Parks for Profit: The High Line, Growth Machines, and the Uneven Development of Urban Public Spaces

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Loughran
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Uneven Development ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Public Park ◽  
For Profit ◽  
High Line

This paper investigates the growing inequality of public spaces in contemporary cities. In the era of neoliberal urbanism, stratified economic and cultural resources produce a spectrum of unevenly developed public parks, ranging from elite, privatized public spaces in wealthy districts to neglected parks in poor neighborhoods. Contemporary economic and cultural practices in public space are equally segmented, as privileged public spaces such as New York's High Line reflect the consumption habitus of the new urban middle class, while violence, disinvestment, and revanchist policing permeate public spaces on the urban periphery. Using New York's High Line as an archetypal neoliberal space, I trace its redevelopment from a decaying railroad viaduct to a celebrated public park. I argue that contemporary parks and public spaces are best analyzed on a continuum of privilege.

scholarly journals New York High Line as Urban Catalyst: Impact to Neighbourhood

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koichiro Aitani ◽  
Vrushali Kedar Sathaye
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Green Space ◽  
Catalytic Effect ◽  
Business Owners ◽  
Public Park ◽  
The Public ◽  
High Line ◽  
Urban Renovation ◽  
The Impact

  The High Line, an abandoned elevated railway structure on Lower Manhattan's West-side, converted into the public park is among the most innovative urban renovation projects. The meatpacking district with industrial taste, transformed to one of the most fashionable areas in New York would not be realized without the impact of this unique Urban Park, the high Line. The story of how it came to be is a remarkable one: two young citizens with no prior experience in planning and development collaborated with their neighbors, elected officials, artists, local business owners, and leaders of burgeoning movements in horticulture and landscape architecture to create a park celebrated worldwide as a model for creatively designed, socially vibrant, ecologically sound public space. 5 millions of visitors are counted annually. The research will clarify the process of the High Line’s execution, its mechanism of urban transform, and impact to the neighborhood chronologically, and will discuss and theorize this urban regeneration as an outcome of catalytic effect of Urban Green Space.

scholarly journals Homeless Individuals’ Social Construction of a Park: A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reuben Addo
Keyword(s):  
Grounded Theory ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Symbolic Interactionist ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Public Park ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Interactionist Perspective

Individuals experiencing homelessness and housed residents have increasingly been in conflict over the use of public spaces, which has led to efforts to regulate how individuals experiencing homelessness use public spaces. However, the discourses around the use of public parks seem to value housed residents over homeless individuals. How individuals experiencing homelessness construct meanings of public spaces has not been given adequate attention in the literature. Drawing on a symbolic interactionist theoretical framework and grounded theory methodology, the researcher conducted 10 semi-structured interviews on how individuals experiencing homelessness construct meanings of a public park. Participants ascribed instrumental and intangible meanings to the park by describing it as a homeless safety hub, a homeless resource hub, and a homeless network hub. This study suggested that homeless individuals’ constructed meanings of public parks may be motivated by their interactions with their peers and housed residents. This study recommends policy makers to make an effort to understand factors that force people experiencing homelessness to congregate in public parks and to discontinue regulations that criminalize how individuals experiencing homelessness use public parks.

Fencing a Field: Imagined Others in the Unfolding of a Neighborhood Park Conflict

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Trouille
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Property Values ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Public Park ◽  
Park Use ◽  
Changing Demographics ◽  
And Control ◽  
Shed Light

This article offers a detailed analysis of a neighborhood dispute over fencing a public park. Unlike the archetypal turf battles between longstanding and new neighborhood residents described in previous research, here the daily visits of Latino “outsiders” coming into a local public space produce conflict over park usage and control. The usually cited conditions for conflict, such as reactionary residents resisting ethnic transition and protecting their backyards, do not apply in this case, as the park sits amidst a relatively stable, affluent, white “liberal” neighborhood. This case study shows how sources of tension and trouble extend beyond the property interests and actions of the park users to include the more symbolic and indirect concerns about identity as reflected in park use. Together with longstanding concerns over neighborhood reputation and property values, changing demographics and greater sensitivity to the perception of racism distinctively shaped the unfolding of conflict in this case. The bumpy course of conflict and shifting opinions about the fence shed light on the new complexities and contradictions of contemporary social diversity and exclusion in city parks and other public spaces.

