Privately Owned Public Space (POPS)
All of the news about Zuccotti Park because of Occupy Wall Street has gotten me thinking about Privately Owned Public Space (POPS). In 1961, a zoning incentive program was created in New York City. It encouraged private developers to create public spaces in or around their buildings in exchange for being allowed to make buildings taller than the zoning of an area would otherwise allow. Since the launch of the program, more than 3.5 million square feet of public space have been created (albeit with varying levels of success). Zuccotti Park, a POPS created in 1968, is currently owned and maintained by Brookfield Properties. The fact it is a POPS means that it does not close at night like most public parks, which is part of why it was chosen by Occupy Wall Street protesters.
Without getting into the politics of the protest (and whether it was legal, or right or wrong for the park to be cleared two weeks ago for cleaning), this has made me think about the unique ownership of POPS. While the owners of POPS do technically own the spaces and are responsible for maintaining them, they do not have the same rights that private property owners do. Likewise, the people who use POPS do not have any ownership over them, but are allowed to use them in ways that they could not use private property. So who has the more meaningful ownership of the space? Who gets to define the terms of the space—the people who build it or the people who chose to use it?
It can really go either way, but here, I think the Occupy Wall Street protesters demonstrate that it’s the latter. The owners can design a space and hope that the public will use it as planned. However, unless an activity is illegal, the owners have no actual say in how the public uses the space. The public can re-found the space as something completely different than what the owners planned and make it their own.
I think the balance of public and private conceptions created through this POPS program in Zuccotti Park is very interesting. Clearly as you pointed out Emily, in this case OWS protesters were able to determine the uses of the space. I’m curious how this particular domination of public space contributes to the park a place. It was already a mixture of private and public property, but has the occupation contributed to different sense of place? There was a very temporary aspect to the encampment, but it was also a very social construct with much of the multi-use aspects. So was the encampment merely a temporary place that no longer exists? Or has the refounding by the protesters caused the sense of place for the park in general to change? Thoughts?
