the place where cities get “remade” is in the public rather than private sphere. Part of the problem, then, with privately owned public spaces (“Pops”) ... is that the rights of the citizens using them are severely hemmed in. [...]
[Pops] feel too monitored, too controlled, to allow this communal activity to simply unfold. London, and many other cities, are failing miserably to enable diversity in people’s engagement with such spaces.
— theguardian.com
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Have to agree, but in today's financial environment it seems to be the only way, but cities need to put the land in land trusts before it goes private otherwise they may be turning parks into skyscrapers….have to wonder why the private entities just don’t donate the funds to the cities to create the parks….have to wonder what their real agenda is.
Here the town buys development rights to preserve agriculture. The end result - private stables and polo grounds on publicly protected land, or massive hedged perimters that turn protected public land into private-view for lux subdivisions. Another scam is donating a portion of your property to the Nature Conservancy, getting a big tax right-off, then continuing to use it as if it were your own.
The guys don't play one angle, they play them all. At our expense.
My hometown, Seattle, has proven itself to be completely incapable of maintaining clean, safe public open spaces in the downtown. Whether this is do to incompetence or political gridlock is a matter for debate, but the fact remains that downtown parks left under public jurisdiction are unpleasant places to be if you're not homeless or a drug addict.
But recently the (private, but non-profit) Downtown Seattle Association has been taking over management responsibility under contract from Parks. The effects have been immediate, positive, and transformational. All of a sudden, public squares like Occidental Park are truly public again, not the exclusive domain of those who are in a race to the bottom of antisocial behavior.
It's been great, and made me a big proponent of private management of public open spaces. Ideally, the city government would be doing their job on this in the first place, making it unnecessary. But since they aren't and probably can't anymore, we need the next best alternative. So if private parks are the way to reclaim the urban environment, bring it on.
A visit to Freeway Park on a nice sunny day a few years ago netted me a sighting in the wild of folks snorting some kind of powder off the beautifully textured concrete there, and several used needles strewn about. Pioneer Square, where do I start? Beautiful city, but the people you see milling about don't make for the most comfortable daily walks...
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