Homelessness is an issue many American cities face, with the demand for adequate shelter exceeding supply. Mitchell and Staehili argue that redevelopment of cities exacerbates homelessness, and causes the use of public space to become a, “battleground over the homeless and the poor and over the rights of the developers…and those who seeks to make over the city in an image attractive to tourists.” (2006, p. 144). Based within the redevelopment of San Diego, this article seeks to address the question of who holds the right over public spaces in the city.

Before redevelopment began in the mid-80s by the Gaslamp Quarter Association, downtown San Diego was considered to be a dangerous place filled with crime. Horton Plaza Park was a gathering point for the homeless, poor and socially marginalised people due to the underground public toilets, benches, bus stop, and the Rescue Mission. The initial redevelopment process began surrounding this park, where the architects sought to create a central festival space for the city. The development was “built like a fort” (2004, p.147) with emphasis on safety and security to draw back people from neighbouring suburbs, whilst excluding the homeless. This leads Mitchell and Staehili (2004, p.149) to discuss the property rights of public spaces. They state ownership bestows the monopoly right of use, and property rights may be defined as the right to exclude. Yet, when this is applied to public spaces and the “people” hold the monopoly of use, who has the right to exclude over others?

The redevelopment of Horton Park and the surrounding area lead to the displacement of the homeless and poor. Their presence grew on the streets due to them being forced out of cheap lodgings, bars, and places where they spent their days. Considerable effort was then lead into working out a way to control them on public property. This indicated a privatised control over public property. The interests of the developers and business owners around the area were enforced onto the pubic spaces, therefore removing the rights of the homeless.

The city enforced many policies to exclude the homeless and poor. Despite generous donations from businesses to foundations set up to help social services, each time a new homeless shelter was proposed, the city delayed or denied the permit applications. The property rights of these services were constrained due to the fear of decreasing values to other properties.

Eventually, the “Clean and Safe” initiative was set up as a public safety program. The program was set up to clean the city through constant maintenance and power washing, as well as to make public spaces “safe”. There were two groups of community handlers, one of which provided customer service to visitors, whilst the other group were to move homeless people out of the centre and to deter begging and pan handling. This new regime “changed the nature of public spaces downtown,” (Mitchell & Staehili, 2004, p.165) removing the rights of the people and limiting its use to middle and high-income earners.

Questions

· What would have been a better alternative to deal with the homeless situation in downtown San Diego?
· Are you comfortable sharing public spaces with homeless people?
· Do you believe private organisations have the right to exclude others from using adjacent public spaces?

Reference

Mitchell, D. & Staehili, L.A. 2006 “Clean and Safe? Property Redevelopment, Public Space and Homelessness in Downtown San Diego.” In The Politics of Public Space. Routledge, New York, pp 143 – 171.

3. Public Commons 18th March, 2008 12:24:19   [#] [2 comments] 

This is a stub for discussion of this article until the summary has been posted. Comments will be moved across when that occurs.

3. Public Commons 17th March, 2008 13:12:41   [#] [2 comments] 

This is a stub for discussion of this article until the summary has been posted. Comments will be moved across when that occurs.

3. Public Commons 17th March, 2008 13:10:37   [#] [1 comment] 

Economic and social debates on the nature of property, and the proper management of natural resources, parks and social institutions have been heavily influenced by the 'neo-liberal' property rights discourse. Blackmar's article is written as a response to this discourse, arguing that changes to the language of property rights- particular that surrounding “public space” and “commons” - has diminished the possibilities of “democratic public space” (p51).

Broadly, the article can be split into three sections. Blackmar begins with the standard definitions of property (p51): private, that allows “individuals to exclude others from the uses or benefits of resources”; public, government owned property administered for a “wide constituency”; and commons, where a bounded group of individuals have the right not to be excluded from the resource. In a lengthy historical discussion, Blackmar shows that the “commons” came to be extinguished, through a combination of private property rights on previously commonly held land, and through the instituting of a public realm by bourgeois who used it to promote (capitalist) civic values.

By the 1960s and 1970s, legal and political discourse centered on the boundaries between public and private rights. Blackmar argues that, within this context, three separate movements questioned the existing dichotomy: environmentalists disillusioned by private depredation and public agency indifference; socialist historians questioning the “reduction of all social life to property rights” (p61); and libertarian neo-classical economists promoting the “market” as a solution to perceived (and actual) failures of the state. Each of these used the term "commons" as a way of distinguishing themselves from the existing property rights regime, but in ways that came to very different conclusions.

