Evaluating the eventization of public space in the perspective of publicness: a case study of Northern Longfu Cultural Park in Beijing

Abstract

In the post-industrial society, increasing number of events are staging in public spaces and public spaces around the globe are much more frequently occupied by planned city events rather than unplanned city life. The expansion of public space eventization has drawn great scholarly attention. However, in the exiting literature, there still lacks a complete and quantitative assessment on how events affect public spaces. Besides, empirical studies on public space eventization in China and its consequences can hardly be found. Therefore, the paper, through using the methodology of "publicness" and conducting fieldwork in Northern Longfu Cultural Park in Beijing, evaluates to what degrees that events staged in public spaces in China affect the public life and analyses how public space eventization impact the publicness of Chinese urban space. The findings indicate that, though the overall publicness score did not variate significantly when staging event, the event, through multiple component processes such as disintegrating with the city, creating filtered space, providing cultural consumption amenities and introducing communities of strangers, affected the public space on specific dimensions or aspects. Public eventization process cannot be reduced into a unidirectional process through which public spaces are simply animated or altered detrimentally by events.