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Public spaces

Public spaces are becoming increasingly privatised, as for example, regeneration of town centres is contracted out to private regeneration companies, and private shopping centres open as alternatives to high streets, taking many of their businesses and consumers.  These new public spaces are often regulated by private security companies rather than the police force and they are able to set their own rules such as the ban on ‘hoodies’ in some shopping centres.

What are the implications?

• Increase in surveillance and restrictions on civil liberties as private owners can block the rights of groups to assemble or protest (see security and surveillance)
• Marginalisation of certain groups (for example young people) (see tolerance of anti-social behaviour)
• Increased similarity of local areas, conflicting with trends around increased local political and economic autonomy (see localism agenda)
• Potential increase in the levels and diversity of investment in public spaces – for instance from new philanthropists (link) and companies with Corporate Social Responsibility investment programmes (link)
• Potential higher rents for organisations in areas with significant private sector led regeneration

Moving forward

Can your organisation help to maintain and perhaps create new public spaces for groups to come together? Could you work with others to purchase public space, perhaps by taking advance of targeted loan finance?

Will your organisation need to consider increasing its income generation activities in order to afford commercial rents – for instance to have central/visible and accessible locations? (This may be particularly relevant to organisations in areas where significant changes are occurring such as the Olympic development in East London)

Want to know more?

This driver is a stub and will be completed soon.  Here we will link to external documents and resources for further reading.