La protección de los derechos humanos en el Convenio Europeo de Derechos Humanos

At its core, the relationship between the public and private goes to the heart of a key

concern of social philosophy: the relationship between the individual and society. The public-private relations address the desired balance between the two and whether and how each can and should establish a distinctive realm. On the one hand, the question is:

How can a realm be established that caters for the cultural and biological needs of a social individual to be protected from the intrusion of the others? On the other hand, the question is: How can a realm be established that caters for the needs of society and be protected from the encroachments of individuals?

This formulation has led to a normative tension between two camps. On the one hand there are those who argue for expanding the realm of the individual, promoting various forms of individual freedom and arguing for limiting the sphere of the public control. For example, mass media and new information and communication technologies are seen as capable of endangering the values of privacy and identity for individuals (Post, 1989).

Liberalism, indeed, ‘may be said largely to have been an argument about where the boundaries of [the] private sphere lie, according to what principles they are to be drawn, whence interference derives and how it is to be checked’ (Lukes, quoted in Wacks, 1993:xii). On the other hand, there are those who promote expanding the public realm, with stricter and more far-reaching public controls (e.g. Etzioni, 1995). One version of the gap between these views is reflected in the tension between libertarians and communitarians.

Depending on the side of the argument, public and private spheres can be defined in a positive or negative way. If the aim is to protect privacy, it finds a positive value and publicity needs to be kept at bay as a negative force. On the other hand, when private interests are on the offensive, the protection of public realm gives it a positive value and assigns a negative interpretation to the private sphere. This tension can be traced back to the emergence of the nation state and theories of sovereignty in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the idea of a distinctly public realm emerged (Wacks, 1993:xi; Habermas, 1989). To counterbalance this development, there was at the same time a concern to delineate a private sphere free from the encroachment of the state.

Understanding the interdependence of the notions of public and private poses a major challenge to urban design. Is urban design taking properly into account the private sphere and its significance, or is it mainly emphasizing the public realm embellishment without due consideration as to what lies behind the boundaries that enclose it (Figure 2.9)? Is a lack of attention to private sphere part of a new form of specialism, a division of labour between the architect and the urban designer? Urban design itself emerged partly as a response to the neglect of public realm. Is it now focusing too narrowly on elements of public realm so that it neglects the private realm and its importance? Or is it taking private sphere for granted, that it will be looked after by private interests? In any case, the public and the private can only exist as an interrelated set and any design effort that does not see them in this close interdependence runs the risk of being limited and ineffective.

CONCLUSION

Private space is an individuated portion of social space, a part of space that individuals

2.9 Is urban design taking properly into account the private sphere and its significance, or is it mainly emphasizing the public realm

embellishment without due consideration as to what lies behind the boundaries that enclose it? (Aarhus, Denmark)

enclose to control for their exclusive use. It provides a physical home for the body, with its mental or portable personal spaces that were discussed in the previous chapter. This control offers humans social and psychological wellbeing by giving them an outlet for exerting their will on the outside world, to express and tame their aggression, and to find a location in the social world. The control of enclosed, private space offers the individual an ability to communicate with others through becoming a means of expression of their will, identity and power. It also offers them the ability to be let alone by being protected from the intrusion of others. The establishment of a private sphere offers the individual the ability to regulate the balance of concealment and exposure, the balance of access to oneself and communication with others. Major moral problems arise, however, when the creation of a private sphere of their own is not possible for some while others expand theirs relentlessly. This is when private sphere is no longer a response to a basic social and biological need.

The boundaries that separate the two realms are the most visible spatial manifestation of this division of social life. Architectural and geographical articulation of the boundary is thus the embodiment of a divide, the signifiers of a social organization. The challenge of boundary setting, i.e. the challenge of city building, is to erect the boundaries between the two realms so that they combine clarity with permeability, acknowledging the interdependence of the two realms, and supporting both sides of the boundary.

We saw in the last chapter that a new notion of the individual was needed, one in which the autonomous self was seen to be constructed by the forces of the social and biological and that universal norms were needed to be exposed to a critique of difference.

In this chapter, we have followed this line to see how the relationship between individual and society is regulated by the designation of public and private spheres and by the construction of boundaries between them. In this sense, the critique that was needed has been built into this structure of the public and private, each limiting the other by articulating conditions in which they can flourish and limits beyond which they may make no more sense. A critique of the private from the viewpoint of the public, and at the same time a critique of the public from the viewpoint of the private are essential ingredients of a constantly readjusting relationship between the individual and society.

Chapter 3