Public Space Privatization and the Hollywood Sign | Urban Planning Expert Interview

[00:00:00]hey everybody and welcome back to the Millennial project today I want to get into our last Hollywood sign interview at least our last one for the time being and this interview is with Professor anastasiya Lucas adara's as she is a professor at UCLA and she specializes in a variety of urban issues of one of which is the privatization of public space and so what I wanted to do in this interview was have her talk a little bit about this concept in general and then try to relate it near the end of the interview to the Hollywood sign issue I think this really will help us tie the various interviews that we've done on the Hollywood sign into larger issues of inequality of a park access etc so I'm pretty excited for this interview I had a really good time talking to Professor reply to sedaris when I was at UCLA so I want to get right into this interview but before we do that per usual I did just want to remind everybody that if you like what you see today you can stay up to date with the millennial projects latest videos by subscribing to the show on YouTube or liking the page on Facebook also please feel free to share what we're doing with your friends your family fellow activists city council members anyone you can think of because the extra view is always really help and then on top of that I think especially with these later interviews the ones that talk about the ability to get this Hollywood sign issue solved it out reducing access I think it's really important to get those out there because again as I've said in some of my other introductions I think city officials and reporters most often hear from various residents who want to shut down access and a lot of people just really don't know because the view is not exposed very often they just don't know that there are others out there who want to keep access open and that actually have a tangible way of doing that while solving some of the quality of life issues the tourism issues and the public safety issues that occur below the sign all right so with all that out of the way let's dive right into our next interview with professor Anastasia Luke I to sedaris from UCLA so my name is Ana Stasia you cry to see days and an architect urban planner urban designer I'm a professor in the Department of urban planning at UCLA and I'm also the associate dean of the School of Public Affairs will ask him School of Public Affairs so this was hoping we could start out with you talking a little bit about public space privatization in general and you know what you would look for in a city like LA if you're worried that something might kind of falling into that and that trend yeah so public space represents an asset for City and it is abroad and sometimes ambiguous terms but by public space we thought we refer to the streets the sidewalks the parks that Plaza you can meet with people may be from different walks of life and so traditionally American cities would give quite a lot of value to public spaces think about the big central park in new york number of big parks like Golden Gate Park they would build public spaces for people the same thing with sidewalks where they would host a number of activities not only walking which is what we tend to do on sidewalks today but also street vending political talks are all kinds of social activities in the late nineteen thirty twentieth century but as we move progressively after world war two and with suburbanization and people moving out especially the white flight to the suburbs we start seeing often traditional public spaces becoming quite devalued considered to be more of instead of assets more liabilities for cities so you start seeing opens newspaper articles about the pathology of public spaces that crime happens in public spaces and at the same time we start seeing a a number of ordinances in in cities the takeaway progressively the social activities from the sidewalk so no street vending no political speeches and sidewalks what on the other hand you start seeing especially from the late 1970s 1980s is the development of a different type of public space under private development what a number of scholars have called the privatized public spaces and these are all the clauses the shopping plaza the corporate plaza the malls that attract the public but they have a lot of rules and regulations not everyone is welcome you would not see skateboarders bad ladies poor people under dressed people in general in some of these plazas if the aventurine they will be usually politely asked to leave and so this phenomenon is called the privatization of public space this goes hand in hand with other developments like gated communities where we start seeing even residential streets becoming privatized and becoming community private so that only if you belong if you reside in this neighborhood you can park on the street or enter the street so you start seeing this phenomenon happening more and more in starting from the from the 70s as I mentioned and well into the beginnings of the 21st century and so that's what what we call the privatization of public space and so you know i actually just happen to have done an episode on Regan and so it was just curious because it's in kind of the back of my mind you know just have to do with kind of this movement towards privatization and a lot of areas in our government in our economy and to say it's more efficient it's more effective you know let private corporations take over these services and even be better for everyone how would you react today absolutely this goes hand in hand with what it was called during the Reagan era the ideology of New conservativism and the idea that big government is inefficient which is something that still you know the Republican Party espouses to and that we really a lot of these public services need to be privatized because