The making of new ghosts

It is in his book Spectres of Marx that the French philosopher Jacques Derrida first introduces the neologism ‘hauntology’ – a splicing together of ‘haunting’ and ‘ontology’ – as a means of describing how the present is always haunted by the past. An always evolving past-informed and future-imagined network or mesh of meanings, reality as we know it is constantly constructed and reconstructed by these (linguistic, social, cultural) hauntings. ‘The time,’ says Derrida, quoting Hamlet, ‘is out of joint’.

This is as true, argues Su Lim at a recent Hassell-hosted TEN women panel discussion on ‘public spaces where women thrive’, of our (often much-lauded) shared spaces as it is politics, the economy, or society itself. Whether a statue commemorating a significant piece of colonial history, the way our parks are utilised, or even the application of Melbourne’s Hoddle Grid, public spaces are the expression of our culture and values, none of which, as Derrida might say, are neutral. On the contrary, they are the ghosts of the privileged. They describe a world regulated by the policies, institutions, and tools of men. They are the design of the colonisers of our times and our spaces. And in their haunting of the present, so they absent those whose pasts and futures they fail to represent, embody, or imagine.

In this hauntology, as Lim’s fellow panelists Nicole Kalms, Anika Labadie, and Laura Martires variously assert, there is no such thing as a gender neutral space or even a genuinely shared commons. It is, rather, a sociocultural space, as Kalms might say, defined by what she calls the hypersexualised landscape of the modern city. It is in this world that a substantial number of girls and women over the age of 15 have experienced physical (31%) and sexual (22%) violence, and in which 80% of sexual harrasment in public spaces goes unreported, such is the lack of trust in the legal system(s) haunted by those self same ghosts. The time, for girls and women, is out of joint.

How then, asks Lim, might we redeploy the idea of hauntology to foster and design for a new sense of a future shared commons? In short, we must exorcise our present ghosts, and in three ways: one, by ‘crowding out the ghosts of the past’; two, through the ‘radical participation’ of women and other absented stakeholders in placemaking; and three, in enabling more women into leadership roles.

Crowding out

In crowding out our ghosts, we reimagine or reassign the public realm as social spaces, a realm where women are the protagonist designers and occupiers, the new storytellers ushering in interventions that prioritise mobility and safety, that provide space to nurture the young, and that ensure essential workers are paid properly. We must explicitly design, as Kalms says, for girls and women, and in doing so design better public spaces for all. For a fine example of this exorcising of our ghosts, see Seestadt Aspern in Vienna, a large ongoing development where ‘gender mainstreaming’ – a UN global strategy for ensuring gender equality in policy, legislation, and resource allocation – has been and continues to the norm. All the streets in Aspern are named after women, antidote to the fact that 3,750 of the rest of the city’s streets are named after men. These brand new ghosts in the making represent a different and relatively ignored reality.

Radical participation

This crowding out the ghosts of the past is not simply a strategy made real in the service of a girls and women. Rather, it is this and it is a strategy made real by girls and women. While we certainly need, says Lim, more women on our design teams, if we were to stop here, then it’s clear that we would still be unrepresentative of the communities we serve. Engaging communities is to invite community groups to lead on design, to be constantly involved in the build, and enabled through longterm funding in the managing of our public spaces. Two fine examples: The UK charity Make Space for Girl‘s involving of teenage girls in the design and improvement of their parks makes them safer, more equitable, and much more available to wider cross section of interests. The ongoing ‘creative city’ drive in Ballarat (Victoria, Australia) is quite literally powered by members of the community it seeks to serve. It’s ‘radical’ because a it’s still a pretty rare form of ‘community engagement’.

Women in leadership

Women are underrepresented in the governing, planning, designing, and management of our public spaces. As Vienna’s success clearly demonstrates, the task of haunting our public spaces with new ghosts requires that women occupy critical leadership roles. The city’s deputy mayor Maria Vassilakou, its chief urban planner and strategist Eva Kail, and its head of cross sectional gender mainstreaming Ursula Bauer have all – though especally Kail – ensured that Vienna is the model city for promoting gender equality, and therefore for the making of one of the world’s most liveable cities. It’s first deliberately gender-biased hauntology, Frauen-Werk-Stadt (Women-Work-City), is a 357-unit social housing project designed exclusively by women. Barcelona is another example of women-led change, its female mayor Ada Colau busy fast tracking a whole new set of ghosts. The above mentioned Ballarat example has been championed and engineered by creative city specialist Tara Poole, a natural champion of the kind productive or maker urbanism advocated for by Martires. More of the same, please.

The TEN women panel discussion on ‘Public spaces where women thrive’ was hosted by Hassell’s Susie Quinton. Introductory and closing remarks from Brenda Boland, CEO of Lighthouse Foundation, for which the event raised $6,000. If you would like to learn more about TEN, the event itself, or female-led, designed, delivered, and managed hauntologies, do get in touch with Su Lim.     

Photo credit: Hassell