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GUÉNOLA CAPRON
Universidad Autónoma JÉrÔme
MONNET
Université
Gustave Eiffel RUTH
PÉREZ LÓPEZ
Universidad
Autónoma Recibido translation Jérôme Monnet
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The sidewalk:
between traffic and other uses, the challenges of a hybrid urban order Abstract: Through a case study of the sidewalk in the Mexico
City metropolitan area, we use the notion of hybrid order to understand the
variable place that mobility and public space occupy in the ongoing logics of
the material, social and cultural production of different sidewalks. This
proposal contributes to a critique of European-centric conceptions of public
spaces and underlying dichotomies. The production and governance of sidewalks
are inscribed within a culture of informality common in Latin American, but
the concept of hybrid order can be extended to other objects and other
contexts. We conclude that the interest in walking and the sidewalk can lead
to a disruption of the conventional hierarchy that places at the bottom end
of governance the management of uses, by integrating it upstream in the
decision-making, planning and design processes. Keywords: Urban space; urban traffic; urban planning; Mexico.
La banqueta (acera): entre circulación y otros
usos, los retos de un orden urbano híbrido[1] Resumen: A partir del caso de estudio de las aceras en la zona metropolitana de la
Ciudad de México, utilizamos la noción de orden híbrido para entender el
lugar variable que ocupan la movilidad y el espacio público en las lógicas
que operan en la producción social y material de las diferentes banquetas.
Esta propuesta contribuye a una crítica de las concepciones eurocéntricas de
los espacios públicos. La producción y gobernanza de las banquetas se
inscriben dentro de una cultura de la informalidad común en ciudades
latinoamericanas, pero el concepto de orden híbrido puede extenderse a otros
objetos y contextos. Concluimos que el interés de caminar y por la banqueta
puede conducir a una ruptura de la jerarquía convencional que sitúa en el
extremo inferior de la gobernanza la gestión de los usos, al integrarla en el
extremo superior de los procesos de decisión, planificación y diseño. Palabras clave: Espacio urbano; circulación urbana; planificación urbana; México.
Cómo citar Capron, G.; Monnet, J. & Pérez, R. (2023). The sidewalk: between traffic and other uses, the challenges of a hybrid urban order. Culturales, 11, e763. https://doi.org/10.22234/recu.20231101.e763 |
Introduction
The original European conception of sidewalks makes them a part of the
public domain characterized by public uses, which is a matter of public order
and whose development and management belong to the public authorities (Gehl,
2010). Within this monopoly, the sidewalk may appear to transport and mobility
specialists as an element of the infrastructure for pedestrian circulation and
as a support for urban furniture that serves this circulation as well as that
of vehicles on the roadway. However, this functionality often seems to be
limited or even disrupted by many other uses, especially in cities of the
Global South, where the formal order of transit, which dominates the design of
streets, competes in particular with the alternative or even informal practices
of staying in public space to work, shop, consume, play or rest.
We are moving
away from the literature on sidewalks that puts the highlight on defaults of
accessibility, on walkability and urban design (Boils, 2019, 2022; Ingram et
al., 2017; Guío, 2008) and pedestrian mobility (Fernández-Garza &
Hernández-Vega, 2019; Tanikawa & Paz, 2022) and are following
Loukaitou-Sideris & Ehrenfeucht’s (2009) and Kim’s (2015) works on
conflicts, although with some differences. This situation of heterogeneity of
the uses of sidewalks has been studied in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam by Kim
(2015), who recommends managing the conflicts arising from it by going beyond
property rights focused on the public/private dichotomy and considering other
types of basic rights, particularly the right to subsistence. Extending Kim’s
proposal, we suggest here that the sidewalk has to be seen as the product of a
negotiated order in which informality plays an important role and that allows
for the coexistence of a variety of often conflicting uses, while at the same
time creating an ambivalent place for traffic.
Understanding the
production of the negotiated order of the sidewalk
means going beyond the dichotomy between public and private space. For this
reason, we do not adopt Kim’s notion of “mixed-use public space”, which implies
that the sidewalk is administered by public authority. Instead, we follow the
hypothesis that it is not only the physical space but also the order that
regulates the sidewalk that is hybrid, as it integrates and articulates
multiple dichotomies: public vs. private, formal vs. informal, residence vs.
work, and especially mobility vs. immobility. The notion of hybrid order that
we develop here for the study and interpretation of the sidewalk has
theoretical and methodological implications that could be extended to other
socio-spatial objects, whether related to mobility or not.
