“Noise” Creates Complexity and Sociability: Shopping Streets as an Imperfect but Livable Public Space in the Era of “Space Wars”

Abstract

This article compares shopping streets with a “mall-like” space from the viewpoint of spatial form and its social effects. It argues for the unique nature of “real” shopping streets, particularly their everyday creativity, which is embedded in their physical structure. Shopping streets are basically composed of two different spatial parts: “streets” and “shops.” Within shopping streets, these come into contact with each other. In effect, the world of the shopping street becomes a kind of contact zone, where different rules and orders meet, oppose, negotiate, and are forced to adapt. To make such zones both dynamic and capable of reproducing themselves, shopping streets need to be under the “care” of several agents. This process is very complex, costly, and sometimes noisy, but the “care” caused by this “noise” makes shopping streets sustainable spaces of everyday diversity.