To prevent the spread of COVID-19, restrictions have been imposed on the movement of people in public places.
The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) wants to use this situation to break the habit that migrant workers and other members of the public have adopted of sitting in groups on the checkered floor of Taipei Railway Station’s main hall.
The TRA’s notion of banning people from sitting on the floor has sparked a great deal of lively debate, with some applauding the move, while others have spoken out on behalf of migrant workers.
Is the TRA taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to deny people the right of access to a public space? Do spaces inside stations belong to everyone, or only to travelers? Which restrictions and opportunities exist regarding urban public spaces?
Rebellious flash mobs against forcible occupation of spaces are challenging the accepted definitions of “public” and “space.”
The wide-open space within the station make such activities as buying tickets, consigning luggage and walking more pleasurable. However, there is a disproportionate lack of seating inside the station for those waiting for a train, and the absence of seats is what has made such a large public space available.
It was for fear of homeless people sitting on the seats that seating was removed from the station, but it means that train travelers also have nowhere to sit. This freed up a bigger floor area, where the decorative chessboard pattern has frequently in the past few years been replaced by Southeast Asian migrant workers in their leisure hours, having indeed become an important space for them.
People who want to take shelter from rain or hot sunshine, or enjoy the air-conditioning, have kindly made way for the migrant workers, while the TRA, which owns the space, has gradually come to an unspoken acceptance of their presence.
Thus, this public space has been adopted and even internalized by migrants as the best place to meet on hot or rainy days.
The atmosphere of a space is a kind of social relation whose sustained membership can gradually influence the space’s symbolic meaning. The involved symbols include power, community, economy, belief, social structures, impressions and memories. They foster expectations and imagination. These symbols of the station allow migrant workers to reproduce the meeting places that exist in their minds.
By meeting there on weekends, holding religious activities and so on, large numbers of migrant workers have over time acculturated the spaces within the station to meet their need for a social space. When they are present, this mindset is superimposed on the station’s intrinsic inner space. At such times, the station becomes a symbol of each person or group using it according to their needs.
Would train travelers prefer to turn the hall back into a space just for walking through and buying tickets? Or do they see no problem in having many people sitting on the floor?
As for the TRA, is it thinking of reinstalling seats for people waiting for a train?
If migrant workers are deprived of their space for meeting friends in a foreign land, would the TRA’s use of the station be in line with its public responsibilities? What about college students who want a place to dance, or elementary-school students on excursions, would they be allowed to meet inside the station?
Different places have different degrees of complexity and cognition. The space in the station is big enough that it can hold many people. Many migrant workers also pass through the train stations of Taoyuan and Jhongli (中壢), but those stations hardly offer enough space to walk through, so who would think of them as a place for sitting or lying down?
When expressing goodwill about a friendly space, that goodwill should be given to all its users to reach a balance in the public domain. If each type of person wants to preserve and hog the benefits of such a space, that formless space would degrade to the point where the public loses more than it gains.
Chao Che-sheng is an assistant professor in Kainan University’s Department of Information Communications.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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