20 ms·

Pseudo-public space in London

253 points by joosters 9y ago

booleandilemma 9y ago
NYC has a bunch of these. I think they're great, because they're free and the alternative is paying $4 to sit in a Starbucks. Of course when the weather is nice out you can go to a park. http://www.nyc.gov/pops http://www.nyc.gov/pops
- balefrost 9y ago
  So that's what the tree logo means. I saw it all over the place, but I never realized what it meant.
  - masto 9y ago
    It’s supposed to be a deal where the building owner gets a variance on zoning restrictions if they promise to maintain a public space. But the reality is that a lot of them are inaccessible and there’s no enforcement. http://gothamist.com/2017/04/19/pops_balderdash.php http://gothamist.com/2017/04/19/pops_balderdash.php
- jccalhoun 9y ago
  as masto wrote in another comment, a lot of these "public private" spaces are inaccessible to the public. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/nyregion/public-space-trump-tower.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/nyregion/public-space-tru... Here's a site that lists the ones in NYC https://apops.mas.org/ https://apops.mas.org/ (I don't have any first hand experience with these since I don't live near NYC)
veidr 9y ago
It's interesting watching the cyberpunk fiction I read in high school in the 1980s slowly coming true.
mdekkers 9y ago
There is no "insidious creep" - this is private land, and owners are -- or at least should be -- free to allow what they like. be glad they turn some of it in a space that can be enjoyed. If you don´t like it, you should turn to your government to get them to buy it back, and make it real public space.
- collyw 9y ago
  If you take the concept of private land back far enough, you will see very little legitimacy in it.
- bleuarff 9y ago
  It is indeed insidious in that the general public has no way to know the place is private and not public space.
  - fche 9y ago
    Why does it matter to them?
    - ivanbakel 9y ago
      Because the very act of being on private land means relinquishing some rights to the property owner. I don't like the idea of suddenly being under the jurisdiction of private security just because I walked into an non-distinct private area. Especially since, as the article shows, plenty of them enforce regulations you may not know the details of.
    - elthran 9y ago
      Because they are then subject to the private rules that the landowner enforces, without realising it, as is pointed out multiple times in the article
      - fche 9y ago
        The article is long on words and on Concern, but short on actual compact statement of the problem. Can you help me out here and list some of these problematic private rules?
nikajon_es 9y ago
I've noticed something quite similar in San Francisco - http://sf-planning.org/privately-owned-public-open-space-and-public-art-popos http://sf-planning.org/privately-owned-public-open-space-and... (most in SF seem to be clearly marked as private spaces for public use though)
0x4f3759df 9y ago
Reminds me of being told "you can't lay in the grass" in Millennium Park in Chicago by a security guard. They build something nice and then you can't use it properly.
- neaden 9y ago
  That's probably an anti-homeless thing. We try to make it hard to sleep in public spaces to push homeless people to the margins. Like how they put arm rests in the middle of park benches to make it hard to sleep on them.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    > We try to make it hard to sleep in public spaces to push homeless people to the margins. It's much more complex than that. Every homeless person I've every offered to help has already rejected the systems in place to help them. Maybe they should have for various reasons. Reform and innovation in this kind of social work is sorely needed. But the whole story isn't that "society" just wants to give dirty people the boot.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      The systems in place to "help" them are typically also there to control them in some way, and may also be blind to the new risks they may be creating. The few genuine charities that offer help with no strings attached, and with sensitivity to potential unintended consequences, are frequently underfunded and subjected to frequent attacks by the powerful. For instance, the city might pass an ordinance criminalizing the act of giving away food gratis, if it was not prepared by trained personnel in a commercial kitchen with a current health inspection certificate, just to shut down a group that gives away sandwiches that were prepared in a church kitchen. I don't think that "society" hates the homeless, but its self-appointed lords and masters sure seem to hate how they don't play the grossly unfair games that seem to have been set up just for them to lose. And there's my tinfoil hat, creeping back onto my head. There is a vein of Puritan/Calvinist/Prosperity sadism running through the US. Adherents believe that those people are in the gutters because God is punishing their poor character with unfavorable circumstances. So in order to solve their financial problems, they must first accept that it is all 100% their own fault, and that random chance has no role in success or failure. People become rich only through hard work and public virtue, therefore poor people are all lazy degenerates. This twisted logic poisons public policy, because some rich people like to believe all their money makes them better than other people, and they spend a significant fraction of it on politics. Those who genuinely believe in charity and "as you treat the least of you, so you treat me" may have greater numbers, but they have lesser funding, and therefore smaller political influence in the US. They can't seem to pass any public program to help people without someone amending it to punish the poor in some way for the sins made obvious by their financial condition. This leads to homeless rejecting official help. From the outside, it just looks like institutional cruelty. I just cannot fathom the type of thinking that would spend thousands of dollars installing unnecessary armrests on park benches, just so that poor people derive less benefit from them. It is embarrassing for a supposedly advanced and modern society to have the human detritus of its public policies on display for all to see. But instead of fixing the broken policies, or accepting responsibility for those that were hurt, the evidence of brokenness is swept under the rug.
clubm8 9y ago
Maybe I'm biased, but I'm surprised this is considered new. I grew up in an American suburb. There was basically zero commons. Most places you go to socialize (eg: the mall) are privately owned.
- ivanbakel 9y ago
  It's strange in Europe, and especially in as dense a city as London, which has a lot of public engagement and interest in spaces. To quote the article: >it’s a very Atlanticist model, seen primarily in North America
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    In the US the semi public spaces will be concentrated in urban cores. Elsewhere real parks will dominate. Especially in terms of actual use. People might not even realize that some little set aside green space is semi public, whereas municipalities like to advertise their green spaces.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  The private commons I'm most concerned with are actually digital commons: sites like twitter, reddit, and facebook. They have and enforce speech codes and otherwise curate and filter the content. In this way, a park or two that you can't have a picnic in isn't all that alarming to me. Town squares used to be partially about places for bottom-up speech and marketing. In that world, silencing the riff-raff in squares had serious social consequences. These days, much of it seems digital.
  - kome 9y ago
    very very good point.
  - jancsika 9y ago
    That's a bit like saying you're less concerned about being waste-deep in a tarpit and more concerned about the prospect of your arms getting stuck. The analogy is especially apt because if you think of web/net commons actually replaces free physical assembly (rather than augmenting it), then you can be convinced to give up your freedom of web/net assembly when whatever next new digital shift comes along. (E.g., not terribly concerned about my arms stuck in the tarpit because my head is connected directly to the VR meshnet...) edit: clarification another edit: typo
mrskeltal 9y ago
Why do corporations acquire these kind of spaces? What do they gain from it?
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  Public relations and advertising. They give that land to public use, after all, so that everyone can enjoy it. They support parks. And so on.
- gadders 9y ago
  I would imagine as well it is sometimes (in the UK at least) part of the planning consent from the local council to provide these spaces.