The perspective opened by the notion of hybrid order
allows us to analyze how pedestrian mobility practices that use the sidewalk as
a travel infrastructure, are inserted into the production of this order in
interaction with the other uses of the sidewalk. Our proposal is part of an evolution in urban planning
that integrates the plurality of uses by replacing the vocabulary and culture
of the roadway with those of the public space. What kind of order then
emerges from the hybridization at work?
We have chosen the concept of hybridization, following
García (1997) in his analysis of the evolution of contemporary cultures, where
he wants to mark a double distance: on the one hand, from the concept of
miscegenation (“mestizaje”), associated with the question of the mixing of
races, and on the other, from that of syncretism, used to evoke the fusion of
religious influences. However, the notion of “métissage” has been extended in
France to dimensions other than biological and has been used in Latin America
to conceive the “mestizo thought” (Gruzinski, 1999). Baby-Collin (2000) has
spoken of “mestizo urbanity” to show how the inhabitants of the precarious
neighborhoods of El Alto (Bolivia) and Caracas (Venezuela) produce their
urbanity and citizenship in a back-and-forth between formality and informality,
center and periphery, integration and exclusion. Recently, Runnels (2019) has
studied the “mestizo aesthetic” expressed in real estate development and
speculation in El Alto by entrepreneurs of Aymara origin.
It is in this sense of “mestizaje” that we place our
choice of the notion of hybridization to qualify the realities we have studied
through the sidewalks of the Mexico City area. We follow García (op. cit.)
when he draws attention to hybridization as an ongoing process rather than a
fixed state. Understanding this process means looking at developments on
different time scales and establishing the genealogy of the material and social
production of sidewalks as typical of successive or different generations of
urban planning and design. For example, the first “European-style” sidewalks
were imported to Mexico City by Viceroy Revillagigedo between 1789 and 1794,
marking a turning point in the imposition of public authority over residents
(Sánchez de Tagle, 2007). This process of public legitimation is consistent
with what has been observed elsewhere (Loukaitou-Sideris & Ehrenfeucht,
2007).
Another well-documented example of hybridization is
provided by the sidewalks of popular self-built neighborhoods. The origin of
these sidewalks is neither planning nor engineering, but vernacular know-how.
In some cases, the order of spatial separation between the sidewalk and the
roadway is created by farmers who have informally subdivided their land in
order to sell it, while the residents’ associations then create the physical
sidewalk with the means at hand and according to their own logic of use. In
other cases, the land has been occupied by force and the invaders carry out a basic
distribution of plots, on which the layout of the streets and (possibly) the
location of the sidewalks will be made later. For these different reasons, due to culture of informality
common in Mexico City and its surroundings, but also in other mexican and latin
american cities, the sidewalk appears as a hybrid property, because if
the residents recognize that it is public, at the same time they also feel that
it belongs to them, which explains why they can ensure the daily cleaning in
front of their house as we will see later. All this shows us the illusion of
making the street a “public space par excellence”, especially if it implies
that this space is undifferentiated, homogeneous, and monopolized by the State.
The focus on sidewalks, in a genealogical perspective
of the production of urban space, and thus attentive to the different
historical forms of production of urban space in different contexts, allows us
to highlight the intrinsic heterogeneity of the different places that make up
public space. In the street network, formally dominated by the order of
traffic, where public rules are nevertheless hybridized with social norms,
sidewalks appear as spaces of overlapping public and private logics, where
different normative regimes are superimposed, often incoherent with each other. The concept of a hybrid
order proves useful in explaining this social and cultural complexity of
regulations, practices, and perceptions that fundamentally impact mobility.
This proposal is the result of empirical research developed
in 2017-2022 in the metropolitan area of Mexico City and based on systematic
observations, interviews with governmental, associative, or economic actors,
questionnaires with users, video recordings and mapping of sidewalks at
different scales. Our objective was to consider the different modes of social
and spatial production of this fundamental urban space, as well as the
complexity of the phenomenology associated with it, and the relationships with
the different “settlement types” (Connolly, 2005) and “urban orders” (Duhau
& Giglia, 2008) existing in the metropolitan area.
For this purpose, we selected a series of test sites
that corresponded to some of these types:
– two sidewalks in traditional central areas, one
located in the downtown historical district (Alameda central), the other in a
secondary historic and touristic area (Coyoacán), corresponding to the “city of
contested space” order in Duhau and Giglia’s typology;
– a sidewalk of the “island city” type corresponding
to a recent residential and business development linked to financial capitalism
(Santa Fe);
– three sidewalks in the popular residential areas of
the “city of negotiated space”, one corresponding to a “consolidated”
self-constructed neighborhood (Santo Domingo), another in a precarious area in
the process of urbanization (Nezahualcóyotl-Chimalhuacán border), and the last
one in a space in transition, where the sidewalks have been rebuilt by the
developers of two new shopping centers (Gustavo Madero);
– two sidewalks in the “ancestral city” on the
periphery of the metropolitan area, one in an old village incorporated into the
urban space (Iztapalapa) and the other in the center of a suburban town labeled
“magic village[2]“ (Tepozotlán);
– a sidewalk in the “homogeneous city”, in a
commercial area of a suburban development for the middle and upper middle
classes planned in the 1960s and 1970s (Ciudad Satélite).
