The “Right to the City’ is a movement against gentrification and displacement of persons of lower income, minorities races, gay and lesbians marginalized groups from historic urban neighborhoods (Right to the City). The movement, which began in 2007, is a national movement for racial and urban justice as well as human rights and democracy (Right to the City). Because it is a national movement, the alliance has branches located throughout the United States.
One of the primary cities in which the Right to the City movement has asserted itself is the city of New York. This is because a great deal of public space within the city is being privatized resulting in denial of access to public spaces for minorities and those of lower income. According to “Private Management of Public Spaces: Nonprofit Organizations and Urban Parks” appearing in the Harvard Environmental Law Review, “Private groups participate in the management of half of the seventeen hundred parks in New York City” (Murray, 2010). Even Central Park is under the control of private ownership. Private ownership of public spaces can change the nature of those spaces as well as who has access to them.
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"The Right to the City: New York City".
The article “Pushing Privatized “Partnership” Agenda at New York City’s Public Parks — Part 3” discusses the privatization of public parks in New York City under former NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe (Swan, 2013). Anyone following the issue of privatization of public space will agree that Adrian Benepe primarily relied on those public-private partnerships which were able to spread and increase their reach under his watch. Although the majority of those in the city were opposed to such privitizations, Benepe defends these actions with the claim that the city did not have enough funds to maintain public parks; therefore, it was necessary for these parks to be privatized for their upkeep and everyone’s enjoyment.
According to Benepe, “just because because there are vast inequities between parks in affluent neighborhoods and everywhere else, we shouldn’t be telling anyone who wants to give, say, $100 million to one park, that that is somehow not fair” (Swan, 2013). Thus, it seems as though the main denial of access claim that is being made by those opposed t privatization of public space is not overt or even covert discrimination, instead the claim is that went these spaces are fixed up they become unaffordable. The denial of minority access argument seems to therefore rest on the claim that minorities have less money and thus cannot afford to utilize the places once they are fixed up.
One aspect of the privatization of public space that many people may not be aware of, however, is that people do not have the same rights in the privatized public space as they would in public-public space. According to the book “Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privitization of Public Space” written by Margret Kohn, rights such as the rights to free speech differ in ways that many members of the public may not realize. In the case of Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner (1972), the United States Supreme Court ruled the right to free speech only extends to public not private property, therefore, patrons can be asked to leave or arrested for wearing certain attire, attire with certain slogans, and a number of other things for which they could not be asked to leave public property (Kohn, . However, the case of Pruneyard v. Robbins held that privately owned property which extends invitations to the public may have a limited ability to take such actions based on state law, however, privately owned parks and other public spaces still have a greater ability to deny entry and or access than do publically owned parks and spaces.
