Daily Mobility Patterns: Publicness as a Lived Experience in a Hidden Pedestrian Hub

Abstract

Publicness can be considered as a way of experiencing the contemporary city. In creating publicness, we often focus just on places. There is ambiguity about publicness in transport infrastructure point as place or non-place. In that space, groups of individuals are formed, all set on the goal of reaching a destination. That groups can be named momentary communities. This paper sets out to examine how momentary communities have formed, their needs and aspects of usage, and how they have brought publicness as a lived experience. The study area is Mostar Interchange - an important transport point of Belgrade that connects the city and highway system. It is an intersection point of civic and transport infrastructure. At the same time, interchange connects and separates the city. Historically, by its forming, it erased this part of the city and made the radical cut in the urban tissue. Today, the important parts of the development of the city are urban tissue toward the center, as well as the riverfront, while the transport part remains neglected and witnesses radical urban changes in its environment. Therefore, this space can be considered as a liminal space that has potential. The purpose of this paper is to open the questions and reconsider possibilities of inquiries values of liminal spaces treatment, especially in the context of planning practice. In that sense, the focus of methodology is on literature review, historic research, and walking interview as input data and observations as mapping (urban reading) through different frameworks, and also testing that combined approach in the pedestrian hub of Mostar Interchange as a case study of liminal space. The results should show that although interchange is a liminal space, it has its hidden values in the daily mobility patterns of users that reveal the life of a pedestrian hub with its rules and problems. It is necessary to work on new pedestrian mobility in the development of this space in the city which will include neglected needs of momentary communities.