Gregory T. Donovan
CUNY Graduate Center New York

Presentation prepared for the “Negotiating Conflicts Over Public Space” Panel
Divided Cities Conference of the Transatlantic Graduate Research Program
Columbia University, New York, October 2006
Abstract: This paper explores the role privatization has played in the repurposing of New York City’s Union Square Park from an organizational space for collective action to a ‘passing-through- park’ for tourists, commuters and wireless communication. Tracing a political shift in the park’s governance, beginning in the 1930s and culminating with it’s current public/private management, a decline in collective action at Union Square can be found alongside an increase in individual wireless communication, a displacement of union offices by anti-union retail stores, and a privileging of ‘tourist attractions’ and ‘marketing initiatives’ over public services for the local community. This paper concludes by examining attempts by certain groups to reclaim the park for collective action. By utilizing the organizational affordances of virtual space, these groups are developing ways to overcome the barriers to waging collective action in Union Square.

At 2:00 p.m. On February 18th, 2006, a social gathering of about 120 people instantaneously formed from the passive masses that typically populate Union Square Park (Smallwood, 2006). Instead of the signs, flags, floats and megaphones that tend to distinguish such organized crowds from bystanders; the distinction of this crowd was the pillows held in hand by each participant. As the clock struck 2, the crowd erupted into a public pillow fight, each participant hitting the other with their pillows - contributing to a cloud of feathers, which enveloped the crowd.
This seemingly instant emergence of focused public interaction was methodically organized via a peer-to-peer network consisting of websites, text messages, phone calls and word of mouth. As a result of this decentralized organization, the New York Observer notes that few of the participants knew that Canadian artists Lori Kufner and Kevin Bracken, had conceptualized the event (Saurav, 2006).

When asked by one publication about their motivation for organizing such an event in Union Square, Mr. Braken responded:

Our…ideology is about reclaiming public space… We consider our events massive works of art that change the way people interact with a city…
We feel that there are a lot of forces threatening public space right now; excessive advertising, overzealous police, and a general unwillingness to socialize in public as society becomes increasingly isolated (Saurav, 2006).

Union Square Park serves as an appropriate stage for such an event. Tracing a political shift in the park’s governance, beginning in the 1930s and culminating with the its current public/private management (The Union Square Partnership), a decline in collective action at Union Square can be found alongside an increase in individual wireless communication, a displacement of union offices by anti-union retail stores, an avoidance of public oversight by public officials and a privileging of ‘tourist attractions’ and ‘marketing initiatives’ over public services for the local community.These observations and the argument put forth in this presentation are shaped by an ongoing ethnography of Union Square Park that began in February of 2006.

Understanding the Square as a cultural and visual artifact, behavior maps, movement maps, Wi-Fi Maps, photographs, video footage, observational notes and interviews with park goers have been employed in this ethnographic analysis. Relevant literature regarding Union Square Park and the privatization of public space has been reviewed in an attempt to contextualize this ethnography within a socio-historical framework. Promotional materials distributed by the Union Square Partnership, the board members and their affiliated organizations and a presentation given by the Partnership’s Director of Public Affairs (Henry Choi) have been reviewed as well to gain some insight into the Square’s governance.Regarding the spatial affordances of Union Square Park, it has been known historically as a place for public displays of collective action - functionally satisfying a need for public deliberation. Recent shifts in what the park affords has transmuted it into a space for tourists, commuters and public displays of private interactions - functionally satisfying a need for private deliberation. While communicative interactions are still the most common behavior observed at Union Square Park the communicative purpose has shifted.My movement maps as well as my observational notes indicate a majority of people in Union Square Park at any one time is exclusively passing through (most often to or from one of the 3 subway terminals). The minority which actually station themselves within the park, according to my behavioral maps and observational notes, were often using portable communication devices to communicate with people, places or things located outside the park. During one visit, on a sunny and warm day (04.22.06), 88 of the approximately 150 people stationed at the park were using portable communication devices.Interviews and observations suggest that many people stop to use their cell phones upon exiting the subway, bus or store. Most of the people I interviewed said they check their phone and voicemail once they regain their signal because no cell phone signal exists in the subway. One interviewee explained that she won’t answer her phone in stores and instead will usually walk outside to answer her calls or check her voicemail. All interviews indicate, along with the behavioral and movement maps, that a majority of people using wireless technologies in the park were essentially passing-through and decided to stop in the park to use their technology because it was a comfortable place to do so - the majority did not go to the park and then decide to use their technology. Private communications once limited to the office, the home or the phone booth are now taking place in our public spaces as well - afforded in part by wireless communication.

