I write this brief report in New York. I was invited to attend this International Workshop because of my university research on public space planning on Auckland and Wellington waterfront land. The workshop was attended by academic and expert geographers, anthropologists and urban planners from France, Austria, USA and New Zealand (moi).
Title: Understanding Public Private Partnerships: governance, urban development and spatial justice. Held at City University of New York at the CIRHUS - Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, sponsored by CUNY-CPCP and Metropolitics/Métropolitiques.
The intro to the workshop reads: "As cities have adopted the entrepreneurial turn (Harvey, 1989), many urban interventions initiated or encouraged by public authorities rely on the financial capacity and the know-how of both for-profit and not-for-profit private interests to (re)develop land. Presentations will examine public-private partnerships that contribute to the development of ostensibly public space, the creation of urban amenities as well as the formulation of urban design aesthetics and production of architectural quality..."
Professor Elliott Sclar was the discussant. The morning was allocated to a series of 15 minute presentations (very tightly managed!), then discussion. After lunch a smaller group concentrated on the mechanics of producing a journal issue on the workshop. The presentations were attended by a much wider group of academics and practitioners.
I won't go into detail here, but just a few highlights. Phil Berge-Liberman from University of Connecticut kicked off talking about "Conservancy Park" planning where private investment in parks maintenance and development increasingly gives the investors the right to determine "proper use" of the park, and to introduce ideas like "the landscape has rights too". He described in detail the amount of private money that now goes into New York's Central Park - with ideas like "adopt a tree" and suchlike to the extent that investment now shapes the way it is used. Large "political" gatherings are much less likely. Many behaviours are prohibited. He produced statistics that showed in 2009 the park added $17.7 billion in value to properties adjacent to the park. One throw away line he used, "the difference between parks in working class neighbourhoods and wealthy ones, is that the first are brown - because they are used so much for football and basketball, and the others have much greater tree canopy and green - because they are hardly used at all by comparison.
Yvonne Franz from Austrian Academy of Sciences spoke about residential PPPs in Vienna, what she described as "social democratic city", operating in compliance with the "EU Stability and Growth Pact" - which she didn't really explain, but sounds similar to what's happening in NZ, where Central Government imposes its growth targets on Auckland Council and Auckland. Apparently Vienna (which is not a big city) is building 8,000 to 10,000 new apartments per year. Her concern was the fact that private investor is not interested in schools or kindergartens. She described it as "single project thinking". Lack of integrated planning. She described "under-utilized open space semi-private park spaces". Her concern was that this results in "limited sharing practices", and for connecting. Her work suggests there needs to be thinking and design about "interaction between generations" - to "create social mixing amongst new and existing residents". What also struck me about Yvonne's talk was that the carrot of "affordable housing" is used to get political and public sign-off of PPP residential projects, but there is little effort put into ensuring those numbers get delivered and are protected. (Invokes in me the thought of how often in Auckland the carrot on the waterfront is public space - and how frequently it is either not delivered, or that it is taken away and privatised).
I compared public space outcomes at Auckland and Wellington - under the same statutory environment, yet so very different in quality - and provided an analysis of the reasons for those differences. And finished with an account of what is happening now in downtown Auckland. The risk that public space will be appropriated in the interests of the deal that has been reached between Auckland Council and Precinct Properties unless third sector groups like Auckland Architecture Association, Civic Trust and Urban Auckland intervene in the public interest. This sparked response from visitors. Sclar suggested their action might be subversive. Another commented, "same as here, can't see daylight between the interests of municipalities and developers. Calls into question what you call public..."
You get the picture. I was among fellow travellers. Other interesting presentations followed. Lots of ideas shared. Will share more in the blog later.
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