scholarly journals Planning, design and use of the public space Wahlenpark (Zurich, Switzerland) : functional, visual and semiotic openness

2009 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Kaspar ◽  
E. Bühler
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Dual Role ◽  
Subjective Perception ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Goods ◽  
City Planners

Abstract. Wahlenpark is currently one of Zurich's most recent urban public parks. It is located in a neighbourhood which has been totally rebuilt during the last 20 years. Based on a constructivist conception of space, this article looks at the kind of spaces that have been, and still are, produced at Wahlenpark. It is argued that various groups of actors are, and have been, involved in this production of spaces: city planners in the role of constructors, landscape architects in the role of designers and «the population» in the role of users. By defining requirements, city planners constitute space, at first on a mental level «only». As constructors they perform – through the designers' plans – a powerful spacing act: they physically construct a park. Park users in their dual role as actors and «park element» subsequently (re-)produce manifold spaces by uniting social goods and people to spaces (see Löw 2001). It is argued that openness is an important reference point in the production and appropriation of space at Wahlenpark by planners, designers and users, albeit with different meanings. The statements of park users show that they experience openness differently, sometimes even in a contradictory manner, thereby highlighting the variability of subjective perception, resulting in both the inclusion and exclusion of the perceiver. In view of greater inclusiveness of public spaces, a better understanding of the manner in which people perceive and use these spaces is needed.

scholarly journals Representing “The Other India” in Transnational Public Spaces

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
Maitrayee Basu
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Celebrity ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Fiction Writer

Marlon Ross in his chapter in The Construction of Authorship (1994: 231) claims that what differentiates a writer from an author is the latter’s ability to “transmute” and “transport” knowledge to a public space, thus “transversing” the distance between the self and the other. Such knowledge or experience is then rendered “knowable, shareable and answerable”. This article explores some of the ways in which the Indian non-fiction writer and journalist, Sonia Faleiro, is positioned as someone with a privileged knowledge about the lives of Indian marginalised subjects, and the ability to translate those experiences for a transnational middle-class audience. She is also tasked with having an ‘authentic’ personality that her readers can relate to, interact with, and in some ways hold to account. This article, with its focus on empirically understanding Indian middlebrow writing, showcases some of the characteristics of literary celebrity in the postmodern cultural sphere, its focus on affective citizenship, and purported significance to upholding the cosmopolitan values of plurality, social justice and democracy.

Public Space in North American Cities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Ellen Sewell
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Public Speech ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range

From 1800 to 2000, cities grew enormously, and saw an expansion of public spaces to serve the varied needs of a diverse population living in ever more cramped and urban circumstances. While a wide range of commercial semipublic spaces became common in the late 19th century, parks and streets were the best examples of truly public spaces with full freedom of access. Changes in the design and management of streets, sidewalks, squares, parks, and plazas during this period reflect changing ideas about the purpose of public space and how it should be used. Streets shifted from being used for a wide range of activities, including vending, playing games, and storing goods, to becoming increasingly specialized spaces of movement, designed and managed by the early twentieth century for automobile traffic. Sidewalks, which in the early nineteenth century were paid for and liberally used by adjacent businesses, were similarly specialized as spaces of pedestrian movement. However, the tradition of using streets and sidewalks as a space of public celebration and public speech remained strong throughout the period. During parades and protests, streets and sidewalks were temporarily remade as spaces of the performance of the public, and the daily activities of circulation and commerce were set aside. In 1800, the main open public spaces in cities were public squares or commons, often used for militia training and public celebration. In the second half of the 19th century, these were augmented by large picturesque parks. Designed as an antidote to urbanity, these parks served the public as a place for leisure, redefining public space as a polite leisure amenity, rather than a place for people to congregate as a public. The addition of playgrounds, recreational spaces, and public plazas in the 20th century served both the physical and mental health of the public. In the late 20th century, responding to neoliberal ideas and urban fiscal crises, the ownership and management of public parks and plazas was increasingly privatized, further challenging public accessibility.

scholarly journals Public realm ethnography: (Non-)Participation, co-presence and the challenge of situated multiplicity

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802090426
Author(s):  
Alasdair Jones
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Urban Public Space ◽  
Core Group ◽  
Group Activities