Globally, as wireless networks and portable technologies proliferate, we find examples of how private communications can be publicly linked, contributing to more public interaction. In Burma, Burmese exiles across the globe used the Internet during the mid-90s to collectively lobby against the controlling regime there (Danitz & Strobel, 1999). In 2000, outraged by a sudden increase in gas prices, thousands in Britain used mobile phones, text messaging, emails and CB radios to organize decentralized groups that prevented fuel form being delivered to select service stations. In the Philippines, hundreds of thousands of protesters organized themselves via text messages to oust former President Joseph Estrada in 2001 (Rheingold, 2002).Here in New York examples can be found as well. One group, called “Critical Mass,” organizes large bike rides to protest the excessive use of cars. They organize - much as the public pillow fight had - via text messaging, websites and word of mouth. This group quickly organizes at Union Square on the last Friday of every month and continues to communicate via text message in order to disseminate useful information such as the location of police and security officers in order to circumvent arrest and/or ticketing. The need at both the global and the local for groups to organize via virtual space in order to wage collective action or facilitate public deliberation raises an interesting question - particularly here in New York - regarding the current function of our public spaces. Taking Union Square as a case study, it appears the repurposing of its social function from one of social interactions to one of economic interactions has much to do with the privatization of its governance.In discussing concepts of public and private we must be wary of portraying either as absolute classifications. While there is no rigid public or private distinction that can be made without creating a dualism, within a particular context we can conceive of these terms as processes of publicizing and/or privatizing - as directed political movements. By looking at the governance structure of a particular place in time and contextualizing that view within the space’s social history - movement emerges. With this in mind I would like to explore Union Square’s current governance within a historical context.

A former burial ground for the poor and estranged turned public place in 1831 (1,2,4), Union Square Park has a rich social history of collective action. While Union Square’s name originates from its geographic location at the union of Broadway and Bowery, it was used by the Union army during the Civil War - as well as the public for pro-Union rallies and draft riots alike (Cowen Brancaccio, 1991). During the late 1800s and early 1900s Union Square played host to numerous public demonstrations organized by union, socialist and communist groups. The most notable of these demonstrations took place on September 5, 1882, when up to 30,000 union members marched in the first Labor Day parade - nearly 12 years before President Cleveland made Labor Day a national holiday (Cowen Brancaccio, 1991). By the 1930s weekly demonstrations were being held in the square by communist and socialist groups, Amalgamated Bank (the nation’s first worker’s financial institution) was established on the west side of the park and it is reported that at least 12 labor unions and political groups had located their offices around the Square (Cowen Brancaccio, 1991). In commemoration of its notable labor history, the US Department of the Interior designated Union Square Park a National Historic Landmark in 2002 (5).Returning again, to the 1930s (during the height of socialist, communist and unionist demonstrations in Union Square) there appears to have been an open and concerted effort by local business to efface the “red image of the Square.” In 1930, the same year that local property owners and businesses lobbied for a ban on public demonstrations, the Square was redesigned, and thus in part repurposed into a “passing-through park” with more walk ways and more open space fenced off (Cowen Brancaccio, 1991). Between 1932 and 1954, three organizations (the Union Square Centennial Committee, the Broadway Association and the 14th Street Business Men’s Association) petitioned to ban radical organizations from speaking in the square, sponsored various ‘patriotic’ events and installed numerous American flags in the park. In 1953, The 14th Street Business Men’s Association stated they wanted to “reclaim Union Square for America” on flag day and attempted to organize a “Loyalty Day” parade on May Day in 1954 (Cowen Brancaccio, 1991).While the Union Square Centennial Committee, the Broadway Association and the 14th Street Business Men’s Association have all faded, the Union Square Partnership - a public/private organization, founded in 1976, which governs the park - appears to carry on their legacy of representing the interests of local business (Cowen Brancaccio, 1991). In practicing what Neil Smith (1996) describes as revanchist antiurbanism or “a reaction against supposed ‘theft’ of the city, a desperate defense of a challenged phalanx of privileges, cloaked in the populist language of civic morality, family values and neighborhood security” the Union Square Partnership appears to continue the corporate push to repurpose the square from a space for social interactions to a space for economic interactions (Smith, 1996; pg. 211). This is highlighted by the fact that 76% of Partnership’s 2004 budget went to ‘public safety,’ and the report that their “Public Safety Officers” responded to 1,783 incidents “involving complaints regarding illegal street vending, skateboarders, the homeless, garbage conditions and other community disturbances” (Union Square Partnership, 2005).