Figure 1: Location of neighborhoods studied, Mexico City agglomeration.
Created
by: Jerónimo Díaz.
This paper is structured into five sections. Firstly,
we present a typology of sidewalks as a hybrid order, highlighting the specific
role of mobility in each type. Secondly, we describe the manifestations of the
hybrid order in material space. Thirdly, we analyze the socio-political effects
of hybridization. Fourthly, we examine how the hybrid order renews the strategy
for analyzing public space. Lastly, we explore comparative uses of the concept
of hybrid order.
The sidewalk as a
hybrid order: an attempt at typology
Our theoretical proposals and empirical results lead us to suggest the
following typology of practical modes of operation based on the hybrid order
concept, which encompasses mobility and other uses.
Sidewalks where the
legal order applied in a discretionary and non-linear way produces
contradictions and mixtures
In our study, this type of situation is exemplified by the sidewalk
running along the Alameda Park, in the historic center of Mexico City. This park
was created by the colonial authorities at the end of the 16th century. It
continues to be popular among both residents and tourists, who frequent it the
whole week and particularly on weekends. The sidewalk we studied is located at
the interface between this park and a vehicular access road to the underground
parking lot located under the square of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of
Fine Arts, Mexico City Opera), itself an emblematic monument. The sidewalk
serving the pedestrian street (Madero) that leads to the Zócalo (Main Square)
of Mexico City, therefore, occupies a central place in pedestrian mobility
between the landmarks of the historic center, while hosting street performances
and many other uses. Formally, it is integrated into the management of the
park, where the prevailing regulation is precise and very restrictive in the
activities allowed, prohibiting a wide range of uses such as roller skating,
walking dogs, or vending. In practice, a whole range of omissions, tolerances,
compromises, and agreements emerge between enforcement officials and park
users. Three situations may illustrate the hybrid order in place:
a) formal rules that are not applied (by omission:
this is the case of children’s games in the fountains which were intended to
beautify the space, but became a playground for fun and refreshment, especially
during the hot season);
b) formal rules that are applied arbitrarily or on a
discretionary basis (users break the rule because they are not sure that it
will be applied; this is the case of skateboarders who, despite bans, continue
to practice until they are chased by the police);
c) informal rules (unrelated to the regulation) are
enforced (e. g., the police prohibit homeless people from sleeping on
benches, implying that benches can only be used for sitting, while the
regulation is not clear on this point, referring only to “the proper use of the
furniture”, cf. Giglia, 2016).
The enforcement of formal rules seems so uncertain
that police officers sometimes appear among the spectators of (in principle
prohibited) street performances. The discretionary nature of the application of
both formal and informal rules corresponds to a political logic in which hidden
agreements can be broken at any time.
Sidewalks where two formal
orders coexist and are in contradiction
Laws themselves can create uncertainty by appearing “fuzzy” or “muddy”
(“mud laws”, cf. Kettles, 2014). An example of this uncertainty is the
management of parking along sidewalks. Roadway space is nominally under public
management, even in self-built neighborhoods where residents have often built
the sidewalk in front of their homes. However, residents cite the lack of
parking and, more importantly, the risk of having parts of their car or vehicle stolen, to occupy
the pavement space in front of their homes. They place cans or other objects to
reserve this space for themselves and prevent other cars from parking there,
which can also be seen in other cities like Bucharest as a sign of privatism
(Popescu, 2022); this privatization of the curb is congruent with their control
and attention to the corresponding sidewalk, where they often decide on
legitimate uses. Residents and drivers generally respect this regulation, which
is not legal, but is consistent with the formal responsibility of residents to
clean the sidewalk in front of their homes and take care of the vegetation on
it (Law on Waste, Residuos Sólidos,
art. 39).
Thus, there is an unspoken hybrid
rule that says: “This is my parking lot between these points, and beyond that,
others can park”. However, the municipal authorities sometimes carry out
operations to remove the cans used to privatize the parking space, but the
residents immediately replace them; more often, these authorities tolerate this
use.