Against the backdrop of abstract accounts of a variety of processes associated with the ‘end of public space’ (disneyfication, commodification, privatisation, gentrification, securitisation and so on), the last few decades have witnessed a marked growth in ethnographic accounts of the production, meaning and experience of urban public spaces. Methodologically, studying these dimensions of public space ethnographically poses clear challenges for how researchers design and conduct their fieldwork: practically, how can fieldworkers participate in a socio-spatial context typically characterised by ‘situated multiplicity’ (Amin A (2008) Collective culture and urban public space. City 12(1): 5–24) and co-presence with strangers? Moreover, what do researchers do when there are no core group activities, institutional roles or (sub-)cultural practices to participate in? With these questions in mind, I first seek to review the practical fieldwork techniques used by ethnographers interested in studying the urban public realm. I then use this review to synthesise and distil a set of four interlinked fieldwork heuristics for public realm ethnography.

Residues of a Dream World

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 358-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cataldi ◽  
David Kelley ◽  
Hans Kuzmich ◽  
Jens Maier-Rothe ◽  
Jeannine Tang
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Railway Track ◽  
Public Park ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Constitutive Function ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Public ◽  
High Line

The High Line – a public park on a repurposed railway track in New York City – first opened to the public in 2009, and has been increasingly celebrated as a model public space, and as a democratic project directed by community. Artistic and amateur photographic practices have significantly informed the High Line’s design, landscaping, publicity, urban policy, use and constellations of community. This photo-conceptual essay critically considers the constitutive function of the photographic image, as photography produces, interpellates and defines the public and public sphere of the High Line. However, these imaging practices have also taken increasingly regulated form, and endorse conservative forms of community, personhood and publicness. The new park’s imaging practices may be understood as supplementary to neoliberal forms of property accumulation, in fact diminishing public space even as they purport to represent it. Drawing from the historical avant-garde, feminist critiques of representation and anti-capitalist urban theory, the following photographic series critiques the High Line’s photographic apparatus, from within a practice of photography, and from a position within the field of contemporary art.

The Role of Public Parks in Telling the Nation's Story

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Dustin ◽  
Larry Beck ◽  
Brett Wright ◽  
Gene Lamke ◽  
James Murphy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Affect Theory ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Affective Responses ◽  
Frame Theory ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Public Park ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
Object Lesson ◽  
Good Object

In this paper, we discuss the role of public parks in telling the nation’s story via statues, memorials, and monuments. We ground our discussion in affect theory, which addresses the affective responses statues, memorials, and monuments elicit in visitors. Of particular note is affective dissonance, which suggests that a statue, memorial, or monument may evoke a variety of conflicting affective responses. The way in which visitors reconcile these conflicting affective responses shapes their public memory of significant events in our nation’s history. As more is learned about the checkered past of individuals venerated in statues, memorials, and monuments, how should public park administrators respond? We provide several examples of statues, memorials, and monuments that are controversial in nature, and discuss how public park administrators have responded to the challenge of telling the nation’s story through the reinterpretation of events. We also consider the complexity of the management implications, focusing in particular on who should be driving the decisions made. We then discuss the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, as a good object lesson in how to deal with the affective dissonance involved in recasting public spaces. In so doing, we underscore the importance of frame theory in educating visitors about the preservation, modification, or removal of existing statues, memorials, or monuments.

Future Park

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amalie Wright
Keyword(s):  
Public Spaces ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Public Park ◽  
Industrial Land ◽  
Industrial Sites ◽  
New Public ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Urban Places

The first public parks were created on urban 'greenfields'. Once these designated sites had been used, cities looked towards post-industrial sites, and built parks in places that had suffered from environmental degradation, neglect, abandonment and conflict. With finite stocks of urban post-industrial land now also approaching exhaustion, more ways of making parks are required to create inclusive, accessible and resilient urban places. Future Park invites Australian built environment professionals and policymakers to consider the future of parks in our cities. Including spectacular images of public spaces throughout the world, the book describes the economic, social and environmental benefits of urban parks, and then outlines the threats and challenges facing cities and communities in an age when more than half the world's population are urban dwellers. Future Park introduces the need to embrace new public park thinking to ensure that benefits continue to be realised. Future Park illustrates imaginative and resourceful responses to real challenges by highlighting recent proposals and projects. These projects coalesce around four broad themes – linkages, obsolescences, co-locations and installations – responding to contemporary urban paradoxes, and ensuring parks continue to play a vital role in the lives of our cities.

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