Spaces of indeterminacy could link with contested spaces challenging the dominant modern narrative. The creative destruction of capital, the nation state political power, and the heterosexual hegemony of ideological reproduction ensure the demolition. There is always an Other and could be critical. The capacity of critical others and the performance of public spaces in the global mega-cities are highly related to the constitution of subjectivity. The flaneur in public spaces might be embedded with dreams and resistance.

Considering the strategies of subjectivity constitution, the concept and practice of heterotopias could bridge the urban design and urban politics. Indeed, spaces of heterotopias could be considered as design project to empower the grassroots communities, to nurture the capability of reflexivity. In every culture, between the utopia of the public sphere and real public space, are places that exist as Other real places, which are something like counter-sites and are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. These heterotopias might be a sort of mixed, joint experience - the mirror or utopia, since it is a placeless place. But heterotopias as the mirrors do exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. If public spaces work as heterotopias, they are reflective mirrors of the selves, and the spaces of representation between real spaces and utopia (i.e. the representation of spaces).

The spaces of heterotopias may be not only the reflective mirrors for the strategy of subjectivity constitution in identity movements, but also the global flowing representational images, which are spaces of counter-cultures against the power of symbolic. Thus the struggles of representations may be developed by grassrooting the space of flows as well as by flowing the space of places, and finally, can transform the real space and society of tomorrow.
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Chu-joe Hsia, born in 1947, is Professor of architecture and planning at Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, National Taiwan University. He has got Master of Architecture from Yale University (1975), Master of Urban Design from Harvard University (1977), and PhD. from University of California, Berkeley (1987). He has taught various areas such as architectural and urban histories, architectural and urban theories, political economy of urban policy, and the global-informational cities. He has researched and practiced the topics such as community design, historic preservation, and urban social movements. He has published 4 books, including Theorizing Architecture (1992), Space, History and Society (1993), Public Space (1994), Readings in Social Theories and the Cultural Form of Space (edited with Chih-hong Wang, 1993), and translated Manuel Castells' trilogy of The Information Age into Chinese (2000, 2001, 2001). He was the Chief editor (1990-92) and the director (93-95) of Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies. He is the Chief Editor of Cities and Design: An Academic Journal for Intercity Networking. He is also the current Board Chairman of the National Taiwan University Building and Planning Research Foundation, A Not-for-Profit Organization.