The nature and evolution of public space management
Recent urban policy focus on issues of sustainability, social
exclusion, economic competitiveness, place image, culture, gender, and
ethnicity, partly explains renewed global interest in the quality of public
spaces. Broadening concern with public space and its quality reflects a more
complex view of the relationship between the local physical environment and the social and
economic well-being of its inhabitants.
The key issue is whether the regime for public space
governance and management in most Western countries is still an appropriate way to
realize all the roles ascribed to those spaces.
The retreat of the state and the privatization of public
space provision and governance are key themes explored in this book. Evidence
suggests that new organizational forms have emerged and that responsibilities,
power, and resources have been redistributed within and beyond government. This
chapter discusses these new forms of public space management that have emerged
recently, using England as its focus, and dwells on their significance for the
debate on the future of such spaces.
What is
public space management?
Public space management is the set of processes and practices
that attempt to ensure that public space can fulfill all its legitimate roles,
whilst managing the impacts of those multiple functions. This is a very broad
definition, and there are clear issues here concerning who legitimizes the
different roles of public space, what is acceptable and what is not, and who
decides. The management of public space is a complex set of activities that
often goes well beyond the remit of those organizations, public or private,
formally in charge of delivering it. How regulation is conceived and adhered to,
and how it adapts to changing societal needs is a vital dimension of public
space management. Public space regulation, maintenance, and resourcing
are likely to involve a wide array of people and organizations. There is an
essence for coordinating mechanisms to ensure that the agents in charge of
those activities pull in the same direction. This need for coordination applies
equally to units within an organization, such as departments of a local
authority, as it does to different organizations.
Regulation, investment, maintenance, and coordination are the
key dimensions of management, even if they are constant, management
responsibilities change and there is no final definitive state for them. The discussion moves on now to explore how these changes are shaping the new
practices and approaches.
Public space
management, a public good?
In a capitalist economy, goods and services tend to incorporate the character of the commodity; something with value and a price traded in the marketplaces. Public space is of this type, as it exhibits the characteristics of what economists call 'public goods. Just like clean air, defense, or policing, public spaces are goods that, once produced, can be enjoyed by more than one consumer simultaneously without affecting their utility. The possibility of free consumption makes market provision of such goods unlikely as there is no incentive for it, even if demand is high. Public spaces have historically been provided and managed by philanthropy or collective organizations and the state through general taxation. In most Western countries, the codification of the roles of the state during the twentieth century led to their provision and management becoming a public service.
THE UK: THE RECENT HISTORY
In the UK, public space management has been provided through the local government's hierarchy of operational structures, and responsive to
users' needs through the same means that render all its actions accountable to
citizens, the ballot box. For most of the twentieth century, the local
single-purpose private, voluntary or charitable bodies that were so prevalent in
the Victorian period almost disappeared as public service providers.
PROFESSIONALISM OR SILO MENTALITY?
From the middle of the twentieth century, the growth in the importance of local government as part of the welfare state contributed to the
transformation of local authorities into multi-purpose organizations. Public
space as a concept tended to be limited to parks and iconic civic spaces. Even
as late as 2004, a survey conducted for the research reported in Chapter 5 showed
that the majority of English local authorities did not have an operational
definition of public space.
The majority of care for the majority of public spaces in
England over the last half century has been dealt with as part of the general
environmental management responsibility of local authorities. The approach to
managing public space, prioritizing the delivery of discrete tasks without an
overall strategy encompassing all forms of public space, lasted relatively
unquestioned until very recently.
The drivers behind current changes in public space management
The concern with the vitality and viability of town and city
centers – and the public spaces within them – is well consolidated in British
and European urban regeneration. The roles of parks and green spaces in the
quality of urban life are now widely recognized. In the UK, for example, from
the early 1980s, there was a steady decline in funding for public space maintenance.
GOVERNMENT TO GOVERNANCE
Recent trends in public space management can be situated
within the political, cultural, and institutional context of contemporary urban
governance. Globalization, affluence, and fragmentation of social life have
challenged hierarchical, 'command, and control forms of government. In turn, this
has led to the rethinking of public sector cultures, structures, and procedures.
Recent trends in the management of public spaces are part of the process
whereby 'government' is being replaced by 'governance' – a focus on the process
of governing and on the multiple state-society interactions that constitute it.
An increasing public policy focus on problems that seem intractable, persistent, and not amenable to simple solutions such as environmental quality, social
exclusion, and a sense of safety has strengthened the case for collaborative forms of
making, managing, and delivering policy.
