COMMONspace

What can you do in a privately-owned public space? Are they public parks or more like private gardens? Rebar created the project Commonspace, a year long exploration of San Francisco’s Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) in 2006, supported by a grant from Southern Exposure. In collaboration with Snap Out of It we created a series of happenings and urban interventions in the POPS intended to explore the social codes that govern behavior. The interventions ranged from interactive public “paraformances” to kite flying from rooftops,  to “Nappening” a free, quiet, guided napping space in the middle of San Francisco’s business district.

Over the year long project, we learned that while public parks have a publicly-displayed parks code that governs do’s and dont’s, POPS have no such explicit guidelines. The San Francisco Planning code outlined basic design and operating parameters; however, in practice; building owners, tenants, and often the security guards present in the space on a particular day are left to determine what type of behavior is permissible. Having been asked to leave several times from one particular space, we returned with volunteer lawyers from the ACLU who informed the security guards and police that we were simply exerting our constitutional rights to assemble in public space.

Following the year long project, we were asked to participate in a committee organized by SPUR to come up with new guidelines for how SF POPS should be designed and governed. The committee's recommendations were incorporated into an update of the San Francisco Planning code.

Collaborators

Matthew Passmore, Blaine Merker (Rebar), Snap Out of It (SOOI), Jane McGonigal and Ian Bogost, SOEX, SPUR