- marxidad 9y ago
  real estate / land value
- 7952 9y ago
  To build a development you need planning permission. This will often include an agreement that public open space will be provided as an amenity for the community. Sometimes this will be as mitigation for loss of other space. Or just as a something the local authority wants. It is probably better than stricly gated communities that exclude the public community, which is what the councils want to avoid. Also, the council may not have the funds to properly maintain the open space if it was handed to them. It makes commercial sense for operators to do landscape work themselves if that is something that matters to them. People want retail, housing developments or high end office blocks to be attractive and well maintained.
- JackFr 9y ago
  In New York they get valuable zoning concessions. It's explicitly transactional, in consideration for the property owner providing and maintaining the space, they get to build XYZ. And as the spaces are typically adjacent to their properties, they are motivated to keep them well maintained. The alternative seems to be that the developer build smaller, or not build at all, and provide not public space.
usmeteora 9y ago
in my hometown Charlotte, NC, the downtown had some of the worst crime growing up, now many spaces that were completely ignored are beautiful parks, futhermore, dozens of artists have received financial support for soemtimes a lifetime of work or otherwise significantly reimbursed by the local banks that utilize and maintain the public spaces and install artwork. There is the obvious concept of the potential for abuse encompassing all spaces so you could conceivably not ever be allowed to walk outside without potentially being discriminated against, or utilizing artwork to convey disturbing messages to try to influence public opinion, however, this can be the cases for government owned lands in all countries as well, and it is their private land, and I find the idea of not allowing people or organizations to own private land just because the public who is sitting in the park created to be used by them are noticing its not owned by the government, as an immediate abuse of government power to intervene on weather companies can buy land, and furthermore, choosing to take away their rights to do so because they are creating public spaces for everyone and making them nicer, and its annoys the public who benefits from it, as opposed to the perceived threat that one day it could be abused. Everything that is currently legal can be potentially abused, it just so happens in this case its not at all, and turning abandoned dumps and warehouses into public parks, green spaces, open musuems, and hosting events for the public on them. in NYC, many of the parks when I worked there were previously total dumps and havens for crime, entire areas of manhattan have been turned around and they have the following effects 1. free urban green space the government cant afford 2. a clustering of small businesses around parks who pop up and do very well catering to lunches and outdoor cafes, 3. immense number of otherwise unrecognized groups being supported such as fashion shows, concerts and other events companies choose to support, public ice skate arenas 4. paying otherwise unrecognized artists millions to install their artwork in one of the most coveted places in Manhattan, etc 5. Making urban places desireable places to live and not just work, which is im pretty sure what the goals are for progressive humanity Furthermore, I've never personally observed people being removed for looking scruffy, and I think in general you are removed for harrassing people, which police would do anyways. In the current area I used to live in, there are 28 parks. 27 of them are complete dumps and noone takes care of them, particularly the young activists in town. There is one nice gated park own privately by a private community, who takes care of it, and you must live in the nieghborhood to have a key. Given the rest of the city is ridden with crime, its a safe spot for families to take their kids, or a women to read in the park without fear of beign a victim. Regardless, despite the 27 other parks which the local government has asked hippie acitivists to come in and help clean etc, they are fixated on the idea of the one private park and trying to make it public, without understanding that the only reason its nice and noticeable is because its privately maintained, and the only reason people want to hang out there is because its safe, which is also because its privately maintained. Instead of taking the concepts that make the park desireable, and putting in the work to show that any of the other 27 complete dump parks could also become desireable and safe for gentrified communities to inhabit, and then use that as proof of concept that this park can be public and safe as well, and benefit more people, it turns out thats more effort than they are willing to put in. They only want to take the one nice park that is, without any plan on how to make the park not turn into the other 27 which are basically abandoned places people are sacred to go so, and as a female I would never go to alone. The government is too broke to maintain them.
patorjk 9y ago
I wonder if these types of privately owned parks have gained popularity precisely because of the restrictions placed on them. People discover one and then keep going back because it's nice, and then overtime it becomes a more popular place for locals to visit because it has lots of visitors and is more kept up then the actual public places. For example, I've been disheartened by some of the parks I've visited in Baltimore. There's trash everywhere and sometimes I wonder if the city even knows the park exists.
- TACIXAT 9y ago
  Oh Baltimore. The park I walk in every morning has a dog park with no signs. They just put up fences, didn't announce it. I really appreciate having that off leash area everyday for my dogs, but they could market it a little better. (This is technically in Baltimore county.) They have trash cans in the dog park but no one was collecting them. I had to flag down the trashmen a few days ago and ask them what needed to happen for them to get it. They thought the dog park was a locked area. A lot of the nicer streets in the more neglected areas are nice because residents go out and pick up the trash. I've given people shit who I've seen littering in my neighborhood, but at the same time, there aren't trash cans on every corner for them to use.
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    You know what I do when there are no trash cans? I carry it around with me until there are. I have walked 3 miles through residential areas carrying a damn can so screw the assholes littering.
    - ensiferum 9y ago
      +1 I do exactly the same. If everyone was like you or I there'd be no litter anywhere. What especially irritates me are smokers throwing their rubbish everywhere. Why is practically every smoker a full on retard?
- matt4077 9y ago
  Public spaces aren't anarchist lands of lawlessness. Cities can and do prohibit uses that have a negative impact on the space or other visitors. They can also invest in up keeping, and there are many examples of public spaces that rival anything private. New York's Central Park comes to mind, or Yellowstone. But at the end of the day, US citizen always seem to agree when asked if taxes are too high and the government is wasteful, and that opinion does not correlate with actual taxation or spending. The result is the decay of public property. A nice comparison that I recently came across, illustrating the last point: The government spends just about half as much on IT per office worker compared to the private sector.
danso 9y ago
As a few others have already noted, this is also an issue of interest in New York. Here's a dataset of privately-owned public spaces from NYC's data portal: https://nycopendata.socrata.com/Housing-Development/Privately-Owned-Public-Spaces/fum3-ejky https://nycopendata.socrata.com/Housing-Development/Privatel... (it's a MDB file of around 275K, so I imagine it just holds point data as opposed to full shapefiles) One of the most well-known debates over the use of privately-owned public spaces was in 2011 when the Occupy Wall Street movement took over Zuccotti Park: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/zuccotti-park-and-the-private-plaza-problem.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/zuccotti-park-and-... The relevant part which describes how these spaces come with benefits to the developer, even as the developer is left to come up with "reasonable" rules: > Among the better spaces is Zuccotti Park. The developer never received a floor-area bonus for the 26,000-square-foot park, although it did receive other valuable zoning concessions. The current owner, Brookfield Office Properties, voluntarily installed trees, seating, lighting and art over the last decade. (It also changed the space’s name from Liberty to Zuccotti Park, after John E. Zuccotti, one of its co-chairmen, creating a personal interest in the park’s quality.) > Nevertheless, the events at Zuccotti Park highlight the continued inadequacy of the laws regarding privately owned public spaces. Other than the requirement that this space remain open 24 hours a day, the owners were left to promulgate their own rules; the only limit is that they be “reasonable.” > Until last month, Brookfield’s rules barred skateboarding, in-line skating and bicycling, but said nothing about long-term occupation by any group. New rules, announced Oct. 13, permit passive recreation only and prohibit things like camping and lying down on the ground or benches if it interferes with others. The rules remain unenforced; no one is sure what will happen next.
