Negoiated Stories in Public Space

Abstract

<p>Design professionals and environmental social scientists understand the human modified environment as a material production of cultures. As a result, we also support the idea of spaces as communicative. The contextually defined relations between objects, places, and people communicate the values, decisions, and choices made throughout a broadly defined process of placemaking. Places have meanings, they tell stories. Thus "narrating" is one aspect or part of deCerteau's conception of spatial practices (de Certeau, 1984, xiv). Yet because values differ, the same place may tell different stories to different people.</p>