RE-DISTRIBUTING POWER
An emphasis on cost-effectiveness, competition among
providers, and consumers' choice have underpinned a retreat of government from
service provision. For public services in the UK, this has meant a substantial
redefinition of how they should be funded and delivered. This is at the core of
the notion of the 'enabling' local authority.
Public sector and local government reforms in the 1980s and
1990s led to a multiplication of agencies with a stake in the delivery of public
services. Managing public space might now involve a plethora of privatized
public sector bodies, utility providers, local authority departments,
semi-public delivery agencies, and so forth, all responsible for parts of the
space.
The management models
Three emerging models of public space management - i.e. three
different ways of addressing the issues of coordination, regulation,
maintenance, and investment. One involves a modified version of the current
framework of public provision of public-space services, with public agencies
playing the roles of coordinators, regulators, maintainers, and funders. The second involves partial or complete delegation of those roles to private-sector
organizations through contracts and reciprocal agreements. The third is similar to the second, but roles are devolved to voluntary and
community-sector organizations as part of a move to reduce the distance between
users and providers of services.
The state-centered model
The first model of public space management is based on the
state-centered provision of public services by public sector institutions, with
little or no external input from the private sector. Its key characteristics
are hierarchical structures of planning and delivery; clear vertical lines of
accountability to policymakers and downwards to service users; a
public-service ethos; and a separation between service and use.
The traditional model of public sector management and
delivery in the UK aims to maintain the positive elements of
state-controlled public service delivery with its public-service ethos and
democratic system. The main strength of this model is that it is based on
visible and widely acceptable lines of accountability, as service planning and
delivery are directly subject to established mechanisms of elected local
democracy.
COORDINATION
This is still, by far, the dominant management model
throughout the world requiring that efforts to tackle the issues of
bureaucratic rigidity, fragmentation, excessive specialization, lack of responsiveness, insensitivity to
context, and so forth are made within a public-sector service framework. This
can mean the creation of clear lines of management and responsibility for public
space services at the local authority level, or formal agreements linking national
and regional agencies to the service delivery strategies of local authority
departments. 'Taskforces' and working groups that can oversee and harmonize the
actions of different agencies are other common ways of securing multi-agency
coordination in public space management.
An essential issue for coordination is how the different
aspirations, demands, and actions of users are factored into public space
management. The normal participation channels of parliamentary democracy are
essential as public space users can express their views. It is likely to be a
challenge in a complex multi-level, multi-agency institutional context.
REGULATION
A regulatory framework for public space has two sides - one
is legislation and the other is the regulation of relationships between public space service providers. The fragmentation, restructuring, and withdrawal
of the state have weakened traditional command-and-control hierarchical
structures. New forms have emerged which rely less on hierarchical lines of command
and more on performance management.
MAINTENANCE
Maintenance routines are primarily technical and budgetary
exercises, confirmed by political sanctioning in policy instruments and public
consultation to secure support when necessary. This is public space management in the narrowest sense, typically conducted by specialized departments of local
government and other agencies. Key to the maintenance dimension are mechanisms
that secure the involvement of policymakers and users in designing maintenance
routines.
INVESTMENT
In the state-centered model, public space is primarily about
capturing an appropriate slice of public-sector budgets for public space
services. As resources come exclusively from within public sector service
budgets, increases in the quantity or quality of public space services are
linked to one of two processes. On the other hand, those increases can be the
result of rationalization, for example through better use of existing human,
technical and financial resources.
Devolved models
'Devolved' models suggest the transfer of responsibilities
for the provision and management of public space away from the state and towards
other social agents. They also suggest a redefinition of what public space is
or should be, and how its public character should be kept. Devolved models
imply a definition of property rights over public space management, separate
from the issue of ownership of such space.
The market-centered model
The devolved model involves the transfer of management
responsibilities over public spaces, whether publicly or privately owned, to
private entities. This is done either through straightforward service delivery
contracts or as part of a development agreement. The contracting out of street
cleaning or park maintenance services, common in the UK, are examples of the
former. In the US, the public-private spaces between the government and private
developers are an example of the latter.
In the private sector, even when not imposed by planning and
other urban policy regulations, such collaborative relations can be justified
by the characteristics of public space as commodities from which profit can be
made. For the public sector, they represent a way to fund public services by
means other than the public purse. The rationale here is the same one
underpinning the development of public-private partnerships.
Public space services are increasingly being provided by
private companies as a way of buying-in expertise and lowering fixed
operational costs. Service delivery through private contractors is now common in
a range of services such as street cleaning and graffiti removal. Increasingly
it involves the total design and delivery of services in particular areas or
even the private provision of design guidelines and service standards for
public spaces.