jccc 9y ago
Immediately reminded me of this from 2014: http://www.startribune.com/man-arrested-in-st-paul-skyway-sues-3-police-officers-city/282658401/ http://www.startribune.com/man-arrested-in-st-paul-skyway-su... A father waiting to pick up his kids from day care sits in an ambiguously public-ish place. He refuses when an employee asks him to leave. Then the police arrive. At that point he voluntarily gets up and starts walking away, but the cop follows him and continues pestering him to identify himself, etc. It doesn't end well. I'm sure you can guess what he looks like.
- veidr 9y ago
  > It doesn't end well It's an unpleasant story, but the ending seems OK. Cops play the role of corporate lackey (like they do everywhere, in the USA and everywhere else), treat citizen badly, with probable significant racist component, and end up shooting him with a taser and arresting him. All bad so far. But then he sues, and they settle for $100,000.00. That's pretty much how that story should end.
  - avs733 9y ago
    >But then he sues, and they settle for $100,000.00. Not really. The police decided to act like corporate lackeys and TAX PAYERS paid a $40,000 settlement to a person who was physically injured by their misconduct. There are several ways this story should end that are not that 1) the settlement should not cost the tax payers money 2) the cops, or at least the property owner, should pay the settlement 3) those officers should not be officers anymore AND they should be held to some level of personal responsibility for their actions 4) there should be consequences for the police brutally attacking someone who asserts their (legal in MN) right not to identify themselves to police officers
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      If you try to make the police financially responsible they will price that into their decision to do that job; there's no way to really separate the public purse.
kevin_b_er 9y ago
When there are no public spaces left, there will be nowhere left to exercise your rights.
- danharaj 9y ago
  And in the most Orwellian matter, there are those who believe that this is the condition where freedom and liberty is maximized.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
TACIXAT 9y ago
Privatization of public services, the dystopian scifi future I've always dreamed of is becoming a reality. I am really glad that these spaces are being created though. A land owner has the option to do what they wish with their land and I'd much rather have a pseudo public space than a residential block. The rules should be clearly posted though so that everyone knows what game they're playing. >free wi-fi and big screens showing summer sport, as well as activities like table tennis, climbing walls and outdoor gyms I would even pay for a space like that, it sounds really nice.
- zabuni 9y ago
  Given housing prices in London, they could probably use another residential block.
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    You misspelt "less corrupted zoning process"
- arethuza 9y ago
  Some UK cities, such as Edinburgh, have private shared gardens where you pay an annual subscription to get keys and the gardens are managed and provide services and maintain play areas for different ages of kids, puts lights in the trees at Xmas, provide barbecue areas etc. The annual subscriptions generally aren't that high although they do tend to be linked to living in nearby properties (with some degree of flexibility).
  - falsedan 9y ago
    Yeah, they're run that way to keep out homeless, riff-raff, scum, and tourists visiting for the Festival. They should be genuine public places, managed by the council.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      Given that Edinburgh council seems more interested in selling of parkland for development I don't think there would be much chance of that. I'd be worried that if the council did somehow take ownership of them they'd end up being developed and a lot of green space (albeit private) would be lost.
byteCoder 9y ago
Here's a good, quick review of the case-law precedents regarding free expression in quasi-public places in the United States: http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-01/54-quasi-public-places.html http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-01/54-quasi-...
StavrosK 9y ago
It seems to me that this stems from a misdefinition of the phrase "public space". Public space shouldn't be defined as "space that is owned by the state", but as "space that makes no attempt to prevent entry". An open park on a lot that someone owns should be legally considered a public space, but if the owner puts up a fence and a door, then it starts to move towards private space.
odiroot 9y ago
To me it's a pointless indignation. This is a lot better than companies fencing off huge swathes of land so you need to meander around their properties. I really like recent development in my hometown (Warsaw) where you can walk around new buildings, sit on a bench and watch a fountain. Usually the local government doesn't have a budget to stick those facilities everywhere.
- Boothroid 9y ago
  Lots of these places are horrible as well. I remember being hassled by a security guard for cycling through a part of the City of London. No loss, it is a concrete hellhole, I'll find somewhere else to cycle.
PJDK 9y ago
Whenever these concerns are raised I find it difficult to gather any information on what the land was before it became "pseudo-public". "insidious creep" implies that land that was previously public has become pseudo-public. But the examples cited seem to be land that was previously private has become pseudo-public. That just doesn't seem so dystopian to me.
- stillhere 9y ago
  Suppose the land was private buildings turned to private park. Seems dystopian to me since it seems public but it is not. No public protests can be had near the MegaCorp for example.
  - djmobley 9y ago
    Do you suppose an area with no access to the public is better than an area with conditional access to the public?
    - ChristianBundy 9y ago
      Of course, as it puts the public in a place where they're at risk of being harassed by the police without realizing that they're on private property. The entire system of private property is terrible and I hope it will be abolished within my lifetime.
      - TheCoreh 9y ago
        > The entire system of private property is terrible and I hope it will be abolished within my lifetime. Would you be okay with having random people just entering your house, sleeping in your bed, using your toothbrush and then taking your computer on the way out? Obvious straw-man, but my point is: There's got to be _some portion_ of the system of private property that you agree with on some level. You might for instance disagree with the way private property is distributed, or how access to it is made difficult for some groups, or how we value it more than public property. You might be in favor of more taxation, or of “fairer” taxation (whatever that actually entails would be hard for everyone to agree with) or of revamped eminent domain laws, but I find it really hard to believe that you'd hope for the entire system of private property to be abolished within your lifetime.
twelvechairs 9y ago
