Al Hail, Oman. The week around national day is fireworks season in Oman. The celebrations of the country’s remarkable progress over the last four decades take place not on the ground, but in the sky. Through the spectacular show of fireworks in the sky everyone can participate in a communal event without having to leave the private sphere of home. In other places, such celebrations would be all about getting out onto the streets with enormous crowds gathering in the largest open spaces of the cities in order to share the experience of getting together. But since privacy seems to be the leading motive of the Omani lifestyle, it is through the fireworks that what is otherwise kept apart it eventually connected.
On the ground, and in the everyday, it therefore hard to find the places of encounter in the city, the places where strangers meet randomly to interact peacefully, or in other words, the place of the public. However, with a closer view to the urban life it appears that the places that come closest to this description of public space are the petrol stations. In a car-dominated city, this is the place that everyone needs to frequently visit. And not surprisingly, it is here that functions that would otherwise be around public spaces are accommodated.
In Al Hail, for example, a suburb of Muscat, the usually rather informal gathering of shacks around the petrol stations has evolved into a more formal spatial arrangement. While filling up, you are now surrounded by proper, pristine white buildings, almost like on an urban square. There is a fashion shop for “the modern woman”, a coffee shop for truck drivers, an upmarket tea-house next to a car wash, a delicatesse butcher, a beauty salon, and – most surprisingly – a kindergarten. Initially only planned as part of the urban infrastructure, the petrol stations in Muscat have transforming into social nodes. Places of identity. Places of the public. For lack of any others.Al Hail, Oman. The week around national day is fireworks season in Oman. The celebrations of the country’s remarkable progress over the last four decades take place not on the ground, but in the sky. Through the spectacular show of fireworks in the sky everyone can participate in a communal event without having to leave the private sphere of home. In other places, such celebrations would be all about getting out onto the streets with enormous crowds gathering in the largest open spaces of the cities in order to share the experience of getting together. But since privacy seems to be the leading motive of the Omani lifestyle, it is through the fireworks that what is otherwise kept apart it eventually connected.
On the ground, and in the everyday, it therefore hard to find the places of encounter in the city, the places where strangers meet randomly to interact peacefully, or in other words, the place of the public. However, with a closer view to the urban life it appears that the places that come closest to this description of public space are the petrol stations. In a car-dominated city, this is the place that everyone needs to frequently visit. And not surprisingly, it is here that functions that would otherwise be around public spaces are accommodated.
In Al Hail, for example, a suburb of Muscat, the usually rather informal gathering of shacks around the petrol stations has evolved into a more formal spatial arrangement. While filling up, you are now surrounded by proper, pristine white buildings, almost like on an urban square. There is a fashion shop for “the modern woman”, a coffee shop for truck drivers, an upmarket tea-house next to a car wash, a delicatesse butcher, a beauty salon, and – most surprisingly – a kindergarten. Initially only planned as part of the urban infrastructure, the petrol stations in Muscat have transforming into social nodes. Places of identity. Places of the public. For lack of any others.