When we imagine being in a large public space, we think of it as a relaxing experience — a place to people-watch and take in the city scene.
As New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman writes in City Squares (HarperCollins), a collection of essays edited by Catie Marron, “The square is a treasure precisely because it doesn’t parade as an outdoor museum. It’s a living place, jammed with people, changeable, democratic, urbane.”
In recent decades, the city square has also become ground zero for political activism.
Before reading this collection, I’d assumed that the contributions by 18 gifted writers (along with 93 compelling photos) would be about architecture or childhood memories. Several writers did choose to personalize their descriptions: New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik lyrically describes the magical escapism provided under the plane trees in the Place des Vosges in Paris; Zadie Smith’s word paintings of Italian treats at Piazza San Marco in Venice and Piazza Navona in Rome stimulate the senses. According to Andrew Roberts’s essay, these squares represent the “highest form of civilized urban life…”
But it’s the essays about squares as sites of protest that moved me the most. As Marron explains, “The idea for this book came about when I realized that the major protest movements over the past few years — in Cairo, Istanbul and Kiev — all began in city squares. This deeply free and public space continues to play a vital role in our world.”
The names of some of the more recently publicized squares are now linked forever with global initiatives for freedom: Tahrir Square in Cairo, Taksim Square in Istanbul, Euromaidan in Kiev. David Remnick wisely remarks in his essay, “Authoritarians don’t realize what a dangerous thing it is to have a city square.”
The essays in City Squares deepened my understanding of the historic roots of Tiananmen and Red squares. Remnick observes, “Soviet leadership employed Red Square as an arena of awe. The few who dared to challenge the Soviet leadership saw it as an arena of confrontation.”
Richard Stengel chronicles the success of Nelson Mandela’s speech at the Grand Parade in Cape Town following his 27 years in prison under the apartheid system. The symbolism of a freed leader cheered by tens of thousands was powerful, and Mandela’s dignity and focus helped shape a peaceful transition.
Perhaps my favorite piece is from Chrystia Freeland, a member of the Canadian Parliament whose grandparents fled Ukraine when the Soviets invaded and whose mother was born in a refugee camp in 1939. Her mother moved back to Ukraine in 1997, where she worked on legal reform for a decade.
Freeland and her young children maintained residence in Kiev for several months following her mother’s death in 2007. The public square called the Maidan became the epicenter of Ukrainians’ fight for self-governance. She says, “For Ukrainians, the Maidan isn’t just a noun; it has become a verb, the act of grassroots democracy.”
The bucolic public square in some urban centers has been transformed into a tent-filled hive in others. Since the majority of the world’s population is gravitating to cities, we can expect increasing activity in these city hearts.
As the LGBTQ community gathers in the heart of Ybor this weekend, I wonder: What other Tampa Bay locations serve as our most important city squares?
This article appears in Mar 23-30, 2017.