Ageographia, Heterotopia, and Vancouver's New Public Library

Different critical positions have emerged around the restructuring of space in postmodernity. I consider two sets of literature: the sceptical thesis (theses) of the ‘ageographia’ in Sorkin's edited collection Variations on a Theme Park and Foucault's affirmative thesis (theses) of the ‘heterotopia‘. These authors' works relate to a number of themes relevant to this paper: democratic public space, public space (comparing Canada and the USA) and its demise, spatial utopias, and the public library as public space and as ‘other’ space. Vancouver's newest civic landmark, the Vancouver Public Library, provides an illustrative case study with both ageographic and heterotopic qualities.