Observations on the State of Public Space in Doha

The above image is a combination of a few of the major issues within the public realm that I have identified- A) physical accommodation, B) social accommodation, and C) climate.
A) physical accommodation- while the city's public areas are largely connected via the Corniche to go to them or to other spaces within the larger city, a car is required. The city is very much organized with the vehicle as the primary urban user over the pedestrian. Small sidewalks and roundabouts make it very difficult to move within the downtown area, while the increasing sprawl negates the pedestrian option as one moves away fro the center. Thus, above, the roundabout acts as the divider (possibly economically as well as physically) between the public spaces on either side.

B) social accommodation- the city's main forms of public space- souq, mall, and park are barred to migrant laborers on their only day off on Fridays, as these are considered 'family days' while on other days the laborers have little available time to utilize these spaces, if they could get to them. In the image above workers are at left, cut off from the basic mall section on the right both by the issue of the car as well as social norms, represented by the red crosswalk hands (there have been incidences of workers being prevented to cross to the same side of the street as public parks or souqs). The result is often that workers create public spaces out of underutilized areas such as the parking lot pictured above.

C) climate- barring workers from public spaces directly relates to issues of climate, especially in the summer- if these men and women are barred from most public air-conditioned places, it becomes somewhat hazardous to their health to be out in public on their days off for months at a time.

Methodology v1.5

This is more of a readjustment of my past methodology based on my recent shift in direction. I plan on doing a more significant overhaul sometime in the near future that will be more specific both as to what I am researching/doing and when. The emphasis here is on the interrelatedness of each of the divisions I've denoted within my thesis method- as I haven't yet gotten to the specifics of site and program, let alone design, these haven't been adjusted much.

Re-proposal

Henri Lefebvre writes in The Production of Space that
           "A social space cannot be adequately accounted for either by nature (climate, site) or by its previous history.... Mediations, and mediators, have to be taken into consideration: the acts of groups, factors within knowledge, within ideology, or within the domain of representations."

The design of public space at the urban scale requires one to address these 'mediators' as they act within space and upon each other (the objects and their relationships in Lefebvre's terms), resulting in a multiplicity of issues: spatial, functional, aesthetic, historical, social, economic, identity. I define this last element as a unique spatiotemporal object that conflates elements of the natural and social, with the potential to exert a specific guiding force on the creation of future public spaces. Identity is an agglomeration of these other contributing factors yet it can also act of its own accord- to make a somewhat simplistic analogy, a palazzo may be a wonderful addition to the public realm on paper, yet it is much more likely to be successful in a Mediterranean city than in Los Angeles. Conversely, it is possible to adjust or even reforge identity with new combinations of its contributing factors, to good or ill effect- for example, Pittsburgh's change in eliminating industrial infrastructure and creating Point Park.

Coming at my initial thesis from a broader angle, I propose to investigate the development of public space within Doha as it relates to its specific socio-cultural issues, such as the relationship between the car and the pedestrian, its climate, and recent local trends in urban development.  This will inevitably lead back to my initial interest in architecture as potential agent of social change, albeit from a wider and more comprehensive perspective as it pertains more directly to architecture rather than sociology, i.e., architecture as a potential influencer rather than as a means to enact social change.

Building upon precedent studies that emphasize particular qualities of Doha's identity such as Souq Waqif (socioeconomic), Al Bidda Park (environmental), and the current Musheireb development (social, environmental, urban), and taking into account the social directives the current leadership is taking to make Doha a more sustainable and accessible global city, I will develop my own design (or re-design) of a public space in Doha in response to my understanding of Doha's developing identity that reacts to or enters into a dialogue with Doha's environmental, architectural, and social contexts.

My initial thinking as of this moment is the redevelopment of Al Bidda Park to (correctly) utilize environmental conditions to create a usable public outdoor space on Doha's prime Corniche area, while entering into a dialogue with nearby Souq Waqif over their respective inclusion and exclusion of the migrant labor class. Obviously this is subject to revision if not outright change.

Making a Left Turn

At this point, this thesis is veering dangerously near to what will amount to at best a top-down authoritarian direction of social interaction in a society not my own. While I am still interested in the social ramifications of what it is I will be designing in the next 9 months or so, as it stands now, my research is less directed towards an architectural thesis than a sociology thesis. Having reached a similar conclusion to some advice given me recently, I am redirecting this thesis to address a need for usable public urban space within the developing city of Doha, in so doing still creating a larger scale urban space that still addresses issues of the pedestrian versus the car and the climate as well as obliquely hitting upon the social issues that I am interested in. In so doing, I think the thesis will become more directly architectural in nature, rather than veering into the polemics of social division in the built realm or a retread of a Modernist utopian architectural agenda.

Avoiding what was described as the Scylla and Charybdis of the polemic and the utopia, respectively.

 The former position is almost wholly undesirable to me- it is not my intent or desire to point fingers or create a bellicose architecture; similarly, it is not my desire to ignore the de facto social situation and in so doing blithely ignore the very people I am designing for. I hope that in taking this new direction, I will create a richer body of research that addresses a wider range of topics that will influence my thesis project, in so doing also leading to a freer, more interesting exploration of the myriad issues, not just the social, that are involved in the creation of successful urban space. I don't see this as in avoiding my original intent, or being an overhaul of my thesis, but rather as a redirection. Thoughts?

Methodology v1.0

The first iteration of how I will go about finishing this project by May 2011.

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Architecture has the potential to be a catalyst for the greater integration of social classes in contemporary urban society.

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The capitalist urban landscape is increasingly stratified along class lines with the rich, poor, and middle-class insidiously segregated from one another. The results of this stratification are on full display in cities such as Doha where by both custom and by law, the lower classes are kept out of areas of the city more heavily trafficked by the upper classes or tourists. Architecture alone cannot change this situation, but it can draw attention to and comment on social issues such as these.

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Doha's class divisions are especially clear cut between the (very) wealthy upper class, the large skilled expatriate population, and the still larger population of unskilled migrant laborers. Doha is of particular interest as a case study not only due to the clarity of its class divisions, both socially and physically, but also for the added weight of what it means culturally to have a stratified class society in a largely Muslim city. A large-scale, pedestrian-oriented urban intervention has the potential to bring these groups together within one spatial zone. The emphasis on the pedestrian is important as it not only  reflects a current trend in the development of the city, but it also places all classes on more or less equal ground, as opposed to, for example, what a vehicular-accessible or -oriented space would do. Simply bringing both upper and lower class groups together in a space is noticeable and makes obvious the divisions imposed elsewhere in the city, such as at the Souq Waqif. But simply being undivided is not the extent of what this intervention can do; the opportunity for greater and more meaningful social commentary is something to be explored throughout this project's development. How can this space become at least as desirable to the upper classes as other exclusive spaces, yet still remain usable for migrant laborers? How can this space encourage classes to cohabitate a space, rather than self-segregate? The challenge becomes how to make this zone attractive and accessible to people of all classes simultaneously.