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Post #5

In my final blog post, I will be discussing a topic that we covered very recently in class: gender hierarchy in space and more specifically “the power of the gaze” within the Commons. I will answer two questions regarding this topic. 1) Is the Commons a sexist environment? 2) Does the gaze have any impact on how successful the Commons is as a public space on campus? This post will connect back to my third post pretty frequently because in order to analyze this aspect of the Commons, we have to look at what a typical day looks like in the Commons, what activities people are doing, and most importantly for this topic, how they are behaving.

Before we get into “the power of the gaze” within the Commons, I want to discuss the gender and sexuality facts about the TCU community because those will come into play here. On the TCU website, it says that the student body population is about 60% females and 40% males. On top of that, TCU is dominantly a heterosexual population (though are very accepting to the small homosexual population on campus). So based on these numbers, you would expect that you would typically see more girls than boys in the Commons. But most of the time it is actually the other way around.

Since the school has a significantly larger number of females than males in it’s population, we have to ask if there is a gender hierarchy within the public spaces around campus. The Commons I don’t believe is one of them. Men and women alike both use the space and they use it for the same purposes. I talked about this in a previous post but subconsciously the main reason people spend time in the Commons is to see and be seen. This brings me to “the power of the gaze”.

The power of the gaze is a concept that author Martina Low discusses in her piece. Basically, this is the observation that it’s socially not acceptable to stare, but everyone “gazes” and observes others simply just by looking around. Low describes it as “A gaze into this private space may never be fixed or expressive” (Low 123). She goes on to also say “It is now forbidden to stare, but the stare must be fixed on a point which all observers would unequivocally accept as neutral” (Low 123). Low describes a scene on the beach and the Commons follows this description perfectly.

Although people aren’t running around in their bathing suits, people do typically sit and observe others. The key part to this though is the fact that Low is giving the impression that it is typical for guys to gaze at girls but girls do not gaze at guys. This part of her explanation is flawed, especially in an environment like the Commons at TCU with an unbalanced ratio. Girls are often the ones who are gazing more than the guys. Low says, “It is in a culturally specific and hierarchic structure consisting of milieu, class, gender, and ethnicity that gazes are bestowed and received” (Low 127). This statement can help us answer the question of “is the Commons a sexist environment?” although the answer might be surprising.

Let’s go back and look at the activities that are typically seen taking place in the Commons. The guys are usually playing a game or just passing around a ball, being active and grabbing attention. The girls are sedentary and are either talking amongst themselves or observing what is happening around them. This is where the gaze comes in. The girls are usually the ones who are giving the gaze to the guys and not really because of the ratio but because of how the space functions. Is gazing being sexist though? I would say no because it is not discriminating agains a gender.

However, the second question I want to answer is where it gets tricky. When people go to the Commons, they know they are going to be seen and gazed upon. Having this awareness might change the way people behave within this space. It might even prevent a portion of the community from using the public space because they do not want to be gazed upon. Girls and guys alike gaze so I do not think it could be considered sexist but the answer to the second question is yes, it does have an effect on how successful a public space works. If people do not feel comfortable going to this space because they are going to have to be more aware of themselves, then it is not going to properly serve everyone in the community.

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Post #4

In this blog post, I will be discussing a topic that I have not touched on yet: the organized events that take place in the Commons and what rights the community has when it comes to those events. Something that I want to bring attention to in this post that I realized in my last post, is that the Commons is not just a space enjoyed by the TCU community, but the Fort Worth Community as well. There are several events that occur where the public is more than welcome to come and participate in with the TCU community such as the Christmas Tree Lighting, petting zoos that are set up, and performances by some of the clubs at TCU. This is a public space to not just the university, but the city around the university so who gets to dictate what happens there and what implications do those events have?

