Urban festivals and local social space

Contemporary spectacles are often criticized for tightly scripting public life, proscribing spaces and their meanings, and instrumentalizing the public realm for political, cultural or economic gain. Participant observation of visitor behavior at festivals in Glasgow, Scotland, and Gwangju, South Korea and analysis of the festivals' spatial organization reveal how such events can also facilitate social interaction at the local scale. Four kinds of spatial conditions-enclosure, centrality, axial connection and permeability are shown to shape informal social encounters among attendees, and stimulate performances of local identity and engagement with the meanings of place.