Reconstructing The Community Public Space

One of the basic characteristics of the community is its locality, implies the value of the Community's interests and aspirations. While theorists, researchers and many practitioners have no consensus of the definition of community, but now, at least in our process of community development and community studies, we increasingly inclined to think that the community should be located in a certain geographical range. Community can be understood as the relationship which formed by social interactions between people who living in a certain geographical area. Thus, if we research community from the perspective of community space, it would be a good entry point. Community space is created by people, it get its characteristics from the people who living or active in it, in fact, there is a two-way interactive process, through the dialectics of social space for the idea that, on the one hand, people acting in a certain space in the constraints of social structure; the other hand, people can create and change the space to express their needs and desires.Community space is a social field, both as to meet the residents'needs of daily life and the most basic platform for communication, but also various social organizations and institutions active in the field, permeated with the complex relationship between power and interests, means that, community space conditions are also the expression of power and interests. Participants in our community space mainly include:the State and its agents (the power sector, the original unit, street management committee, etc.), various types of market organizations (real estate agency, property management companies, commercial service enterprises, etc.), different types of social organization (resident self-organization, resident rights groups, resident interest groups, etc.) and some scattered residents in the community. Because of their different participant time and levels which has resulted in community conditions vary widely. The most obvious is that, around the maximum of their benefits, participants in community engaged in a fierce competition for resource of community space, resulting in the dilemma of disorder, such as community public space was diverted and community structure was torn apart. Our imagination of community is to build "a new social life community", such communities should be a harmonious life, good life. The gap between ideal and reality, ultimately lead to the question which the paper attempts to answer:Based on the imagination of Community, which way should we choose?With this issue, this paper firstly gives a brief theoretical comb, pointing out the different levels of space value and the different dimensions of space hypothesis, which not only provides theoretical support for the understanding of the value and action strategies of participants and the consequences of their actions, but also makes out a more detailed description of the assumptions and analytical framework of this study.In the third chapter, I have examined the history and reality of two different types of communities, and traced the process of the changes in their community space, which result in the "similar" consequence that market forces bring chaos of community space, and residents have a strong expectation of public space. The facts show that participants have interest correlation in the use of community space, the absence of any participant or the weakness of any participant will inevitably lead to the non-equilibrium result of their interactions, that is, the disorder in the use of community space.The next chapter, I described the process of the reconstructing of community space in the two communities. This reconstructing is different from the "down again" in the period of Urban demolition and construction, but an social action aimed to reconstructing community space (public space in particular) under the existing pattern of community-induced conditions and construction, through the ways of recovering the occupied community space, clearing the ownership of space resources, limiting the rights and obligations of each participant. From the "six-party talks" to "form an owners committee," from "removing and building" to "build 'urban garden' Association", the process is not only a vivid performance of multi-agent game, but is also stated that the organization of community residents is the fundamental way out.The final chapter, I reflected the two stories of the reconstructing of community space based on political science and sociological methods. First, from the ownership right of the community space, I point out that the study of community space can use the perspective of pluralism, analyzing the differences (such as principles, objectives and action strategies) of different participants and their mutual influences. Along with the rights consciousness of residents, it inevitably requires a certain organization to represent and protect their rights. Then, I discussed the practical significance of the organization of community residents from two structure relations, first, the relationship between community organizations and residents, and second, organizations, community organizations and other social relations. Finally I think that effective community participation have to rely on organized way, and community participation is the dynamic source for the formation of community sense, which responded to this paper's initial concern.