In the final section, Blackmar focuses on the emerging dominance of the latter group in the property rights discourse, and of their use of Hardin's “Tragedy of the Commons” as a trope for the general failure of public domain. In Blackmar's analysis, neo-liberal think-tanks undermined public governance, through “public choice” critiques, privatisation of public goods to avoid the “free rider” problem, and through the use of public-private partnerships. In each case, public responsibility for the public realm is diminished, and the bourgeois idea that “socializing public goods yields both private and public benefits” lost.

Blackmar leaves open the reason for the decline of the public realm, but she puts forward five reasons potential reasons: that the pursuit of wealth has made Americans miserly; that economic elites experience over the 20th century has made them “fearful rather than confident in the assimilative powers of public institutions”; that activists, leftists and libertarians are mistrustful of public officials; that, with abundance, a public realm is unnecessary; or that democracy itself is too inclusive and insufficiently local. Whatever the reason, Blackmar sees a different tragedy in the lack of supportive language or theory that “affirms that people can build and maintain governments that can build and maintain public space” (p77).

Questions:

• Do you agree that support for a public realm has reduced in our society, and what reasons would you give for it?
• Are market based solutions to failures of government or common property rights appropriate? What can we do instead?
• Is common property inherently local, and what does this mean for the means by which we govern it?

Reference
Blackmar, E. 2006, “Appropriating the “Commons”: The tragedy of private property discourse” in The Politics of Public Space, ed. Low, S., Smith, N., Routledge, New York, ch. 4

3. Public Commons 14th March, 2008 19:18:53   [#] [4 comments] 

Dr. David Shoup is a professor in urban planning at UCLA and holds a PhD in economics. His research focuses on the impact of parking on land use planning in America: a key element of the transportation system and yet largely overlooked in studies of transportation and urban form. Dr Shoup’s research and publication, The High Cost of Free Parking, seeks to ensure parking is part of this critical debate. Published in 2005, the book was written in a context of increased housing cost, urban sprawl, deteriorating public infrastructure and increased awareness of climate change.

In Chapter 22, Changing the Future, Shoup argues that the current system of allowing free curb side parking “disfigures the landscape, distorts urban form, damages the environment and wastes money that could be spent more productively elsewhere (Shoup p.590)”. He argues current solutions to the problem have led to many unintended and detrimental consequences. His solution is to charge market prices for curb parking.

Curb parking, he argues, is the modern day, urban equivalent of the English agricultural commons: publicly owned land to which everyone in a community has open access. The modern curb parking equivalent allows everyone to park for free, subject to finding a space. However, the considerable competition for this scarce resource results in ‘cruising’ for a parking space. Whilst cruising may not burden the individual, the combined impact is massive. It congests traffic, wastes fuel, increases air pollution and wastes time. Shoup’s research shows that the combined impact of cruising, in just one 15-block area of Los Angles in a year, was the equivalent of driving around the world 38 times.

Shoup believes that urban planners’ attempt to solve this problem – to require new developments to provide off street parking – has alleviated the problem of cruising for curb side park but has many unintended consequences:

• Increasing the cost of urban development;
• Decreasing the density of urban development and therefore increasing the rate of urban sprawl;
• Encouraging a reliance on the car which contributes to increased air pollution, traffic congestion and energy consumption;
• Degrading the transport system for more sustainable transport modes (public transport, cycling and walking); and
• Degrading urban design.

Parking is not free: it has many direct and indirect costs. Free parking, curb side and off street parking, represent a massive (but not transparent) subsidy to people who drive cars. Yet the enormous impacts parking has on land use, the environment, the economy and the transportation system, are borne by the entire community. Shoup argues that there needs to be a new solution.

The solution to the earlier agricultural commons problems was enclosure, whereby common land was divided into smaller lots of privately owned land. Shoup’s solution to curb parking, the urban commons, is the contemporary equivalent of enclosure – “the establishment of legal rights to a previously unregulated resource (Shoup 595)”. He proposes establishing ‘parking benefit districts’ and charging market prices for curb parking. The revenue would be used by the districts to pay for neighbourhood services. The land would remain common property, but access would no longer be open; it would be restricted.