Do homeless people, skateboarders and garbage really threaten our safety, or are they just visual sore spots to a certain - often elite - community? And are they the only ones who have been displaced by the privatization? Taking a quick look at the stores boarding the Square you’ll notice a Bradlees, Toys “R” Us, Circuit City, Staples, Virgin Mega Store, Filenes Basement, Trader Joe’s, Barnes and Noble, Mexx Clothing, McDonalds, Fedex/Kinkos, Diesel Clothing, Au Bon Pain, WholeFoods, Walgreens and two Starbucks. All of these stores link up with national chains and few if any have unions, in fact some (i.e. WholeFoods, McDonalds and Starbucks) are notorious for squashing any signs of labor unionization. Not only has physical offices of labor and other political groups been removed from the Square, but the very businesses that now surround the Square stand in direct conflict with the communities and collective action that those offices have historically organized in the park. As Sharon Zukin (2004, pg. 28) insightfully points out, a shopping space is “gentler than the prison, school and army Michel Foucault describes… and more comfortable than the mental hospital immortalized by Erving Goffman. But once we accept its values, we are its captives.”

Smith (1996, pg. 27) states that “physical effacement of original structures efface social history and geography; if the past is not entirely demolished it is at least reinvented - its class and race contours rubbed smooth - in refurbishment of a palatable past.” Rather than deny its past, the partnership trumpets the park’s history of collective action, through commemorative plaques, statues, guided tours and public relations. However, this ‘trumpeting’ of the past appears to be more a marketing tool for attracting tourists and less of present governance policy.

Over the past 8 months only two large demonstrations were observed at Union Square - one anti-war rally (04.29.06) and one pro-immigration rally (05.01.06). As the photos and video footage display, during both of these events the majority of the park - its lawn - was made off limits to the protesters, forcing the crowds into the thin walkways framing the park and eventually into the street where police and security promptly harassed them. Notable, was the anti-war march sponsored by the UPJ. The march, which began at 22nd and Broadway and ended in Foley Square, crossed the northern part of Union Square before turning south and framing its eastern side. Several rows of gates and police were assembled around Union Square to make sure the ‘Green Market’ occurring that Saturday went undisturbed by the protest. In fact, as several of my photos show, the Green Market proceeded business-as-usual within a bubble, with shoppers seemingly unaware of the few 100,000 people marching just feet away. In Goffman’s Behavior in Public Spaces (1966, pg. 20) he notes “the same physical space may be caught within the domain of two different social occasions” - reflecting on this footage I can’t think of a more vivid example.

A presentation given by Henry Choi, the Director of Public Affairs for the USP, highlights the Partnership’s marketing of the park as a tourist attraction to increase business sales and thus real-estate values. Employing ‘buzz’ words, a basic PR tactic, Mr. Choi used the word “positive” several times, most notably referring to Luna Park, the privately owned restaurant located on the park, as a “big positive influence on the area” and to the “Public Safety Officers” and security cameras as “positive eyes” (3). Mr. Choi explained how the USP wants to attract “rich NYU kids” who think the Square is “cool” because it reminds them of Friends, a popular TV show. He then went on to boast about how Union Square is one of the busiest parks in the city but that they are always looking for ways to attract more people - making a neoliberal argument that Union Square, as a park, is in competition with other parks for tourists dollars (3).

This view that public space should function as a marketing tool for private interests has lead to a displacement of public services by marketing initiatives. A current campaign by the Union Square Partnership to attract park goers has been to boast of its free, corporate-sponsored Wi-Fi. However, as seen in my Wi-Fi map, the Internet signal is very weak and unusable in many parts of the park and the areas with the strongest signal tended to have little shade making it difficult to see the computer screen in the glare created by the sunlight. Rather than offering reliable and free Wi-Fi Internet access - a useful public service - the Partnership appears more concerned with marketing this initiative than assuring it serves a public function.
Although the USP describes its board as comprised of “local business leaders, residents, not-for-profit groups, universities, hospitals and business people” the residents (represented by Community Boards 2, 3 and 5) are the only ones without voting privileges (Union Square Partnership, 2005). The Union Square Partnership’s five elected offices (president, vice president, two co-treasurers and secretary) are all tied to major property owners in the Union Square area. However the public is not totally without representation in the partnership - as with most other public/private partnerships in the city, such as the Central Park Conservancy, the mayor, borough president, comptroller and local council member are all voting members of the board of directors.
This is interesting since many public officials seem to indicate that they have no control over the partnerships and thus cannot be held accountable for their actions. As was the case in 2004 when United for Peace and Justice sought to use the Great Lawn in Central Park for organizing an anticipated crowd of 500,000 to protest the Republican National Convention. After facing opposition from the Central Park Conservancy and the Parks Department, for fear that the protesters would ruin the newly seeded grass, the UPJ rally was moved to Union Square Park. UPJ were permitted to use the Square only as an end point to their march, not as a space for organizing (Williams, 2005). As protesters completed their march at Union Square they were promptly asked by UPJ to disband. While many dispersed, the crowd inevitably grew larger than the Square could handle, once again forcing people into the streets and leading to several arrests. During the time Mayor Bloomberg, a Republican who donated 7 million dollars of his own money to the convention, obfuscated his role in the matter - implying it was an issue between the Conservancy and UPJ and not him. After his reelection to another term, the New York Times ran a story revealing emails between the Conservancy, Parks Department and the Bloomberg Administration - clearly highlighting the Mayor’s role in having the Conservancy deny protesters the lawn to avoid political embarrassment. Here we see public representatives using the partnership to avoid public accountability. Now that private interests have repurposed the Square’s social function, rendering current efforts at collective action problematic, where will we protest? Where will we deliberate? It’s difficult to say whether the frequent use of wireless technologies in the park has gathered more people into a public space or if it has made people more private or both - but it appears to be a symptom of the park’s privatization.

