I find myself in an area apparently completely devoid of commercial imperative, a peaceful enclave where people lie in the sun while children play amongst the carefully manicured manifestations of nature and art. The pace here is noticeably slower, not just for the lack of motor vehicles (which is also the case in  lower Cuba Street), but there are no shops to entice a passerby, and so the mood is more genial and relaxed.

Here Walter Benjamin could have gotten inspiration to escape from the distraction of consumer capitalism by observing the children, who are in no way limited by the intended function of the objects that they appropriate for their play. Benjamin saw the child as the model for a revolutionary artist, so perhaps it is appropriate that here amongst the council offices is the City Art Gallery. I am tempted to enter, but the solemn expressions on the faces of the people exiting have me reconsider, and return to the world of children’s laughter. As I glance up at the building, however, I notice carved into the stone the statement Useful Arts. Now there’s a modernist concept if ever there was one.

Still mulling this over I come upon a decidedly postmodern piece of architecture, the footbridge across one of the main roads that feeds cars into the city. Children never cease to be entertained by this amalgamation of primitive art and concrete function. Even the adults tend to pause and gaze at the views afforded from its elevation. Perhaps Jameson is right when he talks off “a new depthlessness” (1991 p. 6) or a world without existential context, immediacy without historical significance or narrative coherence when he talks of capitalist commodification, but it seems to me that this bridge does have something to say about the nature of our passage, although I must confess that I do not speak its language.

The postmodern bridge leads to a surprising mixture of architectural styles. The Michael Fowler Centre is placed right next to the pillars of the old Town Hall. Even the awning placed between the two buildings to provide shelter seems to struggle with the conflict of styles, and one in is tempted to fall into the trap that Jameson warns us to reject as moralising condemnation “of the postmodern and its essential triviality when juxtaposed against the utopian high seriousness of the great modernisms” (1991, p. 46). Nevertheless, the area does appear to suffer from a degree of schizophrenia in style, from a high modernist seriousness of the City Art Gallery, to the decorative postmodern architecture of the library. Except in so far as the whole of the postmodern movement is founded, as Jameson argued, on the back of American capitalist imperialism (1991, p.5), there is no evidence of consumer capitalism here, and the general feeling is relaxed and free from such consideration. It is very ordered here though, and I wonder what degree of freedom of expression would be tolerated here, until I see the sign forbidding various activities such as skateboarding, cycling, rollerblading, and I have my answer.

This place does lead me to think that Adorno and Horkheimer were a little too pessimistic in their analysis that rampant commercialism had lead to the disappearance of public civic space and the reduction of all social values to those of commercial gain and communication to the surface signs of commodity display. Here is a space given over to art, the library, and just sitting quietly (or noisily in the case of the children). I resume my wanderings with new heart.