[ • Chapter 10 • ] Grounds for Sharing— Occasions for Conflict An Inquiry into the Social Foundations of Cohabitation and Antagonism GLENN BOWMAN Although the title of this collective project refers to “shared spaces,” we are for the most part discussing places rather than spaces when we talk of the social aspects of cohabitation and/or antagonism. Places in this context are lived-in spaces or, in more academic terms, sites of in- habitance, while space denotes an area, of general or unlimited extent, indifferently providing the physical setting for such places; hence the Oxford English Dictionary notes that “place” is “a space that can be oc- cupied … a particular spot or area inhabited or frequented by people; a city, a town, a village.” 1 Spaces are far more easily “shared” than places, if sharing is the correct term to use when referring to coexisting in contig- uous space. When suitably organized, entities can move past and around each other in space without effecting significant contact. Movement in shared places, however, entails negotiation, commensality, and at times conflict insofar as persons occupying place not only coexist with each other but are very much aware of the fact of that coexistence. In Michael Sorkin’s fascinating discussion of “traffic” in Giving Ground: he Poli- tics of Propinquity we see a modernist mode of organization that chan- nels persons and vehicles into nonintersecting pathways in order to give priority to unimpeded flow at the expense of relations between entities moving across the same terrain. Counterposed to this Sorkin shows us a more traditional setting in which flow is impeded by repeated intersec- tion and the necessary and mutually aware sharing of place: Modern city planning is structured around an armature of … conflict avoidance. Elevated highways, pedestrian skyways, subway systems