The 1961 zoning resolution, and privatisation

Chapter 3: Policy changes and an increase in Privately Owned Public Spaces

The 1961 zoning resolution, and Privatisation:

In 1961, at the same time as Jacobs providing her theory on natural surveillance, New York City introduced the 1961 zoning resolution (New York City Planning Commission, 1961), which included the ‘FAR bonus’; an incentive which allowed companies to build higher if they left some floor space for public use (figure 15), such as a plaza. Consequently, this gave rise to an increase of Privately-Owned Public Spaces (POPS) in New York City (figure 16).

Although the zoning resolution had good intentions, to increase the amount of publicly accessible space, private owners are often more particular about who can use their space and the types of activities that may take place there. Thus, hostile architecture is frequently used to remove certain groups, by ‘coding’ the space. Nemeth and Schmidt (2011, p. 21) develop this point where they argue that the reason for the increase in hostile architecture in New York is because of lack of government input on the design of POPS. Stringer (2017) highlights this when, in his audit of New York City’s ‘POPS’, he identifies that 83% of the 333 locations audited had not been inspected by the New York City Department of Buildings for at least 4 years. This audit emphasises how easy it can be for private enterprises to design and adapt their spaces with the focus on ‘security’, over inclusion and ‘publicness’, as they are seldom investigated. Consequently, although more ‘public’ spaces are available, particular types of people are often ‘filtered out’.

Whyte (1988) identifies how the use of hostile architecture in many privately owned plazas across New York City focus on the homeless population; he recognises that “people will sit where there are places to sit”, and concludes that the reason for hostile interventions, such as awkward benches (figures 1, 3, 13 and 17), or spikes (figures 2, 4 and 5), are to prevent homeless people from resting in these privately-owned spaces. This conclusion again highlights how stereotypes may influence decisions made by civic leaders, which consequently leads to hostile architecture, as seen with the addition of the walls in Bryant park as mentioned previously, or the anti-homeless spikes which caused controversy in the UK in 2012 after they were installed in an alcove of a luxury apartment building in South London (Petty, 2016).

Figure 15: A diagram showing how the ‘FAR bonus’ works Source: NYC Planning (2021a)