The root of this issue is that cities maintenance departments dont have the funding and hence ability to maintain new spaces (despite increased populations) espsecially to a high standard. So they push it on private owners in perpetuity as part of the planning process. Theres two ways to solve it better - the first is to ensure that the public is the owner, in which case we need to accept increased government spending on maintenance (the even worse alternative is no new open spaces because neither the public or private sectors will accept the ongoing cost). The second is to ensure that the publics rights in privately owned places are unfettered. In which case there are liability issues to overcome legally (e.g. is the owner to blame if someone gets assaulted?) - the owners duty of care is a big reason for pushing undesirables out, even if that means the problems just move to proper public domain nearby. And there are also general maintenance issues - e.g. what happens when someone is destroying the high quality landscape or threatening to. Your classic 'kids on skateboards' are a risk to both of the above (may cause wear on materials and also risk of accident) even if as a society we would normally accept this in a public place its hard for private owners to do so Occasionally theres some other private policing arrangement too (eg the city hall london example above where they are trying to stop MPs being harranged as they walk in and out). Its gets complex when you get into these issues. We also should seriously consider the disparity in quality and upkeep between these new spaces which often 'sell' a development but need expensive upkeep in perpetuity (even if privately owned this liability is usually passed from the original developer to some other body) and the reality of most public parks which are usually neglected, poorly designed and with much more basic materials. And along with this what kinds of public spaces we actually want and need as modern humans in cities
weberc2 9y ago
> Pseudo-public space – squares and parks that seem public but are actually owned by corporations – has quietly spread across cities worldwide. As the Guardian maps its full extent in London for the first time, Jack Shenker reports on a new culture of secrecy and control, where private security guards can remove you for protesting, taking photos ... or just looking scruffy This is confusing. Why is the Guardian trying to make private property sound scary and oppressive? Why should I expect that I can use someone else's property however I like and without permission from the owner?
- nerdponx 9y ago
  Because it's duplicitous on the part of the property owners, and it also probably isn't a welfare-maximizing use of space. Whenever I see a corporate campus with a huge manicured lawn, it raises my blood pressure.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    There's nothing duplicitous. A private entity is providing a free service along with terms of use. Why should anyone think they're entitled to another person's property? > it also probably isn't a welfare-maximizing use of space. Probably not, but that doesn't make the property any less private. Anyway, it hardly sounds like the corporations' terms are unreasonable, or significantly worse for "welfare" than those of a public park.
- a-saleh 9y ago
  There might be certain expectation in society that certain kind of property is public, which usually means, that you can use it within certain limits, even if you don't own it. Often this is because the property would be owned by i.e. state/city, and that would provide citizens certain freedoms, such as freedom to gather on a public square.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    I understand that many people might see a park and assume it's public because frequently parks are publicly commissioned, but that doesn't explain why I should feel afraid or oppressed. Even if I thought a park was public and then escorted away with the explanation that the park was private, I wouldn't (and shouldn't, contrary to the Guardian's implication) feel like my rights were infringed upon.
wanderer2323 9y ago
>Whenever I see a corporate campus with a huge manicured lawn, it raises my blood pressure. Obviously, a better use of the land would be a socialist wasteland. Looks a bit ugly, there's trash everywhere, an abandoned rotting car carcass or two, but at least it's owned by the proletariat, right, comrade?
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  Because the only viable alternatives are a capitalist wonderland and soviet Russia. It would be forgivable if you were actually funny.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    It's rhetoric, but it illustrates a point. All of the objection is purely an emotional response to the "corporations are evil" cue. There's no actual substance.
    - nerdponx 9y ago
      I said nothing about corporations being evil. I'm only talking about wasteful use of resources. There's nothing socialist implied here either. This is classic welfare economics.
      - briandear 9y ago
        If they own the land what business is it of yours? Unless it’s spritzing benezene into the air, it really isn’t any of your concern.
        nerdponx 9y ago
        Look up the term "welfare maximization".
- sctb 9y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14849089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14849089 and marked it off-topic.
sitkack 9y ago
There is a similar trend in Urban Design called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design [1] (CPTED) great acronym, hard to remember and meaningless. The gist is that you make a place so exposed and inhospitable, so uncomfortable that no-one will want to be there, thus ZERO crime! It is how to build in a natural panopticon to parks and buildings to maximize sight lines and exposure. Most parks that we consider wonderful would have never been built under CPTED. They use all of the thought-crime rhetoric in their writings, Feng-Shui, community, etc except they do the opposite. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_prevention_through_environmental_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_prevention_through_envir...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  That in turn reminds me of two things: James Howard Kunstler's rant against "public spaces not worth caring about", and the Camden Bench https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_bench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_bench
  - sitkack 9y ago
    Ha! Bum-Proof-Bench, another turd making existence worse for everyone.
  - sitkack 9y ago
    From the Camden bench I found http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/unpleasant-design-hostile-urban-architecture/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/unpleasant-design-host...
    - vanderZwan 9y ago
      This is one of those phenomena that everyone who does design should study, if only to be consciously aware of it happening. Although I can't come up with a clear bridge, I feel like the monobloc chair is also relevant to this discussion somehow: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bn5e4m/white-plastic-chairs-are-taking-over-the-world-128 https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bn5e4m/white-plastic-chai...
timthorn 9y ago
The Manifesto Club has been campaigning on related issues for some years: http://manifestoclub.info/category/public-space/ http://manifestoclub.info/category/public-space/ An interesting map of regulations on actual public space in London: http://www.bannedinlondon.co.uk/map.html http://www.bannedinlondon.co.uk/map.html
seltzered_ 9y ago
FWIW, Anil Dash had a great talk relating privately-owned public spaces/parks (e.g. NYC's Zucotti Park / Occupy) to the state of the web in "The Web We Lost" (2013): https://youtu.be/9KKMnoTTHJk?t=3m40s https://youtu.be/9KKMnoTTHJk?t=3m40s
Philosopher 9y ago
I believe that in most cases, these privately owned public spaces (POPS) are built and made publicly accessible in exchange for zoning floor area increases for the attached development. Public access can not be restricted on a whim.
deleted 9y ago
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Boothroid 9y ago
Weird place the City. I remember being there for an Oracle course once, and there were people crammed into a small park some wolfing down their lunches, some quaffing booze, and in the midst of this an obviously suffering overweight exec type being bellowed at by his personal trainer to lift kettle bells in between shuttle runs.
code4tee 9y ago
This is being painted as somewhat of a negative thing but in many places this is part of good urban planning. It's private property (generally with large buildings) where as part of the agreement to build a giant building one also needs to build and maintain some public space. Yes it's technically still private property. Would people rather these landowners just put up a fence and a keep out sign?
deathanatos 9y ago
If there is no signage indicating that the area is private, and it appears to a passerby that it is public, does this not create an easement?[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement
PascLeRasc 9y ago
A micro-version of this that really bothers me is sidewalk signs for businesses. I think if someone can take up half the width of the sidewalk for personal gain, it should be legal to take the sign.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  At least in my city, businesses need a permit for a sidewalk sign, and there are restrictions on the size of the sign. If they don't follow the rules, they get a fine.

