It can only be a matter of time in England’s unkind political culture before one of Theresa May’s Special Advisers proposes whipping vagrants and ne’er-do-wells to the parish boundary before then fulminating that the Human Rights Act prevents them from introducing this essential reform.

Battle lines

More seriously, this is one of the battle lines about contemporary public space in England, as seen by recent campaigns against “spiking” potential outdoor resting or sleeping areas, and to protect the South Bank’s Undercroft from being turned into yet more retail space. (Yes, I know the South Bank management explained over and over that they’d been misunderstood).

This whole issue has been compounded by the privatisation of public space in which special and idiosyncratic rules apply and are enforced by the private company or agency to whom management of the space has been contracted. (Anna Minton is essential reading on this).

Space for socialising

But it turns out that there is another way. It’s worth sharing some photographs from the Basque country of how to design in space for socialising. I’m not making special claims for the Basque region here: I’m sure that I could have found similar photographs across Europe. The point I’m making is that Britain has become an outlier in its peculiar fear of the poor.

The photograph at the top of this post is of the port area in Bermeo, which has chairs arranged in two semi-circles, close to a public statue.

The one immediately below is of a small open area in Mundaka: the chairs are concreted into the ground at these convivial angles.

And below that, seating built into the walls of the walkway immediately above the beach at Laida.

Brutish public culture

I know: someone will point out to me that the Basque culture is not the Engish culture, and they would be right. It is more economically inclusive, and more resistant to official stories that blame victims (they had quite a lot of that during the Franco years and found it not to their taste). But in any system, “end-of-pipe” solutions that deal with consequences and not causes, end up amplifying the problem rather than damping it down.

Designers who produce designs that remove sociability in public spaces – even if it is “what the client wants” – are complicit in the brutish public culture to which this contributes, and the low expectations of public behaviour that follow. I’m not that close to the design world, but I hope there’s a lively ethical debate going on about this.

The photographs in this post are taken by Andrew Curry and are published here under this Creative Commons licence.

In my earlier post a few days ago, I wrote about the background to the widespread privatisation of public space. In this second part I look at some of the activist and political responses.

The idea of public space is at the heart of the idea and the life of the city, as Paul Kingsnorth wrote, in his book Real England:

It is the essence of public freedom: a place to rally, to protest, to sit and contemplate, to smoke or talk or watch the stars. No matter what happens in the shops and cafes, the offices and houses, the existence of public space means there is always somewhere to go to express yourself or simply to escape. … From parks to pedestrian streets, squares to market places, public spaces are being bought up and closed down.

A couple of years ago Blueprint magazine, working with the progressive libertarians of the Manifesto Club, chose to go to places which we think of as identifiably public space in London, such as Trafalgar Square and the riverside area in front of the City Hall. They went back on different days to picnic, sometimes with drink, wearing different clothes (hoodies always went down well with security personnel). There’s only a summary online, but it was an interesting experiment. In More London (privately owned and managed, seen above), they were moved on, by security staff citing ‘health and safety’ reasons, which may sound familiar this morning. The rules in Trafalgar Square – publicly owned but tightly restricted under social order legislation – are different in the north half from the south half, below the steps. Deck chairs were not permitted above the steps: below the steps, although drinking is not permitted, the police were happy provided they put bottles out of sight and drank the alcohol from teacups. But then the police have more leeway than security guards, who are poorly paid, and also heavily monitored (by CCTV) themselves.

Dolan Cummings, who wrote the Blueprint article, argues:

Instead of the ambiguity that comes from different groups of people sharing the same space and using it for different purposes, there is a conformism … Anyone doing something a bit different stands out all the more and is increasingly likely to be seen either as a threat or a source of embarrassment.

No fun

Space Hijackers, who also spoke at the Occupy LSX event I mentioned in my first post, subvert these newly private spaces in ways which make more explicit the way the space is controlled. They add posters which set out the rules (‘NO FUN’, ‘NO OLD PEOPLE’, ‘ENJOY YOUR STAY’), they intervene to prevent passers-by from doing things like holding hands or otherwise enjoying themselves. They tend to stay until they have attracted the attention of the security guards – which they always do because of the pervasive CCTV – but leave before the police arrive. More extreme interventions include night-time cricket games, in full whites, in private spaces such as Paternoster Square.

Part of the Space Hijackers’ critique of this privatisation process is that it diminishes the social aspects of the street so that it can emphasise consumption. “They say, ‘You’re welcome here as long as you spend your money’. It turns us into isolated little bubbles”.

Diane Coyle touched on this from a different angle recently when she wrote of the way in which public life is designed out of the city:

The enclosure of open space in private malls, the design of street furniture to make sitting down (never mind sleeping) a challenge, the bearing down on demonstrations and gatherings and even photography on the grounds of law and order or security, have all contributed to discouraging public gatherings.

Paradoxes of public space

Taking a historical perspective, the opportunity to reconstruct urban space so radically, observed Anna Minton when she spoke at Occupy LSX, was created by the de-industrialisation of the city, and the closure of the factories, works, warehouses and docks which used to dot the urban landscape (as one look at any 1970s street map reveals). What we’re seeing as a result is a fairly rapid reversal of the long trend through the 19th century of roads and highways being ‘adopted’ by the public authority. Minton pointed out the irony of the City of London Corporation trying to use the Highways Act (about maintaining public access) to remove the Occupy protesters outside St Paul’s after being so aggressive in privatising land elsewhere in the City of London.

