Quentin Stevens

Masterplanning public memorials: an historical comparison of Washington, Ottawa and Canberra

This article examines three New World democratic capital cities – Washington, Ottawa and Canberra – where the growing number of public memorials has spurred the development of official plans and policies to regulate the siting and design of future memorial proposals. The historical evolution of these strategies is examined in relation to the designs of individual memorials. The analysis identifies a range of planning strategies that significantly influence the design of individual memorials, including large-scale memorial precinct plans, the social meanings of surrounding sites and structures and existing memorials, and the uses of memorial sites for activities other than grieving. The article examines controversies surrounding the siting, design, meaning and public use of a number of specific memorial examples. The research draws upon existing planning and briefing documents, wider public and professional discourse, and site analysis.

Pop-ups and Public Interests: Agile Public Space in the Neoliberal City

Both ‘temporary urbanism’ (in Europe) and self-organized ‘tactical urbanism’ (in North America) are claimed to have a range of public benefits. These embrace five key values: urban intensity, community engagement, innovation, resilience and place identity. This chapter’s critical examination of the neoliberal planning regimes, actors, and interests shaping such transformations also identifies a range of potential negative impacts, including displacement, privatization, gentrification, disenfranchisement, and the withdrawal of long-term public-sector planning and investment. Temporary and tactical transformations of public space can reproduce or even exacerbate the urban problems they seek to address.

Memories Come to the Surface: Pavement Memorials in Urban Public Spaces

Memorials installed within public pavements are a recent, distinctive genre in terms of their forms, subjects, audiences and custodianship. Through international examples, this paper examines their varied materials and designs, and their differing placement in relation to the pavement surface, the location of the events commemorated and the wider cityscape. It analyzes the particular visual and tactile encounters they frame for the passing public. These commemorative installations sit in tension with the complex ownership, regulation, use and maintenance of the public right-of-way. They also engage with specific physical and representational opportunities that the public pavement presents for commemoration.

Memorial planning in London

Abstract Three London jurisdictions ‒ Westminster, the Royal Parks and the City ‒ employ different policies, decision-making processes and criteria to shape the siting, design and subjects of new memorial proposals, in relation to different stakeholder interests, existing memorials and ongoing urban development. Across these jurisdictions, some new memorials fit well into existing physical, functional and symbolic contexts. Non-traditional ‘spatial’ memorials are often placed opportunistically wherever they can obtain approval. Other memorials are incorporated into existing commemorative precincts, despite dissonance in form or subject. Varying systems, a densely-developed urban fabric, political influence and compromise all lead to very diverse commemorative outcomes.

How do open space characteristics influence open space use? A study of Melbourne’s Southbank Promenade

ABSTRACT With the importance of open spaces to urban quality of life being increasingly recognized, knowledge about which spatial characteristics influence open space use, how, and why is of growing interest to open space researchers, designers and managers. Through an observational survey of Southbank Promenade in Melbourne, Australia, the research examines how various specific design characteristics of open spaces correspond to their actual uses. The findings show that different levels and kinds of uses are associated with the different space features of three distinct sections of Southbank Promenade, under varying time and weather conditions.

Shaping Seoul’s memories: the co-evolution of memorials, national identity, democracy and urban space in South Korea’s capital city

ABSTRACT This paper examines the evolving subjects, forms, symbolism, and spatial constellation of the diverse memorials erected in Seoul since 1953. It explores how these memorials have expressed shifts in national identity towards democracy since the end of dictatorship in 1987. It illustrates how commemorative intentions in this massive, rapidly-changing metropolis have intersected with other urban design aims and pressures. The analysis reveals an evolutionary progression in memorial themes, from heroic statues that re-establish roots of Korean national identity and independence, to marginal grassroots memorials and wider themed precincts that present more inclusive, democratic, complex narratives of identity and history.