253 points by joosters 9y ago

NYC has a bunch of these. I think they're great, because they're free and the alternative is paying $4 to sit in a Starbucks. Of course when the weather is nice out you can go to a park. http://www.nyc.gov/pops http://www.nyc.gov/pops

balefrost 9y ago
So that's what the tree logo means. I saw it all over the place, but I never realized what it meant.
- masto 9y ago
  It’s supposed to be a deal where the building owner gets a variance on zoning restrictions if they promise to maintain a public space. But the reality is that a lot of them are inaccessible and there’s no enforcement. http://gothamist.com/2017/04/19/pops_balderdash.php http://gothamist.com/2017/04/19/pops_balderdash.php
jccalhoun 9y ago
as masto wrote in another comment, a lot of these "public private" spaces are inaccessible to the public. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/nyregion/public-space-trump-tower.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/nyregion/public-space-tru... Here's a site that lists the ones in NYC https://apops.mas.org/ https://apops.mas.org/ (I don't have any first hand experience with these since I don't live near NYC)

veidr 9y ago

It's interesting watching the cyberpunk fiction I read in high school in the 1980s slowly coming true.

mdekkers 9y ago

There is no "insidious creep" - this is private land, and owners are -- or at least should be -- free to allow what they like. be glad they turn some of it in a space that can be enjoyed. If you don´t like it, you should turn to your government to get them to buy it back, and make it real public space.

collyw 9y ago
If you take the concept of private land back far enough, you will see very little legitimacy in it.
bleuarff 9y ago
It is indeed insidious in that the general public has no way to know the place is private and not public space.
- fche 9y ago
  Why does it matter to them?
  - ivanbakel 9y ago
    Because the very act of being on private land means relinquishing some rights to the property owner. I don't like the idea of suddenly being under the jurisdiction of private security just because I walked into an non-distinct private area. Especially since, as the article shows, plenty of them enforce regulations you may not know the details of.
  - elthran 9y ago
    Because they are then subject to the private rules that the landowner enforces, without realising it, as is pointed out multiple times in the article
    - fche 9y ago
      The article is long on words and on Concern, but short on actual compact statement of the problem. Can you help me out here and list some of these problematic private rules?

nikajon_es 9y ago

I've noticed something quite similar in San Francisco - http://sf-planning.org/privately-owned-public-open-space-and-public-art-popos http://sf-planning.org/privately-owned-public-open-space-and... (most in SF seem to be clearly marked as private spaces for public use though)

0x4f3759df 9y ago

Reminds me of being told "you can't lay in the grass" in Millennium Park in Chicago by a security guard. They build something nice and then you can't use it properly.

neaden 9y ago
That's probably an anti-homeless thing. We try to make it hard to sleep in public spaces to push homeless people to the margins. Like how they put arm rests in the middle of park benches to make it hard to sleep on them.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > We try to make it hard to sleep in public spaces to push homeless people to the margins. It's much more complex than that. Every homeless person I've every offered to help has already rejected the systems in place to help them. Maybe they should have for various reasons. Reform and innovation in this kind of social work is sorely needed. But the whole story isn't that "society" just wants to give dirty people the boot.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    The systems in place to "help" them are typically also there to control them in some way, and may also be blind to the new risks they may be creating. The few genuine charities that offer help with no strings attached, and with sensitivity to potential unintended consequences, are frequently underfunded and subjected to frequent attacks by the powerful. For instance, the city might pass an ordinance criminalizing the act of giving away food gratis, if it was not prepared by trained personnel in a commercial kitchen with a current health inspection certificate, just to shut down a group that gives away sandwiches that were prepared in a church kitchen. I don't think that "society" hates the homeless, but its self-appointed lords and masters sure seem to hate how they don't play the grossly unfair games that seem to have been set up just for them to lose. And there's my tinfoil hat, creeping back onto my head. There is a vein of Puritan/Calvinist/Prosperity sadism running through the US. Adherents believe that those people are in the gutters because God is punishing their poor character with unfavorable circumstances. So in order to solve their financial problems, they must first accept that it is all 100% their own fault, and that random chance has no role in success or failure. People become rich only through hard work and public virtue, therefore poor people are all lazy degenerates. This twisted logic poisons public policy, because some rich people like to believe all their money makes them better than other people, and they spend a significant fraction of it on politics. Those who genuinely believe in charity and "as you treat the least of you, so you treat me" may have greater numbers, but they have lesser funding, and therefore smaller political influence in the US. They can't seem to pass any public program to help people without someone amending it to punish the poor in some way for the sins made obvious by their financial condition. This leads to homeless rejecting official help. From the outside, it just looks like institutional cruelty. I just cannot fathom the type of thinking that would spend thousands of dollars installing unnecessary armrests on park benches, just so that poor people derive less benefit from them. It is embarrassing for a supposedly advanced and modern society to have the human detritus of its public policies on display for all to see. But instead of fixing the broken policies, or accepting responsibility for those that were hurt, the evidence of brokenness is swept under the rug.

clubm8 9y ago

Maybe I'm biased, but I'm surprised this is considered new. I grew up in an American suburb. There was basically zero commons. Most places you go to socialize (eg: the mall) are privately owned.

ivanbakel 9y ago
It's strange in Europe, and especially in as dense a city as London, which has a lot of public engagement and interest in spaces. To quote the article: >it’s a very Atlanticist model, seen primarily in North America
- maxerickson 9y ago
  In the US the semi public spaces will be concentrated in urban cores. Elsewhere real parks will dominate. Especially in terms of actual use. People might not even realize that some little set aside green space is semi public, whereas municipalities like to advertise their green spaces.
humanrebar 9y ago
The private commons I'm most concerned with are actually digital commons: sites like twitter, reddit, and facebook. They have and enforce speech codes and otherwise curate and filter the content. In this way, a park or two that you can't have a picnic in isn't all that alarming to me. Town squares used to be partially about places for bottom-up speech and marketing. In that world, silencing the riff-raff in squares had serious social consequences. These days, much of it seems digital.
- kome 9y ago
  very very good point.
- jancsika 9y ago
  That's a bit like saying you're less concerned about being waste-deep in a tarpit and more concerned about the prospect of your arms getting stuck. The analogy is especially apt because if you think of web/net commons actually replaces free physical assembly (rather than augmenting it), then you can be convinced to give up your freedom of web/net assembly when whatever next new digital shift comes along. (E.g., not terribly concerned about my arms stuck in the tarpit because my head is connected directly to the VR meshnet...) edit: clarification another edit: typo

mrskeltal 9y ago

Why do corporations acquire these kind of spaces? What do they gain from it?