Generally speaking, the issue of parking blurs the
formal order of division between the sidewalk as pedestrian space and the
roadway as vehicle space. It is common for residents to park their vehicles
across the sidewalk in the driveway to their garage, leaving pedestrians only a
small passageway in front of the house or forcing them to walk on the roadway
turning around the vehicle. This situation, which is also common in front of
stores or other businesses to accommodate their customers’ vehicles, is also tolerated
by the police. In a metropolitan area like Los Angeles, this social practice
also gives rise to a hybrid order (Shoup, 2014).
In all these cases, a hybridization of multiple
figures of legality emerges, leaving open the question of who decides between
conflicting formal rules and offering the possibility of political play,
negotiation, while introducing uncertainty.
Sidewalks in a legal
vacuum:
in the absence of a formal order, a
hybridization regulated by informality
This case is represented by the road that forms the municipal border
between Nezahualcóyotl and Chimalhuacán, where each municipality claims
jurisdiction, but neither exercises it. There is no maintenance, no investment
by the government. The sidewalks here are built by the residents and are
sometimes materially very precarious or in poor condition, or simply do not
exist. The order of the motorized traffic is hardly present because very few
vehicles pass there, which allows the pedestrians to walk preferably on the
roadway. The division between the latter and the sidewalk is discontinuous and
not a matter of formal order. This situation is reproduced in many suburbs: if
frequent in popular self-built areas, it appears also in middle-class housing
estates, where the sidewalks built by the developers have never been taken care
of by the municipal authorities, who do not consider it as a priority.
Manifestations
of the hybrid order in space
We will use photographs taken during the research project to illustrate
these manifestations identified during the in-situ observations.
At the micro-scale of the ground, we observe material
hybridizations. For example, in Santa Fe there is a play of continuities and
discontinuities in the surface texture of the sidewalks. Photo 1 shows the texture
of the sidewalk built by the company that built a tower (left) and the texture
of the sidewalk built by the Delegation, the municipal authority (right).
However, photos 2 (sidewalk of the Delegation) and 3 (sidewalk built by the
company) show that on the one hand the “private” sidewalk reproduces the design
of the public sidewalk, but on the other hand the first one uses materials of
better quality than the second one.
Photo 1. Private sidewalk (left) and public sidewalk (right) in Santa Fe.
Credit: Ruth
Pérez López.
Photos 2 (top) and 3 (bottom). Textures and materials of the public sidewalk (photo
2) and the private sidewalk (photo 3).
Credit: Ruth
Pérez López.
Credit: Ruth Pérez López.
At the intermediate scale of the street, there is a
hybridization between the production of the material space (by private or
public actors) and the uses (public or private) that are made of it. For
example, in a residential street in the Roma Sur neighborhood, a resident has
built a bench that leans against the façade, in a style that matches that of
the house (photo 4). This bench is primarily intended for his use, to sit and
watch the animation of the street, but it is admitted that it also offers a
service to passers-by. This private device built by an individual thus imitates
the public bench device for both private and public use.
Photo 4. The resident’s bench, a service to passers-by.
Credit: Guénola
Capron.
Another situation is the support of street signs or
cables, trees or bus stops. They are often used to hang advertisements or
ropes, to install a kiosk, which often provides food services to people in
transit (Monnet et al., 2007). Another example is trees planted by
municipal authorities to provide shade and make walking or passing more
comfortable. Small and medium-sized trees are cut down by residents due to lack
of maintenance by the local government, which tolerates it. Photo 5 shows the
difference in treatment between trees maintained by residents and those
abandoned by the Delegation (Roma Sur).
Photo 5. Trees pruned by residents (background on the left) and trees abandoned
by the government (center).
Credit: Miguel
Ángel Aguilar.
The space
regulated by the hybrid order of sidewalk is thus the result of a negotiation
between public and private actors, which is part of the inhabitants’ and
government’s culture throughout the city. A very common
case is that of street vending, both in Mexico City and in Ho Chi Minh City
(Kim, 2015) and Nanjing (Guan, 2015). One of our previous research studies
showed the arrangements made between street vendors, establishments, and local
authorities, in particular to allow stalls to follow each other throughout the
day, creating a changing geography of the sidewalk (Monnet, Giglia, and Capron
2007).
The effects of
hybridization: mobility, safety, livability, democracy, integration-exclusion
The hybrid character of the order that reigns on the sidewalks and their
uses implies a series of consequences for the mobility, security, habitability,
integration and exclusion of the various actors that interact in these spaces.
Hybridization creates insecurity that threatens the
proletarians, but their leaders manage to become part of the political order
and allow the negotiation of tolerance for certain popular uses of space, in
particular the informal trade on the sidewalks, which lives on the pedestrian
traffic that provides it with its customers while often constituting an
obstacle to it. In fact, pedestrians who are in a hurry but who have nothing to
buy often have to walk on the roadway, at the risk of an accident.
