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In February, Amazon announced its latest design for a $2.5 billion headquarters in Arlington, "the Helix." Once visual renderings for the campus were released, the architecture community was quick to respond. Besides heavy criticism of its overall design, discussion regarding its surrounding... View full entry
Otherwise known as POPS or POPOS, pseudo-public space is often offered up by developers in exchange for the city giving them permission to add more floors or density than the current zoning allows for. An incentive pioneered in NYC's 1961 zoning ordinance revision, today, there are more than... View full entry
Pseudo-public spaces – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backers – are on the rise in London and many other British cities, as local authorities argue they cannot afford to create or maintain such spaces themselves. — The Guardian
The abundance of pseudo-public spaces, namely outdoor, open and publicly accessible locations owned and maintained by private companies in London is alarming. To this day it's largely unclear what regulations people passing through privately-owned 'public' land are subject to, and where members... View full entry
Critic Curt Gambetta brings forward an age old uncomfortable question on corporate public spaces whose main purpose is often curtailed by exemplary architecture that is hard to reject. His piece titled, "No free gifts," carefully borrowed from the anthropologist Mary Douglas, asks the... View full entry
The indefatigable Paul Krugman takes a closer look at Trump's proposed infrastructure funding plans in his column for The New York Times, wondering why the President-elect would seek private equity for public projects. Is this a profiteering scheme that sneakily privatizes ownership of... View full entry
The phenomenon is propelled largely by the same factors that are making it more difficult for artists themselves to live and work in the city: a concentration of global wealth with its eyes trained on real estate and luxury developers trying to stand out to attract a piece of that wealth. — NYT
Randy Kennedy tours some of the most recent examples of luxury commercial and residential architecture in Manhattan that incorporate "public" artworks. View full entry
“The Garden Bridge is a land grab,” says Michael Ball of Thames Central Open Spaces. “That is, a major piece of public space and amenity – the South Bank, the River Thames, and the views across central London – would be sequestered for private interests, albeit cloaked in some appearance of charity and beneficence. When I saw Pier 55 I realised it was an even more blatant example of the same idea.” — The Guardian
In this piece design critic par excellence Alexandra Lange analyzes two similar Thomas Heatherwick designed-projects, London's Garden Bridge and New York's Pier 55, in the hopes of discovering why one seems to be resonating with the public while the other has inspired satiric contests to replace... View full entry
Privatisation in the 90s has resulted in a reduction of public buildings and an escalation in large, corporate ownership — the guardian
"today, rather than a space for including people from many diverse backgrounds and cultures, our global cities are expelling people and diversity. Their new owners, often part-time inhabitants, are very international – but that does not mean they represent many diverse cultures and traditions... View full entry
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
More news from the public space:Urban design influences how public protests can take rootChristopher Hawthorne on the recovery of public space in Los AngelesLocals welcome The 606, a.k.a. Chicago's "High Line", but anxiety for its future remainsNot all sidewalks are created equal in D.C. View full entry