Broken_Hippo 9y ago
Public relations and advertising. They give that land to public use, after all, so that everyone can enjoy it. They support parks. And so on.
gadders 9y ago
I would imagine as well it is sometimes (in the UK at least) part of the planning consent from the local council to provide these spaces.
marxidad 9y ago
real estate / land value
7952 9y ago
To build a development you need planning permission. This will often include an agreement that public open space will be provided as an amenity for the community. Sometimes this will be as mitigation for loss of other space. Or just as a something the local authority wants. It is probably better than stricly gated communities that exclude the public community, which is what the councils want to avoid. Also, the council may not have the funds to properly maintain the open space if it was handed to them. It makes commercial sense for operators to do landscape work themselves if that is something that matters to them. People want retail, housing developments or high end office blocks to be attractive and well maintained.
JackFr 9y ago
In New York they get valuable zoning concessions. It's explicitly transactional, in consideration for the property owner providing and maintaining the space, they get to build XYZ. And as the spaces are typically adjacent to their properties, they are motivated to keep them well maintained. The alternative seems to be that the developer build smaller, or not build at all, and provide not public space.

usmeteora 9y ago

in my hometown Charlotte, NC, the downtown had some of the worst crime growing up, now many spaces that were completely ignored are beautiful parks, futhermore, dozens of artists have received financial support for soemtimes a lifetime of work or otherwise significantly reimbursed by the local banks that utilize and maintain the public spaces and install artwork. There is the obvious concept of the potential for abuse encompassing all spaces so you could conceivably not ever be allowed to walk outside without potentially being discriminated against, or utilizing artwork to convey disturbing messages to try to influence public opinion, however, this can be the cases for government owned lands in all countries as well, and it is their private land, and I find the idea of not allowing people or organizations to own private land just because the public who is sitting in the park created to be used by them are noticing its not owned by the government, as an immediate abuse of government power to intervene on weather companies can buy land, and furthermore, choosing to take away their rights to do so because they are creating public spaces for everyone and making them nicer, and its annoys the public who benefits from it, as opposed to the perceived threat that one day it could be abused. Everything that is currently legal can be potentially abused, it just so happens in this case its not at all, and turning abandoned dumps and warehouses into public parks, green spaces, open musuems, and hosting events for the public on them. in NYC, many of the parks when I worked there were previously total dumps and havens for crime, entire areas of manhattan have been turned around and they have the following effects 1. free urban green space the government cant afford 2. a clustering of small businesses around parks who pop up and do very well catering to lunches and outdoor cafes, 3. immense number of otherwise unrecognized groups being supported such as fashion shows, concerts and other events companies choose to support, public ice skate arenas 4. paying otherwise unrecognized artists millions to install their artwork in one of the most coveted places in Manhattan, etc 5. Making urban places desireable places to live and not just work, which is im pretty sure what the goals are for progressive humanity Furthermore, I've never personally observed people being removed for looking scruffy, and I think in general you are removed for harrassing people, which police would do anyways. In the current area I used to live in, there are 28 parks. 27 of them are complete dumps and noone takes care of them, particularly the young activists in town. There is one nice gated park own privately by a private community, who takes care of it, and you must live in the nieghborhood to have a key. Given the rest of the city is ridden with crime, its a safe spot for families to take their kids, or a women to read in the park without fear of beign a victim. Regardless, despite the 27 other parks which the local government has asked hippie acitivists to come in and help clean etc, they are fixated on the idea of the one private park and trying to make it public, without understanding that the only reason its nice and noticeable is because its privately maintained, and the only reason people want to hang out there is because its safe, which is also because its privately maintained. Instead of taking the concepts that make the park desireable, and putting in the work to show that any of the other 27 complete dump parks could also become desireable and safe for gentrified communities to inhabit, and then use that as proof of concept that this park can be public and safe as well, and benefit more people, it turns out thats more effort than they are willing to put in. They only want to take the one nice park that is, without any plan on how to make the park not turn into the other 27 which are basically abandoned places people are sacred to go so, and as a female I would never go to alone. The government is too broke to maintain them.

patorjk 9y ago

I wonder if these types of privately owned parks have gained popularity precisely because of the restrictions placed on them. People discover one and then keep going back because it's nice, and then overtime it becomes a more popular place for locals to visit because it has lots of visitors and is more kept up then the actual public places. For example, I've been disheartened by some of the parks I've visited in Baltimore. There's trash everywhere and sometimes I wonder if the city even knows the park exists.

TACIXAT 9y ago
Oh Baltimore. The park I walk in every morning has a dog park with no signs. They just put up fences, didn't announce it. I really appreciate having that off leash area everyday for my dogs, but they could market it a little better. (This is technically in Baltimore county.) They have trash cans in the dog park but no one was collecting them. I had to flag down the trashmen a few days ago and ask them what needed to happen for them to get it. They thought the dog park was a locked area. A lot of the nicer streets in the more neglected areas are nice because residents go out and pick up the trash. I've given people shit who I've seen littering in my neighborhood, but at the same time, there aren't trash cans on every corner for them to use.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  You know what I do when there are no trash cans? I carry it around with me until there are. I have walked 3 miles through residential areas carrying a damn can so screw the assholes littering.
  - ensiferum 9y ago
    +1 I do exactly the same. If everyone was like you or I there'd be no litter anywhere. What especially irritates me are smokers throwing their rubbish everywhere. Why is practically every smoker a full on retard?
matt4077 9y ago
Public spaces aren't anarchist lands of lawlessness. Cities can and do prohibit uses that have a negative impact on the space or other visitors. They can also invest in up keeping, and there are many examples of public spaces that rival anything private. New York's Central Park comes to mind, or Yellowstone. But at the end of the day, US citizen always seem to agree when asked if taxes are too high and the government is wasteful, and that opinion does not correlate with actual taxation or spending. The result is the decay of public property. A nice comparison that I recently came across, illustrating the last point: The government spends just about half as much on IT per office worker compared to the private sector.

danso 9y ago

As a few others have already noted, this is also an issue of interest in New York. Here's a dataset of privately-owned public spaces from NYC's data portal: https://nycopendata.socrata.com/Housing-Development/Privately-Owned-Public-Spaces/fum3-ejky https://nycopendata.socrata.com/Housing-Development/Privatel... (it's a MDB file of around 275K, so I imagine it just holds point data as opposed to full shapefiles) One of the most well-known debates over the use of privately-owned public spaces was in 2011 when the Occupy Wall Street movement took over Zuccotti Park: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/zuccotti-park-and-the-private-plaza-problem.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/zuccotti-park-and-... The relevant part which describes how these spaces come with benefits to the developer, even as the developer is left to come up with "reasonable" rules: > Among the better spaces is Zuccotti Park. The developer never received a floor-area bonus for the 26,000-square-foot park, although it did receive other valuable zoning concessions. The current owner, Brookfield Office Properties, voluntarily installed trees, seating, lighting and art over the last decade. (It also changed the space’s name from Liberty to Zuccotti Park, after John E. Zuccotti, one of its co-chairmen, creating a personal interest in the park’s quality.) > Nevertheless, the events at Zuccotti Park highlight the continued inadequacy of the laws regarding privately owned public spaces. Other than the requirement that this space remain open 24 hours a day, the owners were left to promulgate their own rules; the only limit is that they be “reasonable.” > Until last month, Brookfield’s rules barred skateboarding, in-line skating and bicycling, but said nothing about long-term occupation by any group. New rules, announced Oct. 13, permit passive recreation only and prohibit things like camping and lying down on the ground or benches if it interferes with others. The rules remain unenforced; no one is sure what will happen next.