The forms of appropriation of sidewalks that occur in
working-class neighborhoods are also found in other types of cities/urban
orders. Thus, in the “disputed city” which corresponds to the central city, as
in the case of the Roma neighborhood, the coexistence of residential, service,
and commercial uses generates numerous conflicts, for example over parking, as
we have seen above. Our findings confirm previous research showing that the
“negotiated” order is the dominant type in the agglomeration (see chapter “Los
usos de las reglas” in: Duhau & Giglia, 2008).
The constant negotiation of rules and the resulting
intrinsic uncertainty can be seen as the archetypal form of sidewalk governance
in Mexico City. In this context, everyone tries to take charge of the sidewalk
in their own way, either as a resident or as an occupier. In this context, the
formal order struggles to impose itself.
Nevertheless, there is a hierarchy between uses that
hybridizes “de jure” and “de facto” legitimations: while in law traffic imposes
itself on socialization, which in turn imposes itself on commerce, in fact this
hierarchy is sometimes exactly reversed. This could provide clues for the elaboration
of a “well-made” legal order. The hierarchy could then answer several
questions. Which order is more inclusive, the one that allows homeless people
to stay at the expense of pedestrian traffic, the one where a kiosk at a
crosswalk forces sidewalk users to walk on the road, or the one that excludes
all subsistence or convivial uses to impose traffic? When one actor imposes
itself on all the others, can the hybrid order be democratic and just? How the
most legitimate uses are defined and by who? In the case of the sidewalks of
Santa Fe and the Gustavo Madero Delegation, we observe the predominance of
privatization by real estate actors who try to make it the legitimate order,
limiting or repressing other uses that build on other legitimacies.
In Ho Chi Minh City, Kim (op. cit.) also raised
the question of the (de-)legitimization of the uses of the sidewalks and of the
street shops. She studied the opposing discourses on the latter where their
high social acceptability is evident, especially on the part of the residents,
the police officers in charge of the daily regulation of the sidewalks as well
as the civil servants who manage them. Examples of this kind can be found
elsewhere (Blomley, 2011; Valverde, 2012), including in an authoritarian
context such as China, where the hybrid order of sidewalks maintains the
appearance of a hegemony of the formal order (Guan, 2015). In Mexico City,
Ugalde (2016) showed the hybridization of different legitimacies in the
management of a tree planted in front of the door of a particular building,
whose growth prevented residents from getting their cars out of their garages
and which they wanted to cut down.
In this city, if there is strong discrimination
against street vending by the middle and upper classes, it is counterbalanced
by the tolerance of the working classes, who are the main beneficiaries of
these activities, both as workers and as customers. Thus, according to their
own moral values, as Guan (op. cit.) also observed in Nanjing, but also
because they belong to these social categories, public officials turn a blind
eye to these activities, depending on the place and/or time.
In the case of Latin American cultures, according to
García (1997), hybridization integrates more than it separates, especially in
the case of indigenous tactics in the face of the dominant colonial culture.
But hybridization creates a state of permanent uncertainty that makes the use
of space precarious, diminishing its intelligibility and the exercise of
certain rights, including the right to mobility. The democratic quality of the
hybrid order thus depends on the situations and orders. The hybrid order is
dynamic, because different uses prevail one after the other. Beyond the
observation of the heterogeneity of uses, hybridity shows the importance of the
interplay of actors interacting in the de facto and de jure management of
sidewalks.
Renewing the strategy
of analysis of public space
Critique of modern
Western public space
Urban public space has been the subject of much debate in the social
sciences over the last three decades. The crisis of public space has been
discussed with reference to its historical constitution in the large cities of
the Western world. An ideal public space is supposed to have emerged in
European and colonial cities in the modern era, before spreading around the
world with the industrial city. Its ideal characteristics include free access
for all, the primacy of individual circulation over immobility and static or
collective use of the street, and the anonymity of users. Since the middle of
the 20th century, this ideal corresponds to an urban project that claimed to
guarantee universal access to a set of goods and services for all inhabitants,
saw the emergence of a massive middle class, and offered conditions of full
employment to the working class in the context of the “Glorious Thirty”, known
in Mexico as the “Mexican Miracle” (Duhau & Giglia, 2008).
Public space is linked to the formation of a society
with unprecedented characteristics, and is the result not only of processes of
social inclusion, but also of new forms of regulation of urban life, which are
emerging in response to the problems created by industrialization, urban
expansion, the dispersion of working, living and shopping areas, and the
diversification of forms of housing and consumption. This raises the question
of urban order: At the origin of urban
public space, we find a question that remains central: the question of order, i. e. the forms of regulation of the uses of
the city. Public space, even if we like to think of it as an open and free space, is in fact marked in its essence not
only by the question of the coexistence of heterogeneous subjects, but in
particular by the question of common
rules, and of the common acceptance of rules, be they explicit or implicit,
formal or informal, rigid or flexible (Duhau & Giglia, 2008, p. 51;
emphasis in the original[3]).