Shoup argues the benefits of charging market prices for parking are:

• Improved transportation and land use;
• Reduced traffic congestion;
• Reduced vehicle emissions and therefore air pollution;
• Contribute to solving global climate change

In the context of this course, the article raises the issue of whether a local community does benefit from common land – or any common resource - in a system of open access. Whilst Shoup’s research focuses on land for parking I’d argue his analysis is also relevant to other modern day commons – in particular air and water – being overused and degraded because of relative open access.

Discussion.

• Could there be any unintended consequences to Shoup’s approach of charging market prices for common land (eg. does parking become the domain of the better off in our community, with the poor pushed even further to the fringes)?
• What are the benefits of having common land?
• Are restrictions and regulations necessary to ensure common land doesn’t get over used or degraded?

References:
Shoup, D. 2005 ‘Changing the Future’, The High Cost of Free Parking, American Planning Association, p.589-605.

3. Public Commons 14th March, 2008 10:20:06   [#] [7 comments] 

Peter Spearritt is a professor of history at the University of Queensland. Over the past decade, he has written many works on historical commercialisation and urbanisation. His work 'The commercialisation of Public Space' is written in a historical and academic tone. Its main idea is the theory of "every space must pay its way" which is a phrase used frequently throughout Australian society. This theory works on a basis of efficient use of land, which the Australian government have recently adopted. These definitions of efficiency, according to Spearritt, are narrowly economic in both concept and practice. The article although slightly disjointed presents an argument against this view of economic efficiency through a number of case studies relating to commercialisation. It states that societal benefit and equality should be a more predominant view for governments, rather than a capitalism approach benefiting singular multinational corporations.

To begin with, Spearritt describes the situation with inner city churches, which were originally sited on free land granted by the crown with the settling of the cities around Australia. These key church sites throughout the city are now hugely valuable and churches are capitalizing on this ownership through either selling part of their site or instigating the "demolition of city churches to be replaced with office towers, thereby maximising their returns on the site." Spearritt claims that this land should remain within the public grasp (or semi public as in the case of churches). Other uses are also being employed for these public and semi public structures such as Treasury buildings that are now converted into hotels or railway stations converted to antique markets. Many of these spaces such as in The Rocks in Sydney have attracted vast amounts of funding by the governments only to be commercialised and used as money earners by the private sector.

Spearritt states that although much privatisation has taken place in Australia, we as a culture still however take public space for granted. We have "freedom of the beaches, freedom of the street and the footpath and freedom to visit our public buildings: schools, libraries, town halls, courthouses and post offices." He uses the example of beach ownership in Italy to acknowledge that Australia is still relatively well off with public ownership and public space. However, he argues that these areas, although public, are now beginning to be encroached upon by factors such as entrance fees, overlooking from commercial buildings and the "imposing of a class structure on what used to be Australia's most egalitarian setting". They are no longer areas of equality, being enjoyed only by those privileged enough and not by those less fortunate members of the community.

Sydney's Olympic site is another case study that Spearritt uses to reinforce the economic efficient land use model. The public owned site was originally a contaminated brickworks, abattoirs and gasworks site, which had been left idle due to the cost associated with cleaning it. The site, Spearritt states, was a "case of using public money to fund an apparently public site", however as he goes on to say, "in reality (the Olympics) is run primarily for the benefit of global sporting and media companies" and the more wealthy. Therefore, behind the scenes this project was entirely economic efficiency driven. The site (and the region) has needed the new sporting facilities and transport links for many decades but previous to an economic incentive (such as the Olympics), this was never carried out for the less affluent members (and suburbs) of the community.

The article summarises Spearritt's views by stating that "we should resist the desire of corporations and of revenue hungry governments to commercialise our public spaces". The tag line 'every space must pay its way' is a very dominant but careless theory in present day Australian thinking. Spearritt presented many arguments to identify that this economic thinking is reckless, and his aim for this article is to recognize this area of inequality. He also shows in the article how historically the governments of Australia have reacted to the community values rather than economic efficiency, which has produced the great country that we live in today. Therefore, Spearritt is trying to encourage governments to revert back to this trend.

Questions:

• What trend (social or economic) are other countries following?
• What will happen if (or when) all the crowns saleable assets are sold?
• Is this economic efficiency more sustainable for a society than equality?

Reference
Spearritt, P. 2002, "The Commercialisation of Public Space", Equity, Environment, Efficiency, ed. Troy,P., Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, ch. 4

3. Public Commons 14th March, 2008 10:14:00   [#] [6 comments]