Stepping away from the Commons for a moment, I want to look at the rule making behind that space. It is a public space but does the public (public being the TCU community) have any say in what goes on in that space? There is the END, a student run organization that puts on concerts and activities, and then people are always more than welcome to come and sit and enjoy the space, but if I wanted to host a fundraiser for my sorority I would have to go through a council and get permission. The same would go if I wanted to host a protest.I am a member of that community the space is intended for and the space influences how I interact with others so shouldn’t I just be allowed to do whatever I want without having to ask permission of someone higher up? TCU is constantly saying you should speak out and that we can do what we want on the campus to have our voices be heard. How do I really know if I am enjoying the right to make changes in my life with regards to my society?

In David Harvey’s piece “The Right to the City” he talks about the implications of who dictates what happens in public space and how that effects how we live. He says that there are three main rights that will answer my questions. The first one is safety. Do I feel safe and do I have access to get help if I’m not safe in the Commons? Yes. The second is the right to appropriation. This is the right to “full and complete use” of common space. Am I able to exercise this right in the Commons? Not to the full extent. I still have to get permission to use the space a certain way and that permission can be denied if those who decide see fit. The third right is the right to participate. This is being able to self govern with regards to spaces and their creation. This is the most important part of Harvey’s explanation because “if the city is the world which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus, indirectly, and without any clear sense of the nature of his task, in making the city man has remade himself” (Harvey 23). Basically what he is saying is that space shapes us and we shape space so if that cycle is interrupted by someone else, then they ultimately have control over personal aspects of you.

Everything I have just discussed has been in regards to the social structure of “the right to the city” as in the order of power through which the rules are decided in this public space. But what about physically? Harvey also mentions how citizens should have a right to physically shaping the space around them. Though I don’t think anyone would disagree with how the end product came out, the community did not get a say in the design of the Commons. If everyone could go around and change whatever they wanted whenever they wanted with public space all the time then we would never have a successful public space at all so it is unrealistic to apply that part of Harvey’s theory to the Commons. But for now, I will leave you with this quote: “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city… The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights” (Harvey 23).

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Post #3

Now that I have discussed the Commons from a physical point of view, and gone into the background on the reasons why the Commons were built, I am now going to talk about how the social aspect of the Commons. The underclassmen who do go there and the people who use the public space, how do they interact? I have touched on this a little already but I want to go further and discuss why certain activities are often done in the commons and what the effects are on the community.

When walking or sitting in the commons, what would students typically observe other people doing there? On a typical Texas spring afternoon, the commons would usually be filled with picnic blankets and groups of girls sunbathing or studying. Then there would be guys throwing a frisbee or a football, almost always someone has a dog, and sometimes you see citizens of Fort Worth strolling through or playing with their kids. Excluding the big events that are held in the Commons and also excluding what I have discussed in my last few posts about how the Commons weren’t fully successful in effecting the entire TCU community, l am going to focus on these human interactions that do occur there.

Regardless of how many people are in the Commons on a nice day, or how many activities may be going on, one thing remains the same. People keep to themselves or their group. There isn’t much human interaction besides maybe petting a stranger’s dog or picking up a ball for someone that threw it a little too hard. This is very interesting for a number of reasons. Hannah Arendt and Richard Sennett both wrote pieces discussing public and private realms. They make some key points that are crucial to understanding why it is that people don’t really interact with one another even in a perfectly designed space that encourages people to do so. Both Sennett and Arendt bring up why people go to a public space. Unlike my previous posts, it has nothing to do with democracy or the beauty of a place but actually it just has to do with human nature. “No human life, not even the life of the hermit in nature’s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings” (Arendt 182). Arendt believes that no human can function without interaction with other people. She believes that we go to public spaces to see and be seen by others. Both authors reference ancient Rome and believe that we had it right back then. People want to be seen by others and want people to “see their glory” so to speak. Now think about the Commons. Though people might not be directly interacting with one another, they are fully aware that they are being seen by others and in the presence of others.