Setha Low (2000; pg. 201, 204) argues that “culturally significant public spaces are forums for working out political, economic and social conflicts that can not be resolved by more direct verbal means” and asks “if they are closed or redesigned in response to protest or spatial appropriation that does not fit within the narrow cultural guidelines of ‘modern,’ ‘middle-class’ or ‘appropriate’ behavior, then where will this protest be located?”
The political movement at play in Union Square paints an unsettling picture. As my data indicate, the park is now largely used as both a space for transportation and digital communication - a conduit for physically and digitally connecting people, allowing them to privately address their individual matters of concern. At the local level, the park’s governance, corporate interests and public officials appear all too pleased by this repurposing. At the national level, our President has crystallized this sentiment by instructing the American people “its my job to worry about it, its your job to go about your business.” However, if a democracy is what we are striving for, IT IS our job worry about it - to deliberate over public matters of concern. For these public debates to take place we need public space.

Gregory Donovan is a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Psychology and a Certificate candidate in Interactive Technology & Pedagogy at The City University of New York Graduate Center as well as a fellow at the Stanton/Heiskell Telecommunications Policy Center. Raised on the South Shore of Massachusetts and presently located in New York City’s Lower East Side, his writing and research interests explore human interactions with and within virtual spaces during processes of education, political organization and citizen participation. Gregory is currently involved in projects regarding residential private communities in New York City, the production of educational media within the New Media Lab environment at CUNY, collective action in public spaces and children’s media research.

email: [email protected] • web: www.gregorydonovan.org

:: NOTES ::

1. New York City Aftermath: Union Square; http://www.rootsandroutes.net/body.htm?http&&&www.rootsandroutes.net/unionsquare.htm

2. New York City Department of Parks & Recreation; http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=6533

3. Union Square, A National Historic Landmark; http://www.laborarts.org/exhibits/union/index.cfm

4. Women’s History: The triangle shirtwaist fire of 1911; http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/whm/trials/triangle.htm

5. Mayor Giuliani dedicates Union Square Park as a national historical landmark; http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/html/98b/pr426-98.html

:: REFERENCES ::

Cowen Brancaccio, Joan (1991). Union Square: Everyone was there. NYU Program in
Public History, Retrieved May 26th, 2006, from http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/history/public_history/

Ferguson, Sarah (2005). NYPD unplugs Cindy Sheehan. The Village Voice, Retrieved
April 15, 2006, from http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0538,fergusonshee,67983,2.html

Gershman, Jacob (2005). Anti-war protesters call police Stalinists. The New York Sun,
Retrieved April 15, 2006, from http://www.nysun.com/article/20283

Goffman, Erving (1966). Behavior in public places: Notes on the social organization of
gatherings. New York, NY: The Free Press.

Low, Setha (2000). On the plaza: The politics of public space and culture. Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press.

Sarkar, Saurav (2006). Pillow fight erupts on New York streets. DNA India, Retrieved
April 15, 2006, from http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1014405

Smallwood, Christine (2006). Pillow fights in Union Square-Isn’t there a war on or
something?. New York Observer, Retrieved March 21, 2006, from
http://www.observer.com/20060313/20060313_Christine_Smallwood_pageone_newsstory6.asp

Rheingold, Howard (2002). Smart Mobs: The next social revolution. Cambridge, MA:
Basic Books.

Smith, Neil (1996). The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the ravanchist city. New
York, NY: Routledge.

Union Square Partnership. (2005). The continuing transformation of a neighborhood
(Union Square Partnership 2004-2005 Business Improvement District Annual
report). New York.

Williams, Timothy (2005). Keeping great crowds off the Great Lawn. New York Times,
Retrieved June 1, 2006, from http://www.refuseandresist.org/polic_state/art.php?aid=1939

Zandt, Deanna (2004). Let the races begin. Alternet, Retrieved August 30, 2006, from
http://www.alternet.org/election04/19705/

Zukin, Sharon (2004). Point of purchase: How shopping changed American culture. New
York, NY: Routledge.

Confronting Strategies in Urban Reinvention :: The Urban Reinventors :: #1 Issue - June 07