AURELIE BARBIER

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Revisiting the Social Life of small urban Places

This is not a rom-com, this is not a crime investigation, this is not a tutorial - this is a personal  attempt , with film maker Chloe Saint Denis,  to capture how public spaces are used, looking both to the past and future of urban observation.

It all begins with William Whyte's Social Life of Small Urban Places documentary from the 1980s, studying how people meet, eat, rest, and interact in New York's POPS (Privately Owned Public Spaces). Forty years later, my friend Chloe and I are following his footsteps, armed with new AI tools instead of his rooftop time-lapse cameras. We're asking: What's changed since then? Are we more lonely? Has phone use transformed our behavior? Are we still flirting in public spaces?



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