week 4-Equality Manifesto and AR Practice in Public Spaces

This week, after a group discussion, I reflected on how the invisible boundaries of public spaces in Edinburgh were formed. These normalizations did not occur suddenly but were hidden within the details of daily space usage. For instance, in core tourist areas such as the Royal Mile and Princes Street, where there are many tourists, local residents tend to avoid these areas and shift their daily leisure activities to other non-tourist core areas. Another example is during the Edinburgh Festival, some public squares in the city center are occupied by performances and tourists, so local residents choose to travel at off-peak times and only return to these public spaces during the off-season. The local residents’ active avoidance has made the stratification of public space usage seem natural. However, its essence is actually a compromise between the equal use of public spaces and the capital value of the tourism economy.

I really like the proposal for embedding AR in the group discussion. I will consider creating some lightweight street view displays where AR superimposed dual street views can be seen by scanning the code. For example, on the left is the current tourist store, and on the right is the local grocery store before the capital transformation. This makes the invisible boundaries visible.

Finally, the part about the declaration in the class and the collective discussion also gave me a lot of thoughts. The exhibition declaration should transform from a slogan into executable principles. Based on the inspiration from the group discussion, I came up with the following points:
1. Reject “sorting of space value”; the value of public spaces should not be defined by the tourism consumption capacity, but by the daily needs of all users.
2. Oppose the implicit discipline of “tourists exclusive during peak season and residents returning during off-season”, the usage rights of public spaces should not have the default rule of “time-based compromise”, and no group should give up the space rights they should equally enjoy for the use needs of others.
3. Do not create opposition, but deconstruct the spatial distribution logic of capital and power collusion: make the “invisible stratification of usage rights” visible, and let all users jointly participate in defining the appearance of public spaces.