the private sector is much more efficient and the other thing that is happening at the time that relates to privatization is that we have a lot of tax cut movements like the proposition 13 in California more than 30 states don't remember the exact number about 30 to 35 had similar propositions passing why it is important because the the property taxes is the main revenue of local governments and these property taxes were used for public services and for parks and for public libraries and so by reducing dramatically this revenue for the municipal governments the government start trying to find other means and some of these means is you know have the private sector do it or price put a price so if it take the example of parks another of park started charging for classes and for services that used to be completely free and this can work in a more affluent suburb and community what the people can pay to have a tai chi class or a ballet class or a wood crafting class and so these parks would get the revenue from these classes and we would use them to upkeep the park but in the inner city in low-income areas and communities that they could not put a price because people could not afford it they they would you know have no money and the parks would completely closed down and so we have adduction of traditional public spaces following the passing of this proposition 15 and equivalent propositions and through the ideology of new conservatism a decline of traditional public spaces and what is the alternative have the private sector provide some of these services so you know what does this look like in relation to the original kind of like 1920s or 1930s part that you see I know and some of the reading that you gave me to do they taught a lot about these be in places of civic virtue of people being able to comment enix with others are different backgrounds to you know potentially you know do public generations that kind of thing and so what is a danger of losing public space for the greater health of our democracy in as well as I I think that is a danger in the sense that the public space is the spatial manifestation of the public realm and the public realm is where as you mentioned you can express your views you can come together as a public you can demonstrate you can celebrate and we need to have these spaces in a everyday life otherwise we become completely isolated in you know the cocoon of our own spaces and we only get what's happening in public life through television the media etc and there are modern-day examples contemporary examples that demonstrate the importance of public space think the here Square in Cairo for you know the Egyptian revolution in Hong Kong recently there were demonstrations of students taking the streets sometimes you know democracy needs these spaces but also i would think that these spaces increase our tolerance as a citizens because we get to to see people who may not be exactly as we look people of different races people of different ethnicities people who may be disabled i mean at least you you really occupy the same type of space and i think it would be a great loss if we do not have such spaces so one things are serious about in relation is a specific Hollywood sign issue is that you don't have as many people coming in as let's say like corporate entities these are individuals and they are working in many sentences again this is a very vague babe it's you know certain people in the community are very adamant that these your trailheads leading into Griffith Park that later the Hollywood sign should be kept open but other people are saying we should close them because we have hikers coming through we have too many cars we have tours we don't want you know we have people who could be dangerous and I guess this kind of goes undesirables feeling right now and so what I'm curious about is you know I know a lot of the public space kind of I hate to use this or like this course goes around corporations and and that's right thing so where does individual it is only in corporations because we have this gated communities that are not corporations and they are neighborhood residential neighborhoods that try to privatize their space and these are individuals homeowners and homeowner associations that have acted as a corporation and try to create what sociologists Lynn Lofland calls the parochial area read wrong which is not a public cloud but he's a community private round but here I mean the question is that if these are public spaces if these belong to the city if this is not a private development these are public streets so and I do understand that there may be a nuisance in terms of having too many people walking about that these people knew when they bought their property that this is on the way to the Hollywood sign again there might be a kind of a middle road so to speak that you know after a certain time at night you know you cannot pass through the area but I don't see how you can deny on a public street the right of a citizen or visit or someone who uses the city an urbanite to use a public space to go to a city landmark might eventually interesting and I think I just have two more questions for you so the first one has to do with me to summarizing a little bit about what what I've learned so far so in looking into this issue I've discovered and you know read in places as well because i would say about the first person to do this but i learned that you know a lot of the residents that community have lobbied the city very intensely to get roads closed off only to private residence so you'll go up into the community and you'll see you know on certain more narrow roads that will be kind of blockade it's kind of like a standard you know construction sign and it'll say residents only on it and then they also have preferred parking districts foot in which are basically these districts that say you can only part of your you