Postcard 003 - Shared Spaces
I had the pleasure and the privilege of moving one of my best friends from Austin to Los Angeles earlier this summer, a trip from which I'm sure you'll see many photos.
While I was there, one of my favorite activities was our morning beach walk. I often think of LA as a frenetic city, and even in the early hours of the morning, the boardwalk and beach paths were alive, but often in a much more subdued way. On this particular day, we walked by the Venice skatepark to witness a photoshoot. Perhaps more surprising (to me) than the shoot itself, was the fact that everyone around seemed unbothered by it.
This led me to reflect on the way the beach area was being used and our socially shared spaces more broadly. Part of the joy of shared spaces is that they are, by definition, shared — they exist for everyone to use how they wish. In the case of the paths along the beach, while you'll occasionally see something that grabs your attention (especially when it's people filming), most people seem to be in their own world. You can (and civil engineers among other people do) design spaces to encourage certain kinds of activities, but the beauty in them is what actually unfolds as they are inhabited and enjoyed. They get used in ways you (likely) couldn't have designed for.
I'm recognizing that just like my own home starts to look and feel different to me after a few months (and I look at it differently), we start to see more than what's just in front of us in these shared spaces. While yes, this is a skatepark, it's also a set for a photoshoot (I think in HCI we talk about this as the difference between space and place, or maybe that's backwards, I can never remember - sorry Paul Dourish). This doesn't even acknowledge the role that emotion plays into this, as we encode meaning to spaces because of specific events in our lives.
All this to say, I find myself (especially on my regular walks) often moving through a space and wondering what it is, has been, or could be for someone else. How different this shared world must look to each of us!