Diverse Distribution of Public Space – A Public Good for Whom?

In the contemporary multicultural context, liberal democracies face continuous negotiations among citizens and diverse groups. Some of these negotiations are rather intractable, involving claims from individuals belonging to minority groups. Often, such requests are not adequately managed by liberal institutions. In fact, they lack a theoretical flexibility that would allow them to identify the salient features of different claims and to reconnect these contextual differences to a more general theory. In order to improve the connection between the theory and the reality, it is important to develop analyses of actual concrete negotiations, focusing on specific kinds of claims that are raised. In this paper, I address the distribution of public spaces. In light of this subject (and at a very general level) my aim is to offer better definitions of the ways in which these claims should be laid (i.e. by who and how) and to develop a comparison with the economic theory of public goods. In order to properly analyse the claim-negotiation relationship, the concept of public space stands to be extremely useful. In addition to being a scarce, and thus a contested good, public space is a place in which society produces and legitimates its own image and self-perception. Therefore, issues concerning public spaces always involve issues of recognition, as any redistribution of this particular good inescapably yields a new image of the polis and, from the perspective of the individual or group, a new paradigm of visibility . Hence, the intrinsically public nature of this kind of good allows me to emphasize the issue of recognition within public spaces, recognizing that “how” such spaces are distributed is at least as important as “what” spaces are distributed. In what follows, I will offer more details that describe how every claim also implies a public recognition of identity that can itself be divided in two parts:  The actual claim for distribution of a particular good.  The public recognition of diversity. The basic difference between these two aspects is that the latter is never negotiable, even when it is impossible to reach a compromise when negotiating actual policies. That is, amidst various identity claims, what essentially is not negotiable is not the distribution of a particular good, but rather the act of recognition that this distribution as a rule implies . Analysing the issue of public space demands facing one of the most difficult tensions within multicultural democracies, as the public nature of such spaces inevitably involves the allocation of a good and a definition of the “we” that constitutes the polis. Indeed, the social meaning of the “we”, requires continuous reappraisals and adjustments that must be conducted in accordance with a just and dialogical process and according to a principle of equal respect, where all citizens are able to speak in their own voice . Conceptually, this emphasis on membership in the polis as a pre-requisite to accessing any allocation, allows me to connect the struggle for the distribution of public spaces to the institutional management of public goods. Highlighting the similarity between the two (and though they emerge out of the different contexts of political theory and economics) stands to be useful for connecting the public debate on public space to a discussion about the lack of motivation for collective actions. According to my interpretation, in order to overcome this motivational impasse, we must establish criteria for determining legitimate claims by citizens; we must also study the ways in which institutions should manage particular issues through productive dialogue with citizens. Of course, in public political debate, the dialogic relationship between institutions and citizens does not always involve the same dynamic, much less the same number, of agents. In dealing with requests for the distribution of public space, I argue that the dialogical framework is nonetheless structured according to a triadic form, with three principal agents: political institutions, a majority and disadvantaged minorities.