We consider that insisting on urban hybrid order
-understood as the entanglement of rules of different purposes and origins-
allows us to go beyond the dichotomous vision typical of the modern Western
order, which separated public space from private space, pedestrian traffic from
automobile traffic (Monnet, 2010, 2016), and which prevailed in the planning of European cities,
and even more so in the planning of colonial cities where informal urbanization
was apart from formal urbanization. This statutory and physical
separation implied that public space became the domain of local public
authority.
In the current context of fragmented post-Fordist
cities, where privatized and segmented spaces proliferate, the public-private
dichotomy seems to be challenged by a wide range of actors. In France, the
“residentialization” movement closes and fragments the common open spaces of
large social housing complexes in the name of their safety. Around the world,
gated communities and other secure residential areas have been created, with
access and management under the responsibility of private co-owners (Capron et
al., 2018). Business Improvement Districts in many cities around the world
have transferred the supervision, maintenance, and animation of public spaces
to retail and business associations, while public-private partnerships have become
common in building construction and open space design. Conversely, private uses
of public spaces have been renewed and transformed by mobile information and
communication technologies or with the rise of the sharing or platform economy
(self-service vehicles, door-to-door food delivery, etc.). These changes have
made the regulation of the use of public space extremely complex, involving a
greater variety of public and private actors.
This complexity is linked to the emergence, in the
last twenty to thirty years of new trends in urban planning that promote the
requalification of public space to improve the quality of urban life, according
to a conception of conviviality that is often limited to attractiveness. Thus,
the place making movement illustrates a set of trends that promote
participation, tactical urbanism, and events, but mostly concern the
development of consumption and leisure in selected places (Friedman, 2010;
Peza, 2022). The analysis of these trends is not the purpose of this paper, but
we can point out that their use and effects are far from being homogeneous and
effective, and that they are subject to criticism, often in relation to their
consequences in terms of gentrification[4].
What we want to emphasize here, in relation to the issue
of sidewalks and mobility, is the importance of analyzing in detail the concrete uses of these basic
public spaces, in order to capture the social and cultural complexity of
the practices, normative regimes and social representations associated with these
places. In this way, serious research can contribute to the evaluation and
possible critique or improvement of proposals such as place making.
The sidewalk as a
hybrid order
Why talk about order instead of hybrid space? The concepts of third
space or third place, intermediate or hybrid space, have been used to qualify
co-working spaces, at the intersection between housing, office and
conviviality, but also for intermediate spaces between the rural and the urban
(Bonerandi et al., 2003). The co-working space “articulates the
flexibility of self-employment with the social environment of organizations,”
in a context characterized by a great diversity of interactional situations and
by the efforts of co-workers to produce cooperation, between the defined and
the undefined, between restriction and freedom (Trupia, 2016). Thus, the hybrid
co-working space appears ambiguous, neither public nor private. The ability of
the spatial device to produce or foster cooperation or innovation seems to
depend on the self-fulfilling prophecy that its hybridity does not make it a
workplace like any other.
The notion of Third Space is mobilized by Soja (1996)
to evoke a space between the concrete and the imaginary. As far as we are
concerned, hybridization goes beyond the observation of the heterogeneity and
complexity of the uses and material forms of the sidewalks, to allow us to
analyze the processes of production of orders, or in other words, of the
ordinations that link and hierarchize this heterogeneity and complexity.
We therefore privilege the notion of order (Duhau
& Giglia, 2008), rather than that of hybrid space, as the interpretive key
to the governance of sidewalks as spaces for pedestrian (and micro-vehicles)
circulation that coexist with other, more static uses. According to this
perspective, the sidewalk appears as a sui generis space resulting from a
hybrid order. This reflects changes in spatial organization based on the
distribution of actors, their interactions, behaviors, interests, and
appropriations, as well as the mobilization of different processes or formal
and informal norms. As such, it is a performative reality that is both
normative and practical, extending beyond and connecting the realms of formal
and informal, mobile and stationary, and public and private.
How is all this “put in order”? Much of what happens
between the legally and socially private space of the parcel on the one hand,
and the roadway put in order by and for traffic on the other, does not
correspond to what is theoretically expected of a public space. In this
interval, the order is pragmatic and does not depend on the spatial dichotomy
of public and private. The sidewalk appears neither as a pure public domain nor
as a simple extension of the private into the public, but as a spatialized
hybrid order, in which the power relations between different orders are
expressed. It thus embodies a specific governance that regulates a variety of
uses in which neither the order of traffic (hegemonic on the road) nor the order
of intimacy (essential in private space) dominates.