know during circulatory system a permit the other thing is that now they're allowed me to have those districts extended and on top of that they're working to basically bring lawsuits against the city that that basically say these trailheads that we integrated part from the neighborhood are technically illegal and we're never intended to be there and therefore should be closed and they believe that that will then get rid of this problem as they see the people coming through their neighborhood yeah i mean is this video narrative of their kind of being like people who might be more wealthy exactly in a specific you know concession from the city of the expense of watercolors yeah i think this is very problematic see and especially if you think about this altitude repeating itself because you know we have the same issue with the beach I mean multiple I mean some homeowners want to close the the access to the beach the beach is a public site you cannot really are a public good is is something that can be enjoyed by everything everybody who lives in the city or who visit the city so if you start seeing all these there are trails in altadena near where I live that may come very close to some people's homes now if you start doing this and then you're completely privatizing the whole city and in my view this is not acceptable it's completely different if it is a private road if it is you know something that it's not public but we're talking about public streets we're talking about public beaches we're talking about public spaces and so I don't see how these can be privatized there are again there are maybe some restrictions parks they do most of the parks do closed down at certain points at sunset or at ten o'clock at night or this one can can can see happening that you know certain times of the day or other denied these you know access points are closed but to completely shut down axis is you know goes against you know democracy so and this I think is the last question how are we doing on time well we have about seven minutes okay goodness yeah this is fine so um so another one of the solutions proposed by a lot of residents in the area and this kind of actually spans the spectrum for people who are very anti access it before very Pro accesses well what if we get all of these high-rise developments that are trying to be pushed through in Hollywood what if we have various council districts who have to approve these high-rise development say well if you're going to build a high-rise you have to allow for a specific amount of public space on done with the high-rise you know what do you think about that kind of general idea and is that problematic no actually this is called implanting terms linkage and it has been applied quite successful in sometimes this coin in Boston where when you you know developers of commercial developments office building had to give back something to the city and it can be on-site or it could be developed in the nearby area small part it's a off side and in areas where there is a lot of development activity and developers want to build high rises or commercial buildings or office buildings this is I think a good strategy that planners sometimes apply or could apply to give more open space to the city and so that's why it's called a linkage fee because it's linking the development to some kind of public good um my my kind of follow up on that is do you worry that you might see some of the same issues that you see with the kind of corporate plaza downtown occurring in these high-rise developments or is it something that clearly if it is on the top of a high-rise development definitely I mean if the public space because again if it is on site if it is on site the developer the tenants would try to have it only for the people who live on the side if on the other hand let's say a small part they develop and use the funds that they develop a mini Park or a small Park in a lot in the neighborhood that is open and accessible then you don't have this problem in San Francisco actually they had to put plugs that the planning department was really insisting that the developer had to put a plaque that said this is public space and it's open to use and people can use it and all that so there's that's really interesting because i didn't really know those i could divide there so it sounds like in one sense you could have a situation where they're going to build like an observation deck on the top of the building but that might only be kind of or there might be an incentive for them to closest yeah i call it to the public even though it's technically public you're saying if they can set aside a specific lot of land and then allow the funds to be using an observation I that that's kind of a difference exactly okay exactly because it is we seem to buildings and the tenants would sometimes justifiably be very concerned that you know people are coming in the building getting on the elevators there may be more opportunities for crying because who knows I mean I can see this this happening and complains and so when it is on site and even in the same building it is difficult to to pretty much set the public nuh some space I think that's all I have do anything you buy dad well I think it is a hot topic it has been a hot topic as I mentioned the beach is another area that because public space is bordered by private space and this always creates tension because sometimes what I call via bothers the butters are the people who have property commercial/residential next to the public space and oftentimes their interests clash with in the rest of the general public or people who want to use this public space and I have even written something about about that and about how sometimes the abutters leaders seem to prefer to predominate in the minds of the city so interesting well that is all very interested in thank you for speaking with me great right thank you sure you