COORDINATION
The new model of public space management and its constituent
services is dominated by contractual relationships, with important implications
for the key dimensions of coordination, regulation, maintenance, and investment.
Hierarchical structures might secure adherence to commonly-agreed practices and
objectives among public sector organizations, but clear and detailed
specifications of outputs and outcomes are required in the case of multi-sector
relationships.
In the state-centered model, there is no separation in
principle between the delivery of public space services and their use, as many
of those managing public space on behalf of a local authority or other public
body might also be users of the spaces. Their aspirations, demands, and actions as
public space users will be factored into public space management through their
involvement in partnership boards, forums, panels, and so forth.
REGULATION
The regulation dimension of public space management in this
model typically depends on legislation and powers of enforcement vested in
public bodies. Increasingly, however, private regulation of pseudo-public space
has caused tensions that are reflected in the literature. These concern the
potentially discriminative practice of private regulation and enforcement, but
also the lack of a public-interest motivation in how authority over space is
wielded.
MAINTENANCE
Contracts for public space maintenance tend to be very
different from the state-centered model in that they are between the client and
contractor. The client, normally a local authority, will define the basic elements of routines such as frequency of services, coverage, and so on
which will be specified in the contract, and it will be the contractor who
implements them.
INVESTMENT
On the last of the four key dimensions, investment, there are
significant differences compared to the state-centered model. One of the main
elements of the rationale for the privatization of service provision is precisely
the ability to draw resources from outside the public sector. Resourcing
decisions will imply determining whether or not private money and expertise are
likely to be more effective at delivering a public space service.
The community-centered model
The third model involves the devolution of responsibility for the
provision and management of public spaces to community organizations. These
organizations do not exist to provide public space services for a fee or to
maximize economic returns on investment. Instead, they have a direct interest
in the quality of the public spaces and related services primarily for their use value.
This model is a rediscovery and extension of the
long-established tradition of involvement of charities and the voluntary sector in welfare delivery, which pre-dates state provision and was never fully replaced
by it. Co-production (i.e. user engagement in the provision of public services)
has been seen as the most effective way to tackle diversified and complex
demands brought forth by the increase in wealth and lifestyles.
In the UK, devolved service provision through community and
voluntary sector organizations has also tended to take a contracts-dominated
form. Well-defined public space management contracts with voluntary organizations exist side-by-side with much less formal agreements with ad-hoc resident groups. More recently, there have been a few examples of
role changes in contractual relationships.
COORDINATION
Coordinating the inputs from public space users into
management is not an issue in this model, as it is already implied in the
involvement of users in management tasks. However, this involvement is mediated
by the way voluntary and community organizations work, and it depends on how
representative they are of their own constituencies.
REGULATION
Amore established voluntary-sector organization delivering
public space management services in a variety of locations, with assets to back
their assets will react differently to contractual sanctions compared to a small, local friends group, which might simply dissolve under pressure.
Performance measurement systems setting clear targets for public space
management are important to security standards in a devolved approach but less
useful as an enforcement tool.
MAINTENANCE
In the new model of public space management, the key issues
are about setting standards that are compatible with the capacity of the local
authority or community organization to deliver them. This may involve the
provision of technical and institutional support to those organizations by the
public sector. Locally defined standards and maintenance routines are more
likely to reflect local aspirations and be more responsive to the local context.
INVESTMENT
In this model, public space resourcing is not primarily about
securing a slice of the public sector budget for public space management.
Instead, it is about identifying who are the social actors with a stake in the
fortunes of public space and what resources they can add to its management.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter
three models of managing public space have been put forward which have emerged
as a response to perceived problems of the more traditional approach.
The next
chapters will show how public space management strategies use elements of these
different models to tackle specific challenges and contexts, sometimes
harmoniously, sometimes with contradictions.
Both theory
and practice approaches centered on state action, private sector effort, or direct community participation, can all provide solutions to particular public
space challenges in the particular contexts in which they are applied.
These models
have their own intrinsic advantages, from the clear accountability or the public
interest ethos of the state-centered model; to the ability to draw resources from
a much wider constituency and more sensitivity and responsiveness to changes in demand in the market-centered model; to the sensitivity to user needs and the commitment of the community-centered approach.
They also have
their own potential disadvantages too, from the potential bureaucracy and
insensitivity of the state-centered model to the very real risk of exclusion and
commodification of the market-led approach, to the fragmentation, lack of
strategic perspective, and inequality of a community-centered model.
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