Inner city woodland Cardiff city centre is the place that many vehicles travel…
Unit 05: Reconfiguring Public Space
Tutor: Peter Salter
Brian Haw set up a protest camp on the pavement around Parliament Square, protesting for 10 years against the Iraq War. He was regarded as a rough sleeper and like all rough sleepers, subject to the laws of trespass which pertain to all privatised space. Only the pavement is held as common ground. Britain is gradually giving up its public space to privately run organisations who control how such spaces are used and policed.
Last spring a ‘Red-Top’ tabloid featured the plight of Cardiff’s homeless with a front-page picture of a rough sleeper taking shelter outside the church of St John the Baptist in the Hayes; this was followed by several internal pages of reportage on the increasingly disenfranchised plight of such unfortunates.
Cardiff like London is similarly patrolled and restricted; rough sleepers have few places to set down without getting moved on or arrested. One such place to sit is the curb to the square outside the station now built over and controlled by the BBC. Previously, it belonged to the Bus Station, a place though not ideal that provided shelter from the rain.
The Unit project this year is to return public space to all the inhabitants of Cardiff, whether rough sleepers or others. St David’s Shopping Centre is off limits for the homeless. Originally, the site was housing constructed as workers’ homes by Lord Bute. In the 1970s the housing was turned over to the local authority into public ownership. This estate was subsequently demolished and assigned to the developers of St David’s One and Two, as a privately controlled shopping centre.
With the rise of online shopping , the shopping centre is losing its shops and customers; empty shopping units become like missing teeth within the complex. Howell’s, known as the House of Fraser, has gone into administration, and one can anticipate many more shopping districts similarly falling by the wayside as footfall decreases.The project for the year is to re-establish Public Space for all, including rough sleepers, on the demolished sites of the now defunct Shopping Centre. A new Public Amenity is proposed for all, where rough sleepers and those in difficulties can find help and solace.
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