García (1997) suggests that hybridization, in the
context of conflicts between modernity and the traditional-modern dichotomies,
should not be seen as an imposition but rather a creative process that takes
place between desired modernity and tradition (especially indigenous) that we
do not want to lose. In Mexican cities, this is illustrated by the persistence
of tianguis (open-air markets) and
itinerant commerce, while “modern” forms of commerce have developed (department
stores, shopping malls, and now online commerce). In the same vein, both Michel
de Certeau (1990) and Gruzinski (1999) evoked the “tactics” of the dominated to
adopt the legalism of the dominant and subvert it by integrating it into their
different belief systems and customs, in a new register.
The tension between the durable and the ephemeral, the
formal and the informal, among others, gives great instability to the hybrid
order of sidewalk, for at any moment it can be challenged, revoked, or
complicated.
The significance of
the hybrid order for the comparison of urban spaces
The concept of hybrid order has a theoretical-methodological importance
because, beyond the need for an internal comparison of sidewalks in the metropolitan
area of Mexico City, it allows a comparative analysis of different spatial
management situations in different urban contexts, considering their
complexity, while avoiding the confinement in dichotomies such as
public-private, formal-informal, traffic-parking or residential-work, among
others.
To illustrate this point, let us consider the case of
cities where, in principle, the formal order seems to be more present and
better respected, such as in France or Canada. The concept of hybrid order seems
to contribute to a better understanding of the de jure and de facto management
of sidewalks.
In Paris, the local government usually assumes
responsibility for sweeping the streets from one facade to another. On the rare
occasions when snow accumulates, an exceptional formal order is implemented,
reserving the authority to clear the roadway for vehicles, while in principle
the residents are responsible for removing the snow from the sidewalks. Two
phenomena hybridize this formal rule: on the one hand, the technique used to
clear the roadway causes the municipal services to push the snow back onto the
sidewalks; on the other hand, the residents completely ignore their
responsibility to clear the sidewalks, following the habit of considering that
cleaning is the responsibility of the municipal services.
In Canada, snow is commonplace and municipal decrees
require residents to remove snow from sidewalks, a well-known and practiced
rule. The regulation dictates that residents must ensure the continuous passage
on sidewalks to avoid liability for any accidents caused to pedestrians.
However, this responsibility can shift to the municipality in the absence of a
decree or in streets where the authority uses machines adapted for snow removal
on the sidewalks.
The cases of Canada and Paris thus allow us to
hypothesize that, even in contexts in which all actors are convinced that the
formal order is hegemonic, with a transparent and predictable application,
there are circumstances in which a degree of hybridization of rules and
practices appears that an in-depth study could reveal.
Beyond the archetypal public space of the street, the
concept of hybrid order can also be applied to spaces whose “public” character
is not always obvious, such as the internal pedestrian circulation spaces of
large residential or office complexes of functionalist architecture. In what is
known in France as “urbanisme de dalle” (Picon-Lefebvre, 2001), the level of
pedestrian circulation “above the street” is the subject of many conflicts (between
users and between managers) and poses major challenges. Similarly, the feet of
social housing buildings, long used as public spaces when they were privately
owned, are subject to contradictory trends to resolve conflicts of use: the
strong trend is towards “residentialization” by fencing them off to make them
private spaces, but there is also the opposite trend of transferring ownership,
development and maintenance to the local government (Lelévrier & Guigou,
2005).
The range of hybrid orders is therefore very wide. In
Mexico City, we could also cite the case of parks opened to the public by the
local government on private land (example of Reforma Social Park) or of
shopping centers that are public-private spaces (Capron, 1998).
Conclusions
Each case deserves an in-depth study of the hybridization processes at
work locally, but the theoretical-methodological dimension of the concept of
hybrid order makes it possible to envisage robust comparisons by making visible
uses other than pedestrian transit on sidewalks.
In the Mexico City metropolitan area, the accumulation
of local micro-orders with varying degrees of hybridity makes the governance of
sidewalks extremely complex and unstable. This seems a far cry from the
situation in New York City studied by Jane Jacobs (1961, 1989) in the
1950s. In Mexico City, uncertainty
dominates, making the sidewalk a flexible space, the product of a permanent
negotiation between actors, in which users are a more active part than in other
contexts.