jccc 9y ago

Immediately reminded me of this from 2014: http://www.startribune.com/man-arrested-in-st-paul-skyway-sues-3-police-officers-city/282658401/ http://www.startribune.com/man-arrested-in-st-paul-skyway-su... A father waiting to pick up his kids from day care sits in an ambiguously public-ish place. He refuses when an employee asks him to leave. Then the police arrive. At that point he voluntarily gets up and starts walking away, but the cop follows him and continues pestering him to identify himself, etc. It doesn't end well. I'm sure you can guess what he looks like.

veidr 9y ago
> It doesn't end well It's an unpleasant story, but the ending seems OK. Cops play the role of corporate lackey (like they do everywhere, in the USA and everywhere else), treat citizen badly, with probable significant racist component, and end up shooting him with a taser and arresting him. All bad so far. But then he sues, and they settle for $100,000.00. That's pretty much how that story should end.
- avs733 9y ago
  >But then he sues, and they settle for $100,000.00. Not really. The police decided to act like corporate lackeys and TAX PAYERS paid a $40,000 settlement to a person who was physically injured by their misconduct. There are several ways this story should end that are not that 1) the settlement should not cost the tax payers money 2) the cops, or at least the property owner, should pay the settlement 3) those officers should not be officers anymore AND they should be held to some level of personal responsibility for their actions 4) there should be consequences for the police brutally attacking someone who asserts their (legal in MN) right not to identify themselves to police officers
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    If you try to make the police financially responsible they will price that into their decision to do that job; there's no way to really separate the public purse.

kevin_b_er 9y ago

When there are no public spaces left, there will be nowhere left to exercise your rights.

danharaj 9y ago
And in the most Orwellian matter, there are those who believe that this is the condition where freedom and liberty is maximized.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

TACIXAT 9y ago

Privatization of public services, the dystopian scifi future I've always dreamed of is becoming a reality. I am really glad that these spaces are being created though. A land owner has the option to do what they wish with their land and I'd much rather have a pseudo public space than a residential block. The rules should be clearly posted though so that everyone knows what game they're playing. >free wi-fi and big screens showing summer sport, as well as activities like table tennis, climbing walls and outdoor gyms I would even pay for a space like that, it sounds really nice.

zabuni 9y ago
Given housing prices in London, they could probably use another residential block.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  You misspelt "less corrupted zoning process"
arethuza 9y ago
Some UK cities, such as Edinburgh, have private shared gardens where you pay an annual subscription to get keys and the gardens are managed and provide services and maintain play areas for different ages of kids, puts lights in the trees at Xmas, provide barbecue areas etc. The annual subscriptions generally aren't that high although they do tend to be linked to living in nearby properties (with some degree of flexibility).
- falsedan 9y ago
  Yeah, they're run that way to keep out homeless, riff-raff, scum, and tourists visiting for the Festival. They should be genuine public places, managed by the council.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    Given that Edinburgh council seems more interested in selling of parkland for development I don't think there would be much chance of that. I'd be worried that if the council did somehow take ownership of them they'd end up being developed and a lot of green space (albeit private) would be lost.

byteCoder 9y ago

Here's a good, quick review of the case-law precedents regarding free expression in quasi-public places in the United States: http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-01/54-quasi-public-places.html http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-01/54-quasi-...

StavrosK 9y ago

It seems to me that this stems from a misdefinition of the phrase "public space". Public space shouldn't be defined as "space that is owned by the state", but as "space that makes no attempt to prevent entry". An open park on a lot that someone owns should be legally considered a public space, but if the owner puts up a fence and a door, then it starts to move towards private space.

odiroot 9y ago

To me it's a pointless indignation. This is a lot better than companies fencing off huge swathes of land so you need to meander around their properties. I really like recent development in my hometown (Warsaw) where you can walk around new buildings, sit on a bench and watch a fountain. Usually the local government doesn't have a budget to stick those facilities everywhere.

Boothroid 9y ago
Lots of these places are horrible as well. I remember being hassled by a security guard for cycling through a part of the City of London. No loss, it is a concrete hellhole, I'll find somewhere else to cycle.

PJDK 9y ago

Whenever these concerns are raised I find it difficult to gather any information on what the land was before it became "pseudo-public". "insidious creep" implies that land that was previously public has become pseudo-public. But the examples cited seem to be land that was previously private has become pseudo-public. That just doesn't seem so dystopian to me.

stillhere 9y ago
Suppose the land was private buildings turned to private park. Seems dystopian to me since it seems public but it is not. No public protests can be had near the MegaCorp for example.
- djmobley 9y ago
  Do you suppose an area with no access to the public is better than an area with conditional access to the public?
  - ChristianBundy 9y ago
    Of course, as it puts the public in a place where they're at risk of being harassed by the police without realizing that they're on private property. The entire system of private property is terrible and I hope it will be abolished within my lifetime.
    - TheCoreh 9y ago
      > The entire system of private property is terrible and I hope it will be abolished within my lifetime. Would you be okay with having random people just entering your house, sleeping in your bed, using your toothbrush and then taking your computer on the way out? Obvious straw-man, but my point is: There's got to be _some portion_ of the system of private property that you agree with on some level. You might for instance disagree with the way private property is distributed, or how access to it is made difficult for some groups, or how we value it more than public property. You might be in favor of more taxation, or of “fairer” taxation (whatever that actually entails would be hard for everyone to agree with) or of revamped eminent domain laws, but I find it really hard to believe that you'd hope for the entire system of private property to be abolished within your lifetime.