So why is it that people just don’t go up to one another and start a conversation with all of the other people in the Commons? Sennet better explains this because in his piece he talks more about how we have moved from a society that will directly interact with one another, to very privatized and unsocial beings. “Manners and ritual interchanges with strangers are looked on as at best formal and dry, at wont as phony. The stranger himself is a threatening figure,and few people can take great pleasure in that world of strangers, the cosmopolitan city” (Sennet 3). He believes that we are all too intimidated by people finding out about our private life. We don’t share our private life with others and a public space such as the Commons is not a place to share that with strangers. There is a public and private sphere of our life and they should not cross. Do the Commons encourage them to cross and is that a bad thing? If people were to share their thoughts and private lives with one another in the Commons, it would be functioning as a successful public space and serve its purpose for what it was designed for. But it is not realistic in today’s society to try to push people to merge the lines between public and private.

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Post #2

In this post, I will be discussing how the Commons were designed thinking about the consequences it has on campus democracy and further building on why there isn’t as much social interaction from my last post. First, let’s think about how the design of a space can impact democracy. Kevin Mattson says in his piece about Civic Infrastructure, “democracy requires places where citizens can gather together to discuss the issues of the day and work on solving problems… public space was intended to galvanize democratic activities—especially the informal meetings that could produce discussion and deliberation” (Mattson 133). As I discussed in my last post, when designing the Commons, the architects and the Chancellor designed the Commons to be a space to do exactly that (along with many other things) but the campus did not have a place where the students could gather together and discuss things before the space was built. Mattson would describe the Commons as an agora or, “a place created for both the market and political assembly” (Mattson 133).

Now, the Commons was never going to be a place where students will just voluntarily show up and debate things that they’re thinking about, but it is a place that is trying to encourage people to talk to one another about issues and make progress in bettering the community. TCU has its’ own rules and society and is doing its best to function as a successful democracy. And according to Mattson, “a crucial role of architecture is democracy, therefore, was the creation of public spaces for civic interaction and discourse” (Mattson 134). So it is important that the architecture of the space encourages this but how do architects go about doing this?

There is a ideology called New Urbanism that Mattson discusses in his piece. “New Urbanists believe that a better quality of life issues from kinder surroundings (Mattson 137). Basically it is saying that the nicer your surroundings are, the happier the society will be. Looking around TCU’s campus, it is clear that this was extremely influential to the planning and upkeep of the grounds. Like I said in the last blog, the Commons are a highlight of every tour and even I find myself still taking pictures of Frog Fountain on a beautiful day because the impressiveness of the scene still hasn’t worn off even though I pass through it every day. When I give tours, people are always complementing the campus on how beautiful it is and I even just walking to class with my classmates I still find that we talk and appreciate how beautiful our surroundings are. TCU’s campus is known for being this uniquely elegant and picturesque campus. The Commons is the crown jewel of this image and it brings a sense of pride to every student that walks by Frog Fountain. The architects did this with a few key elements that they incorporated into the campus.

The first one and one that I’ve already mentioned is Frog Fountain. It not only is aesthetically pleasing, but it represents the community of TCU. Each lily pad symbolizes a class, seniors at the top and freshmen at the bottom, and the water represents the knowledge that is passed down from student to student, class to class, and brings the community together. The architects also made the majority of the Commons grass so that people wouldn’t sit on benches or at tables and keep to themselves. And finally, they incorporated the unique TCU yellow brick into the buildings and pathways to make the students remember that this is a place that belongs uniquely to them. All of these specific factors encourage the community to come together and gives everyone a civic sense.

As I discussed in my last blog, though the intention was there from the architects and according to New Urbanists this would make sense, the Commons weren’t exactly successful in actually influencing civic interaction. In fact, in today’s society, civic interaction has greatly decreased. Mattson discusses how currently, social interaction has declined because structures are built with the purpose of automobiles and transporting people from one place to another. This is why the space wasn’t completely successful. Even though TCU turned a structure meant for cars (originally a parking lot), into a place of community and purpose, it still did not have an effect of bringing the entire community together. It had the greatest effect on the underclassmen; the people who live there and pass through that area everyday, a place that is a walkable distance and fulfills their basic human needs. The upperclassmen do not utilize the space because they live off campus and do not pass through there.

