Graduation Semester and Year
2021
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Planning and Public Policy
Department
Urban and Public Affairs
First Advisor
Ivonne Audirac
Abstract
Privatization has been frequently criticized for diminishing the inclusiveness of public space. This dissertation examines whether private signature parks are more exclusive than their public counterparts utilizing Lefebvre's right to the city, along with theories of public space privatization and governance. To better understand the influence of privatization on the social inclusiveness of public spaces, three publicly-accessible signature parks are deliberately selected in downtown Dallas, based on their ownership and management types: (1) publicly-owned, publicly-managed; (2) publicly-owned, privately-managed; and (3) privately-owned, privately-managed. The research methodology includes semi-structured interviews, in-situ participatory observation, and content analysis of official documents, local and social media. This dissertation proposes that any treatment of inclusiveness of a signature public space should be defined through its governance structures and institutional governance regime strategies. Hence, simple dichotomies of 'public-private' and 'inclusion-exclusion' do not encompass the complexity and diversity of experiences in the time-space-event continuum. It interrogates the argument that privatization along with securitization, commercialization, and eventization—three exclusionary strategies typically employed by many public parks governance regimes ”implies the demise of social inclusion. The findings reveal that everyday use and temporal appropriations (events) of space can vary along a carefully managed social inclusion/exclusion continuum, regardless of a parks ownership, where park users may spontaneously appropriate space or may be deftly managed by carefully programmed activities and events that transform the park into a stage. These transformations in deeply neoliberal cities like Dallas signal the rise of different kinds of public spaces and, consequently, different conceptions of the 'public' in each one. The study introduces the notion of 'curated inclusion' or 'symbolic exclusion' to explain these differentials in 'public space' experiences and simultaneous instances of 'provision' of space and 'prohibition' in space which intimate both park users' situations of being or feeling in and out of place in different contexts and moments.
Keywords
Right to the city, Privatization, Social inclusion, Governance regime, Signature parks
Disciplines
Architecture | Urban, Community and Regional Planning
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Ghaffari, Nazanin, "NEOLIBERAL PARK GOVERNANCE REGIMES AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL INCLUSION IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS SIGNATURE PARKS" (2021). Planning Dissertations. 25.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/planning_dissertations/25
Comments
Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington