Przestrzeń miejska a uniwersytet jako przykład konfliktu społeczno-politycznego w Nowym Jorku i Berkeley, 1968–1969

Abstract

In the 1960s public space, alongside with other social problems, became one of the areas where conflicts and tensions which had accumulated in previous years were visible. The problem was not only its spatial development and the manner in which it was done, but also its availability for local communities. At the time of defragmentation of the American society and searching for access to places for everyone, it became a problem of not only social but also political nature, as it intensified at the height of a deep crisis of the American state institutions. Examples of such tensions are youth protests against the activities of Columbia University in New York and Berkeley in 1968 and 1969, respectively. The universities intended to expand campuses at the expense of the areas, which, despite being wasteland, were significant to the strong counter-culture in Berkeley and the black population of the New York Morningside neighborhood, where the university is located. While in the case of the New York university the desire to build a sports hall resulted from the real needs and the need to expand the housing base, the case of Berkeley shows how delay and the incapability of making decisions translated into unexpectedly large and dramatically ended riots. The similarities between the protests in both universities can be seen in the aversion to large corporations, such as universities, the subject of the dispute (the area necessary for its development), a highly administrative and bureaucratic way of conflict resolution and its result – a strike, violent demonstrations and deaths. The main difference between the protests is the political focus visible in Columbia, consisting in the desire to provoke a sharp crisis in other universities, by carrying out an occupational strike to be a model for other universities and building an alternative community based on countercultural values, in the form of, open to all their manifestations, Berkeley People’s Park. In a broader context, events in both universities can be interpreted as a symbolic clash between the old order and the new one, for which the dispute over public space was only a pretext in the struggle for recognition and acceptance.