Post-Public: Contextualizing the Privatization of Public Space

This paper offers a novel conceptual framework to understand and evaluate privatization in the development and delivery of public spaces. Private influences are deployed to produce public spaces in many different ways, but current discourse tends to address this phenomenon through a somewhat narrow lens, typically limited to privately owned public space. This project complicates the existing narrative of privatization and public space, to counter an overly reductive and oft-perceived binary, between publicly owned and privately owned public spaces, that does not adequately represent the myriad ways privatization practices impact public space. Our analysis, developed through case study research, offers a conceptual model to explain and evaluate the impact of privatization on contemporary public space networks. It operates on two levels. First, a set of partnership models distills the many public-private partnerships represented by a series of public space case studies into five core strategies. Second, a set of contextual variables relates the methods of privatization to the social, spatial, political, economic, and material contexts they inhabit. Intended as a resource for designers, planners, and researchers, this paper describes an intuitive framework for understanding privatization and the many avenues for engagement in public space design and delivery.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.110.85

Volume Editors
Robert Gonzalez, Milton Curry & Monica Ponce de Leon

ISBN
978-1-944214-40-1