"Open space"

I dislike the term. It is one of the vapidisms of urban planning babble.

"Open space" is not "park" or "preserve" or anything of substance. It is the absence of something i.e. human buildings (and usually a real rasion d'etre as well.) It is the product of disliking buildings, or of allowing such awful buildings to be built that "nothing" is better than more of them.

Don't misunderstand. I love parks and preserves and "forests." I usually vote my tax dollars for them and I am all for putting as much of the North American continent as possible in a "lock box" until we can do a better job of building in already-developed areas.

It's just the language I find empty.

Of course there is good reason for it when the public is too cheap to authorize its government to simply pay for land for public use. "Open space" is a deliberately-vague term when used as a zoning requirement.

"No sir. We don't have any requirement to make some of your land into park. It's just an 'open space' dedication."

To be fair, such requirements usually do NOT also require that the public be allowed on the property...right now.

Comments

[John Massengale]

All the cool Koolhaasers are talking about "junkspace. " Most seem to think it's a good thing. Actually, Koolhaas says,

"Like a hurricane, globalization is rearranging the features of architecture," declares the oracular Koolhaas. "Architects now work in contexts, climates, and environments they know nothing about." Such clueless designers create what Koolhaas calls "junkspace"the antithesis of Goethe's frozen music. "Junkspace is what remains after modernization has run its course," Koolhaas says. Shopping malls, department stores, theme parks, golf courses, and even ballrooms are among the offenders. "Junkspace," he writes, "can either be absolutely chaotic or frighteningly aseptic...the product of the encounter between escalator and air conditioning conceived in an incubator of Sheetrock." (Harvard Magazine)

Rem's an intelligent guy, and so many of things he says sound so right. Then you go see one of his projects, like Eurolille, or read his statement that Atlanta is the city form of the future, and you realize he loves junkspace.

[Dan]

I use the term "Forbidden Zone" a la "Planet of the Apes" or to just call it "feral acreage."