twelvechairs 9y ago

The root of this issue is that cities maintenance departments dont have the funding and hence ability to maintain new spaces (despite increased populations) espsecially to a high standard. So they push it on private owners in perpetuity as part of the planning process. Theres two ways to solve it better - the first is to ensure that the public is the owner, in which case we need to accept increased government spending on maintenance (the even worse alternative is no new open spaces because neither the public or private sectors will accept the ongoing cost). The second is to ensure that the publics rights in privately owned places are unfettered. In which case there are liability issues to overcome legally (e.g. is the owner to blame if someone gets assaulted?) - the owners duty of care is a big reason for pushing undesirables out, even if that means the problems just move to proper public domain nearby. And there are also general maintenance issues - e.g. what happens when someone is destroying the high quality landscape or threatening to. Your classic 'kids on skateboards' are a risk to both of the above (may cause wear on materials and also risk of accident) even if as a society we would normally accept this in a public place its hard for private owners to do so Occasionally theres some other private policing arrangement too (eg the city hall london example above where they are trying to stop MPs being harranged as they walk in and out). Its gets complex when you get into these issues. We also should seriously consider the disparity in quality and upkeep between these new spaces which often 'sell' a development but need expensive upkeep in perpetuity (even if privately owned this liability is usually passed from the original developer to some other body) and the reality of most public parks which are usually neglected, poorly designed and with much more basic materials. And along with this what kinds of public spaces we actually want and need as modern humans in cities

weberc2 9y ago

> Pseudo-public space – squares and parks that seem public but are actually owned by corporations – has quietly spread across cities worldwide. As the Guardian maps its full extent in London for the first time, Jack Shenker reports on a new culture of secrecy and control, where private security guards can remove you for protesting, taking photos ... or just looking scruffy This is confusing. Why is the Guardian trying to make private property sound scary and oppressive? Why should I expect that I can use someone else's property however I like and without permission from the owner?

nerdponx 9y ago
Because it's duplicitous on the part of the property owners, and it also probably isn't a welfare-maximizing use of space. Whenever I see a corporate campus with a huge manicured lawn, it raises my blood pressure.
- weberc2 9y ago
  There's nothing duplicitous. A private entity is providing a free service along with terms of use. Why should anyone think they're entitled to another person's property? > it also probably isn't a welfare-maximizing use of space. Probably not, but that doesn't make the property any less private. Anyway, it hardly sounds like the corporations' terms are unreasonable, or significantly worse for "welfare" than those of a public park.
a-saleh 9y ago
There might be certain expectation in society that certain kind of property is public, which usually means, that you can use it within certain limits, even if you don't own it. Often this is because the property would be owned by i.e. state/city, and that would provide citizens certain freedoms, such as freedom to gather on a public square.
- weberc2 9y ago
  I understand that many people might see a park and assume it's public because frequently parks are publicly commissioned, but that doesn't explain why I should feel afraid or oppressed. Even if I thought a park was public and then escorted away with the explanation that the park was private, I wouldn't (and shouldn't, contrary to the Guardian's implication) feel like my rights were infringed upon.

wanderer2323 9y ago

>Whenever I see a corporate campus with a huge manicured lawn, it raises my blood pressure. Obviously, a better use of the land would be a socialist wasteland. Looks a bit ugly, there's trash everywhere, an abandoned rotting car carcass or two, but at least it's owned by the proletariat, right, comrade?

michaelmrose 9y ago
Because the only viable alternatives are a capitalist wonderland and soviet Russia. It would be forgivable if you were actually funny.
- weberc2 9y ago
  It's rhetoric, but it illustrates a point. All of the objection is purely an emotional response to the "corporations are evil" cue. There's no actual substance.
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    I said nothing about corporations being evil. I'm only talking about wasteful use of resources. There's nothing socialist implied here either. This is classic welfare economics.
    - briandear 9y ago
      If they own the land what business is it of yours? Unless it’s spritzing benezene into the air, it really isn’t any of your concern.
      - nerdponx 9y ago
        Look up the term "welfare maximization".
sctb 9y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14849089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14849089 and marked it off-topic.

sitkack 9y ago

There is a similar trend in Urban Design called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design [1] (CPTED) great acronym, hard to remember and meaningless. The gist is that you make a place so exposed and inhospitable, so uncomfortable that no-one will want to be there, thus ZERO crime! It is how to build in a natural panopticon to parks and buildings to maximize sight lines and exposure. Most parks that we consider wonderful would have never been built under CPTED. They use all of the thought-crime rhetoric in their writings, Feng-Shui, community, etc except they do the opposite. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_prevention_through_environmental_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_prevention_through_envir...

deleted 9y ago
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vanderZwan 9y ago
That in turn reminds me of two things: James Howard Kunstler's rant against "public spaces not worth caring about", and the Camden Bench https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_bench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_bench
- sitkack 9y ago
  Ha! Bum-Proof-Bench, another turd making existence worse for everyone.
- sitkack 9y ago
  From the Camden bench I found http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/unpleasant-design-hostile-urban-architecture/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/unpleasant-design-host...
  - vanderZwan 9y ago
    This is one of those phenomena that everyone who does design should study, if only to be consciously aware of it happening. Although I can't come up with a clear bridge, I feel like the monobloc chair is also relevant to this discussion somehow: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bn5e4m/white-plastic-chairs-are-taking-over-the-world-128 https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bn5e4m/white-plastic-chai...

timthorn 9y ago

The Manifesto Club has been campaigning on related issues for some years: http://manifestoclub.info/category/public-space/ http://manifestoclub.info/category/public-space/ An interesting map of regulations on actual public space in London: http://www.bannedinlondon.co.uk/map.html http://www.bannedinlondon.co.uk/map.html

seltzered_ 9y ago

FWIW, Anil Dash had a great talk relating privately-owned public spaces/parks (e.g. NYC's Zucotti Park / Occupy) to the state of the web in "The Web We Lost" (2013): https://youtu.be/9KKMnoTTHJk?t=3m40s https://youtu.be/9KKMnoTTHJk?t=3m40s

Philosopher 9y ago

I believe that in most cases, these privately owned public spaces (POPS) are built and made publicly accessible in exchange for zoning floor area increases for the attached development. Public access can not be restricted on a whim.

deleted 9y ago

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Boothroid 9y ago

Weird place the City. I remember being there for an Oracle course once, and there were people crammed into a small park some wolfing down their lunches, some quaffing booze, and in the midst of this an obviously suffering overweight exec type being bellowed at by his personal trainer to lift kettle bells in between shuttle runs.

code4tee 9y ago

This is being painted as somewhat of a negative thing but in many places this is part of good urban planning. It's private property (generally with large buildings) where as part of the agreement to build a giant building one also needs to build and maintain some public space. Yes it's technically still private property. Would people rather these landowners just put up a fence and a keep out sign?

deathanatos 9y ago

If there is no signage indicating that the area is private, and it appears to a passerby that it is public, does this not create an easement?[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement

PascLeRasc 9y ago

A micro-version of this that really bothers me is sidewalk signs for businesses. I think if someone can take up half the width of the sidewalk for personal gain, it should be legal to take the sign.

toomanybeersies 9y ago
At least in my city, businesses need a permit for a sidewalk sign, and there are restrictions on the size of the sign. If they don't follow the rules, they get a fine.