This is probably due to the socio-cultural
particularities of the urbanization process in Latin America. In this region,
during times of deep urbanization, there was few planning and development
regulations or they were not complied with (for example, lots were sold in places
that did not have infrastructure or services), so that inhabitants were forced
not only to build their own homes, but also to build facilities and
infrastructure and manage urban services (Pírez, 2013). Unlike other highly
regulated contexts, in the metropolitan area of Mexico City there is strong
citizen participation (formal and informal) in the design, construction and
modification/rehabilitation of sidewalks, as well as in their management.
According to us, this informal urbanization, and above all, the place that
informality occupies even in other urban contexts that are more formal,
contribute to explain the processes of hybridization in the production and
management of sidewalks. In other words, hybridization is closely linked to the
informality present in urban planning and development processes.
The hybrid order leads to unstable processes of
exclusion or inclusion, but also allows the city to continue to function. We
therefore echo Kim’s (2015) call for local governments to create “laboratories”
that bring together actors (passersby, merchants, residents, police, activists,
academics, etc.) to explore sidewalk governance that balances the need for
stable and consistent legal protection with the flexibility of local
functioning.
We have applied the concept of hybrid order to
sidewalks, and it would be interesting for future research to explore its
application to other objects, including real estate speculation, transportation
management, and waste administration. Examples of such applications can be
found in Boltvinik (2018) about garbage and they encompass the intersection of
formal urbanism, technocracy, and social accommodation. Even in contexts as the European ones, where
publicity and formality are higher, hybrid order can be a productive issue to
analyze blurred situations between public and private or formal and informal.
Acknowledgements
This paper builds upon
empirical results from case-studies completed by Miguel Ángel Aguilar, Guénola Capron, Silvia Carbone, Perla
Castañeda, Eliud Gálvez, Ana Luisa Diez, María Teresa Esquivel, Angela Giglia (†), Salomón González Arellano, Bismarck
Ledezma, Ruth Pérez, Natanael Reséndiz and
Alejandra Trejo Poo. A special acknowledgement to Angela Giglia who helped to
write the chapter “La banqueta, un orden híbrido” in the book “Banquetas: el
orden híbrido de las aceras en la Ciudad de México y su área metropolitana”
(UAM-Azcapotzalco).
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Guénola Capron
Franco-mexicana. Doctora por la Universidad de Toulouse-2 le Mirail
(Francia), con especialidad en geografía y ordenamiento territorial. Es
maestra en Urbanismo y licenciada
en Geografía por la Universidad de París-1. Actualmente se desempeña como
profesora-investigadora en la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco.
Líneas de
investigación: geografía y sociología urbana, estudio de la transformación del
espacio público en las ciudades latinoamericanas. Últimas
publicaciones: Coeditor en Banquetas: el orden híbrido de las aceras en la
Ciudad de México y su área metropolitana (2022) y coautor en “La banqueta insegura en una colonia en vía de
gentrificación: la construcción de los otros desde las relaciones vecinales”
(2022).
Jérôme Monnet
Francés.
Doctor en Geografía por la Université de
Paris-4 Sorbonne. Profesor de la Universidad Gustavec
Eiffel en Francia, codirector de la Escuela de Urbanismo de París e
investigador del Laboratorio Ciudad-Movilidad-Transporte. Especialista de los
espacios públicos en las grandes metrópolis (París, Ciudad de México, Los
Ángeles), sus estudios enfocan las políticas urbanas y los usos sociales, entre
otros la movilidad no motorizada, el comercio, la informalidad. Líneas de investigación: movilidad urbana,
caminar en la ciudad, espacio público, geografía urbana, urbanismo. Últimas publicaciones: Coeditor en Banquetas:
el orden híbrido de las aceras en la Ciudad de México y su área metropolitana (2022);
Coautor en “Trottoir: les multiples facettes d’un
espace public de loisirs. Le cas de Mexico” (2022).
Ruth Pérez
López
Mexicana-española. Doctora en
Cambio Social por la Universidad de Lille1 (Francia) y miembro del Sistema
Nacional de Investigadores de México (Nivel 1). Profesora-investigadora de la
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco, coordinadora de Eje Docente de
Sociología Urbana y secretaria del Consejo Directivo de la Asociación
Bicitekas, A.C. Líneas de investigación: movilidad urbana cotidiana de la
población metropolitana, movilidad no motorizada (cruces peatonales y
banquetas), relaciones de poder entre peatones y conductores de vehículos
motorizados, procesos de apropiación de las banquetas, la coexistencia de usos
y la negociación de órdenes locales entre los actores que las producen y las
gestionan. También realizó estudios sobre la movilidad en bicicleta. Últimas publicaciones: Coautora en “‘Footbridges’: pedestrian infrastructure or
urban barrier?” (2022); Coeditora en Banquetas:
el orden híbrido de las aceras en la Ciudad de México y su área metropolitana.