There is no denying that the TCU community has immense pride in their campus and especially the Commons, but it did not have the desired effect on democracy because it is not utilized by the whole community. The architects and builders essentially everything right according to Mattson and the New Urbanists point of view, but in today’s day and age it still was not enough to fully impact an entire community. We need to stop thinking of the Commons as a space for a physical purpose, but a space where people can just engage in the community.

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Post #1

Throughout this blog, I will be discussing the TCU Commons. A picturesque centerpiece for the university that is highlighted on their website and emphasized as the climax of the campus tour. Although it is a nice point of campus to show off, the Commons were build to serve multiple very unique and complex purposes which I will further be discussing throughout this blog.

For this post, I want to talk about whether the Commons is a contextual space, a created space, or a little bit of both. In his piece, The Socio-Spacial Dialect, Edward W. Soja defines and discusses what the differences are between contextual and created space and the impacts they have on how we interact within that space. Contextual space is a physicalist view of a space that is built and physically there. Soja describes contextual space “of broad philosophical interest in generating discussion about its absolute and relative properties, its character as a “container” of human life, its objectifiable geometry, and its phenomenological essence” (Soja, 209). But created space on the other hand, doesn’t have to do with the physical structure or space itself, but with “socially based spatiality, the created space of a social organization and production” (Soja 209). This is a more materialistic perspective on how people socially interact and function within a space and what that means.

So which one is the Commons? A contextual or a created space? It’s a tough question given that the commons are not just a gathering place, but a collection of dorms, Frog Fountain, the BLUU and all of this leads up to Scharbauer Hall. So it has many different functions as it encompasses all aspects of college life within it: dorms to live in and care for the community, an academic hall which is the main function of a university, and a common area building filled with resources to better both your quality of living and education. According to the TCU website, the vision was created for this space in 1991 however, the grass, intricate brick pathways, and Frog Fountain were later added in 2005. It was merely a cement parking lot. In an article written by Rick Waters for the TCU Magazine, he describes TCU’s Chancellor Boschini’s first encounter with the old space. “He eyed the sea of parked cars in the space between Colby and Milton Daniel residence halls. ‘This is the middle of campus?’ he inquired. ‘Yes,’ he was told, ‘students call it the Quad’” (Waters, 1)  Waters says later in the article, “He visualized TCU’s next step, a vibrant 24/7 community where people would be drawn to the center of campus. It would be a place where students and faculty would interact, study, think, eat, gather, perform, debate, and discover” (Waters, 1). From this description, the Commons were built with a very specific purpose in mind: to influence the way people interact on campus.

At this point, it can be concluded that the Commons were intended to serve as both a created and contextual space. The physical space itself has a purpose of giving the campus a common area for its community together, regardless of how they interacted once they were in that common area, since that space physically was nonexistent on campus beforehand. It also was created to influence the way people interact with one another. However Soja says, “space itself may be primordially given, but the organization, use, and meaning of space is a product of social translation, transformation, and experience” (Soja 210). How do people use the Commons as a space currently now that it is created and established?

Personally, I really do enjoy the Commons and find that any type of student can feel comfortable in that space. It is aesthetically pleasing, there are always things to do, and you feel as though you are in the beating heart of TCU. However, I don’t think it ended up being as quite a successful space as it was intended. I can’t remember the last time I went and sat in the Commons or did anything more than just pass through or take a picture there. And some of my upperclassmen colleagues say they haven’t even seen the Commons since they lived on campus. It would not be the first place I would go if I wanted to fully enjoy campus and reach out to others. For the underclassmen, it is definitely considered a place to gather and enjoy the campus, but it doesn’t really encourage you interact with others if that’s not the reason you came to the Commons in the first place. I also noticed that when I give tours, the people who are not yet a part of the community, feel completely comfortable walking through there and take pictures. It is interesting that it really has a bigger effect on people who are not a part of the society here on campus than the people who do live here and interact with the physical space daily. So for that reason, although the Commons may have been intended to be both a contextual and created space, I believe it is more of a contextual space.

http://www.magarchive.tcu.edu/articles/2008-01-CV.asp