After years of photographing architectural and space form he was surprised to discover a tiny figure in one of his photos giving him the finger. Wolf went over his photographs expecting to be excited by action in every window, but discovered the opposite.

Geoff Manough quotes Wolf:

But it was a little sad to see, night after night, in all these buildings, that it was really just single people between the ages of twenty-five and forty, tired after work, sitting on the sofa watching TV. I was a bit disillusioned. I thought it would be more exciting than that.

Public spaces miror the ordinary existence of the majority of the population. Originally via rolu dsgn. X-posted to Junk for Code.

Normally I have a nice full pipe of bandwidth, however, my recent move has left me without an internet connection until next week. How do people live like this? To catch up on things last night I headed down to a local Phoenix coffee and gelato house that had a wifi connection.

The crowd waxed and waned over the night being populated by a mix of the very old and the very young. Presumably the 25s to 45s were in the restaurants, clubs and pubs; while the early 20s and over 50s preferred more sedate, quiet and juvenile surrounds to spend their evening chatting and/or giggling.

I admire the cafe-scapes that photographers like Michael Blamey take. It is hard taking photographs in those environments, especially ones where you try to compose a shot rather than a quick happy snap or a fast 'say cheese' type picture. I always feel I am intruding to an extent onto an individuals use of the public space. As I do it more and more I am sure I will get over that reticence.

Last week I was at Tempe Marketplace; a large sprawling new mall that contains indoor and outdoor public spaces. It has plenty of outdoor furniture and the misted water which is popular in Phoenix that helps keep the body's heat down.

Americans have a sophisticated view of freedom of speech and other political rights. Courtesy of these political rights being entrenched in the US Constitution as amendments the civil understanding of them and the political reproach of them is quite detailed.

These are political rights though, not property rights and are areas of liberty that the government cannot intrude into. So public spaces related to government control, such as a park, tend not to extinguish freedom of political speech. The other aspect is that the censoring of political views is often democratically impossible in a country that is used to the liberal nature of free speech. It can be done, and often is in secret ways, but for the most part it is hard to remove.

Anick Jesdanun has an article which argues that these rights are not only political, but inalienable to the individual and necessary for a healthy and functioning civic society. He argues that companies are making the political arguments impoverished by over-cautious removal of political and social speech.

From the article:

Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services -- from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video -- become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.

One of the complaints is that the policing of these guidelines can be arbitrary and frustrating. Governments and other bodies, rather than going after an individual, will go after a company such as youtube with a blanket complaint and have them remove a user. Consequently the idea of speech rights get squeezed between the competing interests of consumerism, government demands, company demands, special interest groups and so forth and so forth. Not to mention legislation.

I am not seeing there being any great extinguishment of political speech by the internet. People can, and do, create their own sites outside of the wider guidelines of internet behemoths like yahoo, flickr, google, myspace, youtube, etc etc. Nothing is really stopping an individual doing that and being sovereign over their own view of what a public space is.

The Waste Water Treatment plant on Hayden and McDonald contains parks and public areas around it. The building is done in a modern style with rusted metal, rocks in rusted mesh and blood red canvas sails for shade.

You wouldn't know it is a waste water treatment plant other than a back entrance has card access and a warning that only authorized personnel are allowed in. Immediately infront of the facility is a water feature and dog parks. There is a shaded amplitheatre of sorts behind the structure and then it blends into baseball parks.

It is possible that disguising it in the modern structure was a requirement or a means to fend of any NIMBY attacks so that it could go through council. It is quite a stunning building and well integrated into the surrounding public space.

Update: The maps.google satellite view is before the park was finished. The water treatment plant is done though.