Bumping spaces

Drawing on the Bennett Institute’s work on social infrastructure, Owen Garling discusses the importance of ‘bumping spaces’ – places where people can come together both formally and informally – to a small city like Cambridge.

Bumping spaces. This was the name given to those spaces that enable people to come together by an attendee of one of the workshops that I attended that fed into this piece of work.

It is an expression that has stuck with me and one that captures several key elements that are at the heart of the Young Advisory Committee’s report. First, the importance of the informality of different spaces. You don’t need to make an appointment or be referred to a bumping space. There is (or should) be no need to pay to get into a bumping space. Second, there’s no presupposition about who you will bump into in a bumping space. They are open and egalitarian, and you are as likely to have a random encounter as you are to meet with someone you know. Finally, they are a space, either physical or digital, where things can happen, and people can come together. But they don’t have to be a particular kind of space. It is their informality and ease of access that is at their heart.

‘Bumping spaces’ also captures some of the essence of what in the worlds of academia and policymaking has come to be called ‘social infrastructure,’ and in particular some of the work that we have done at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. In 2021, we published a report on the value of social infrastructure. This report looked beyond the purely economic value of these spaces to also consider their social and civic value. We have also written recently on the importance of pride in place, both to local communities and places, but also to policymakers interested in notions of ‘place.’

So, what are some of the points from our work on social infrastructure that resonate with this work on Cambridge as a City of Quarters? Humans, as Aristotle is claimed to have said, are social animals. Bumping places provide the spaces where people can lead the common life – what is now often called social capital – or more prosaically the “glue that holds us together.” And importantly, they provide a space where we can bump into people we know and who are like us so that we can renew and strengthen bonds of friendship (“Bonding Capital”), as well as people we don’t yet know but with whom we can share ideas and come up with new solutions to existing problems (“Bridging Capital”).

People like local. The ability to easily access things that are important for their lives is important for people. Look, for example, of the example of 15-minute neighbourhoods in Paris, where the objective is for citizens have access to all the facilities that they need within a 15-minute journey. Can we say the same thing about Cambridge? Different communities may have different access to facilities. Are the needs of young people considered as much as people of working age? Do communities from the more impoverished areas of Cambridge have as much access as those from more affluent communities? What about those new communities that are developing around the city?

Related to this, people have a sense of attachment and belonging to where they come from. Whilst this is often considered at a national scale, people are also as likely to be attached to their street, neighbourhood, village, town, or city. This sense of attachment was seen particularly keenly with mutual aid groups springing up at the hyper-local level to enable community members to support each other through the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In our report on pride in place, we also draw attention to the negative impact that regeneration or growth strategies can have on existing communities. Managed poorly this can lead to feelings of ostracism and a sense of ‘them and us.’ The ever-continuing growth of Cambridge makes this a particularly pertinent point for the city.

Whilst people like local, that does not mean that each place needs to be its own self-contained microcosm of the world. Rather, there is an appropriate scale for everything. For example, people wouldn’t expect that larger bumping spaces such as concert halls, swimming pools and cinemas should be duplicated in each community Rather, people from all communities should be able to access these facilities easily, perhaps at a central location. This brings into question one of the key issues that we see emerging around social infrastructure: connectivity. It is all well and good to have a set of world class facilities, but there need to be easy ways for people to be able to reach them. The need for an effective transport system goes hand-in-hand with the need for social infrastructure.

Connectivity also needs to go beyond the physical. People need to be able to feel that spaces are for them. Places can have the best social infrastructure, but if people feel excluded from making use of it, then it will never have the impact that it could have. Whilst the framing of Cambridge as a City of Quarters is an admirable one, these quarters need to permeable and open to everyone. No longer should there be newspaper headlines about children in the city not even knowing that it has a river running through it. It is only in this way that we will see everyone benefit from all the assets of the city.

In many ways, the economic success story of Cambridge is dependent on a long history of bumping spaces. The colleges that make up the university could all be seen as bumping spaces in the way that they bring together people from around the globe from different disciplines in a shared environment where ideas can be born and nourished. University departments and institutes are similar with their ability to convene people and support innovation. And no more can this be seen than in the science parks that encircle the city. They are deliberately more than just places of work and include elements such as cafes, restaurants and childcare providers that can encourage the informal interactions and conversations that have contributed to the success of the Cambridge Phenomenon. I remember talking to someone at the height of the pandemic who was concerned that the closure of these spaces would lead to a reduction in the innovation seen in Cambridge.

The question therefore now needs to be, how can bumping spaces – or social infrastructure – be developed in such a way as to support and maintain the social and civic success of all of Cambridge’s communities?

This piece was first published as part of the Cambridge: a city of quarters report produced by Cambridge Ahead’s Young Advisory Committee.