Photo by Ihor Dvoretskyi on Unsplash
Democracies cannot flourish without widely shared public spaces—both real and imagined. Public spaces include physical places—like the halls of Congress and public streets, sidewalks, and parks. They also include public policies, services, and programs, such as Social Security, welfare, education, housing, police, fire, and transportation. Public spaces are further comprised of public ideas and discourse, meaning debates about all aspects of public life that are shared in the public square.
Formally, the public square is an open space that is designed for community gatherings, social activities and public events—like city plazas, town greens, street corners, and market squares. More broadly, it includes any place where a story is shared about public institutions and public life, such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, theaters, books, websites, blogs, pamphlets, and songs.
Safe, inclusive, and adequately funded public spaces transform society, help individuals, groups, and communities thrive, and strengthen democracy. They create political, social, cultural, and economic capital and contribute to the efficiency, effectiveness, and fairness of government policies and programs by providing a place to meet neighbors, spend time with family and friends, debate public issues, and enjoy nature, sports, and the arts.
Too often, though, public spaces have been physically and rhetorically constructed in ways that divide us and threaten democracy. These “divide and conquer” strategies benefit the few at the expense of the many and reduce the ability of citizens to act together to promote the common weal—the well-being common to all of us.
Public spaces have also increasingly been disparaged, underfunded, or outright replaced by privately-owned ones. Public and private spaces may certainly perform some of the same functions, but they are not interchangeable. The prime example is the implicit bargain between policy makers, civic groups, and business and labor leaders to primarily use private markets, supported by public resources, to reconstruct America’s economy after World War II and deliver important social democratic goals—like political freedom, democratic participation, social integration, and socioeconomic equality.
Historian Lizbeth Cohen calls this political, social, and economic contract the “Consumer’s Republic.” It is still being endorsed today despite evidence that it has harmed us as a democratic society. For instance, the promotion of shopping malls as the new “civic centers” of suburban towns in the 1950s was actually detrimental for civil rights and liberties; their owners’ private legal status permits them to restrict the free speech and assembly that are allowed, but mostly taken for granted, in the public spaces located outside “main street” stores and businesses—like parks, streets, and sidewalks. Moreover, the movement away from small towns and urban centers contributed to socioeconomic inequality and political unrest. Businesses closed once fewer people were shopping on Main Street and both private and public spaces became less safe and accessible.
The reasons for the resulting political, social, and economic decay are complex. When businesses flee one area (small towns and cities) and relocate to another (suburbs), it increases unemployment and underemployment and encourages those with the most resources to leave for greener pastures. Their exit reduces tax revenues and impedes the ability of state and local governments to deal with issues like rising poverty, crime, and homelessness. Most state and local governments are required to balance their budgets, either by law or in their constitutions. They cannot temporarily run deficits during economic recessions in order to provide more public goods and services.
Rising crime is not solely the outcome of increased unemployment and poverty though. Shuttered stores and buildings restrict movement through the community and there are fewer people serving as an informal source of social control. More simply stated, people are less likely to commit a crime when other people are watching (“eyes on the street”), but concerns about public safety foster social distrust and discourage free movement and socialization.
State and local governments have two options:
· Raise taxes to fund more formal means of social control, such as expanding the police force or investing in more electronic surveillance; and/or
· Transfer public funds away from programs that help individuals, businesses, and the community—like economic development, public health, and social welfare programs—and invest them in programs that police them.
Both solutions are problematic; they often lead to infringements on civil rights and liberties and escalate the flight of people and businesses to other communities, states, and overseas.
The federal government, with its larger tax base and ability to run deficits, could step in to promote individual rights, foster economic prosperity, reduce socioeconomic inequality, and protect individuals and society from the risks and insecurities associated with unregulated capitalism. This was the case with the New Deal and Great Society programs of Democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. The collapse of the New Deal liberal consensus, beginning with the election of Republican President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, fractured the coalition that had given the Democratic Party a governing majority to expand public goods and create new social welfare programs—like unemployment insurance, Social Security, health care, and food stamps. Since then, Republicans have worked with so-called “New (conservative) Democrats” to replace modern liberalism with neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism views these policies and programs as disincentives to work, save, and invest. Rather than staying out of the economy, it supports using the government to actively promote capitalism globally and at home. Examples include free trade agreements, providing businesses and (largely) upper-income individuals with tax breaks to incentivize economic investment, deregulating the private sector, and privatizing the public sector. Privatization involves transferring publicly owned resources—like public lands, hospitals, housing, schools, and prisons—to the private sector and/or paying privately controlled entities to offer goods and services that had previously been provided by the government, like education and public safety.
Neoliberalism’s theory of change is that the prosperity from a dynamic private market will trickle down and avert the need for social welfare and criminal justice programs, but research shows that a rising tide did not lift all boats. Instead, neoliberalism reduced democratic performance by fostering uneven economic development, increasing crime and socioeconomic inequality, stoking political and economic unrest, and reducing social trust, institutional trust, and social cohesion (see here, here, and here).
· Social trust is our belief in the honesty, integrity, and reliability of others.
· Institutional trust conveys our faith in democratic political, social, and economic institutions.
· Social cohesion arises when individuals are bonded together into social groups.
Social cohesion may actually enable a powerful minority to use its social, political, and economic capital to dominate institutions, act against the will of the majority, and/or exclude or infringe on the rights of others by creating feelings of “us versus them.” Yet, when tempered by strong democratic institutions and high levels of social and institutional trust, it too improves democratic performance by creating a sense of shared fate among citizens, encouraging citizens to work together to achieve common ends, and improving the efficiency, effectiveness, and fairness of public goods and services.
Democracies thrive when people opt in for the common good. That includes using individual and collective voice to demand public spaces that serve the majority of Americans—not just the most well-off in society. In the upcoming posts, I will discuss how we can reimagine public spaces to improve democratic participation; develop a more egalitarian society; foster a sense of belonging and shared fate; and promote healthy and thriving individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities.
I hope that you will join me and discuss your ideas too. We are stronger when we work together.
In solidarity,
Jody Longo Schmid
* A longer version of this post was first published here.