ABSTRACT
Categorising the functions of London’s spaces is inevitably problematic, since invariably these overlap. Trafalgar Square, for example, is discussed in Chapter 6 as a civic space, but it is also a space on which offices are located (a corporate presence), contains a café and has other retail on roads leading into it (a consumer function), and, depending on how community is defined, it also has a communitarian role as the heart of the community of London (if such a thing exists). Community space – the subject of this chapter – is perhaps the most problematic of the types of space explored in these chapters, since all of the 14 spaces examined in Chapters 5–10 are community spaces, of sorts. This seems logical given that the essence of ‘public’ in ‘public space’ implies ‘for the people’; often defined as ‘the community’. Yet the idea of community as relating to the built environment more generally often has a narrower meaning, one conflated with the notion of physical neighbourhoods, and with the common identity shared by people that live and work in identifiable neighbourhoods by dint of their cohabiting the same space. It is this notion of community that underpins this chapter. Used in this way, London has traditionally provided spaces for citizens of its diverse communities to come together and interact, usually as a by-product of economic exchange activities, most notably its local high streets. In these places, advantage could also be taken of a range of local amenities held in common or run for the common good: libraries, markets, bath houses, places of worship, etc., which grew up at the most accessible locations of the city in a largely ad hoc and unplanned manner.