There are a couple of interesting paradoxes here, which mean that such approaches to managing public space are self-defeating. The mantra of a manager of such privately-controlled spaces is ‘clean and safe’, but they also want to see some energy, which is good for business. What we know about safety in public is that it comes mostly from social interaction, not from the paraphernalia of security management: by banning so many activities, social interaction is reduced, not enhanced. The second paradox is that the management companies believe that ‘clean and safe’ is merely the bottom level of a Maslovian hierarchy, and that once that is established,the site moves up to energy and excitement. Not so; by killing off the messiness, you also kill off the diversity and difference that bring cities to life. You can’t make yogurts or urban environments without some live culture. (The picture shows the feeble attempt by one privately owned space to inject some untidiness. No, they really don’t get it.)

Perhaps improbably, one of the people who realises the costs of this privatisation is the Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who issued  ‘A Manifesto for Public Space‘ (opens pdf) in 2009. It turns out that developers do not need to be bribed with gifts of public land, as they were so notoriously in the building of Liverpool One. The Manifesto is explicit about the need to maintain city space as public space.

There is a growing trend towards the private management of publicly accessible space where this type of ‘corporatisation’ occurs, especially in the larger commercial developments, Londoners can feel themselves excluded from parts of their own city. This need not be the case. At Kings Cross it was agreed that the London Borough of Camden will adopt the streets and public areas. Elsewhere unrestricted 24-hour access to the area has been agreed. This has established an important principle which should be negotiated in all similar schemes.

Despite the title, this is a policy document with the status of legislation. It’s early days: property development is a slow process, especially during a downturn. And so far the Greater London Assembly seems to have disregarded it. But there’s a simple, important principle within it: as Johnson writes, “I want to ensure that access to public space is as unrestricted and unambiguous as possible.” For Londoners at least, it provides a space in which planning and property become visible again, the proper subject of politics.

The photograph at the top of this post is from Blueprint, and is used with thanks. The others were taken by Andrew Curry, and are published here under a Creative Commons licence: some rights reserved.

So it seems appropriate that Occupy LSX has made so visible the private nature of Paternoster Square (as seen in the picture above) and that one of the ‘teach-outs’ it has organised through its Tent City University was about the private control of public space. By privatised public space, I mean that space which appears to be a public space (a square or a lane, for example) is in fact owned and controlled by a private landowner (or sometimes managed privately for a public owner.) Either way, different rules apply. It’s a trend which has been driven along by private sector regeneration schemes, and reinforced by a plethora of increasingly contentious public order legislation. But it is all but invisible.

From public interest to economic interest

Broadly speaking, in the UK, the current wave of land privatisation started in the 1980s, with the development of Canary Wharf and the City’s Broadgate building, and has grown from there. According to Anna Minton, a speaker at the Occupy LSX event, and the author of Ground Control, the best single book on this subject, New Labour gave the process a boost in 2004 when it changed the legal basis by which Compulsory Purchase Orders were assessed. Previously they had to show they were in the “public interest”; now they need only to demonstrate “economic interest”. (New Labour was never very good at consequences, but one consequence was to create a platform for the Coalition to propose trashing the entire planning system in the same way).

What started with office spaces quickly moved on to city centre retail developments such as Cabot Circus in Bristol and Liverpool One, where the developer has a 250-year lease on the 42-acre site. Local authorities were keen because, at a time when regeneration was thought to be about new buildings, it seemed to be an affordable way of re-shaping the city. You don’t get something for nothing, of course, and in many places local authorities were far too willing to give away public space in their dealings with developers.

And then there are the Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), which are managed by a company on behalf of the local authority, and funded by local business subscriptions.

Rules and security guards

One of the things that comes with private management is, almost always, a lot of rules and a set of security guards to police them: no music. no busking, no picnics, no drinking (at least of alcohol), no photography, no street theatre, no ball games, no skateboarding, no roller-blading, no cycling. And certainly no protests. (And as an aside, the fact that London’s seat of government, City Hall, sits on such land seems, to say the least, an affront to civic democracy). Surveillance is widespread, usually via CCTV. “The streets”, said Minton, have been privatised without anyone noticing.”

And indeed, you can tell when you’re on a privately controlled site because of the notices. I’ve included a couple of pictures of these, from Hays Galleria on the south side of the Thames near London Bridge.

Obviously shopping malls and retail areas have long followed this pattern, because they were typically closed off spaces under a roof. Here there is a similar blurring; there’s a telltale sign on the Thames’ riverside walk, as it passes by London’s Hays Galleria, that it is a ‘no-smoking area’ – a sign that the land is under private control even though it appears to be public space. Guardian journalist John Harris made this point about Bristol’s Cabot Circus – which is partly covered, partly open:

Cabot Circus bleeds out into the city, and surrounding streets they are busy redeveloping. The fact that their turf includes open areas points up one of the more unsettling aspects of the development: what seem to be ordinary streets are actually privately owned. “It’s an interesting one, this,” says [Centre director Richard] Belt. “These places are quite a new breed. We’ve applied all the usual rules that shopping centres do, but because it’s a streetscape, it’s getting customers scratching their heads a bit.” Cycling is forbidden. Unless you have a visual impairment, should you turn up with a dog, you’ll be told to leave it at home next time. Security staff in regulation black blazers keep a constant watch on what’s going on, including smoking.

This British model was – according to Ground Control – imported almost wholesale from the United States, but with an important difference. In the US, the changes to property and planning laws became a focus for widespread protest, with extensive media coverage, and eventually George W. Bush had to intervene. In Britain, there was almost no political response, but this was partly because of our opaque legislative processes and the technicalities of our planning processes. As Anna Minton writes, “While the legislation may not look very significant when it passes through parliament, by the time it becomes law, the addition of utterly obscure guidance and statutory instruments … ensures it is rather different.”

The second part of this post will appear in a few days.

The photographs in this post were taken by Andrew Curry and are published here under a Creative Commons licence: some rights reserved.