When I began to reflect on public spaces in Providence, I determined that for me one did not exist, or at least one did not exist beyond my public life at RISD. Not having a car, or a bike, limits me to how far my feet will take me or which bus routes I feel comfortable taking. But I’m not convinced circulation is the problem. Jane Jacobs in all her wisdom spoke of a lack of trust between individuals and how that can affect the uses of public space; I would like to bring that argument into the present. Jane Jacobs’s book “The Death and Life of American Cities” was written at a time of a mass architectural rift in society. Suburbs were no longer a trend they were a reality, they rose up and embodied the fears of the newly commercialized American citizen. In a gross generalization, young families had all but deserted the big cities in order to escape whatever evils they believed were lurking inside, the outside was no longer to fear, it was the inside, an impregnated response to WWII. The birth of modern America as a country that functions on fear supported by the media was born. A constructed society that had the means and the time to build upon their values and use its industrial backbone to generate what became what was a powerful well engine machine, America as a leading world power. With this came a renewed since of distinction between us and the outside, and a re-evaluation of the spaces within. Fears projected by communism, hopes created by the Great Society[i], frustrations generated by the Vietnam War, and confusion stirred by the sexual revolution, exposed a society that had become complacent in its mode of operation. The public no longer demanded public space, they demanded safe public space. After 9/11, the public no longer demanded any public space at all; the expansion of vulnerable places where concentrated amount of people would be held was silenced.

How does all of this relate to Providence? We certainly don’t have terrorists, and we surely haven’t seen any holistic change in how we use our public space in the last few years. What cities like providence provide is a shell of what public life used to be, but we no longer fit into that shell. But what happens in the public eye of America has a reflection on every street corner. Think about it, at RISD every building is card access, every door locks behind you, nearly every window is covered.

My conspiracy theories aside it cannot be denied that RISD lacks any real public space, it’s a private institution, all communal spaces are therefore private. That is why my public space, is indeed a private one, the Woods-Gerry Gallery.

I chose this space because it is one of the spaces left open to the public, and still retains the sense of student ownership. It is a uniquely beautiful space that functions as an outlet for social interaction that sustains all galleries, but also supplies a sense of isolation within the RISD community, good or bad.