The Archive and the Square: Access to Archival Records Surrounding Privatized Public Space

Abstract

Since the late twentieth century, the governance of many public spaces in U.S. cities has shifted from municipal control to a variety of public–private partnerships (PPPs). Today, parks conservancies and other PPPs drive operational decisions, including siting, management, and budgets. They function as extrastate actors, working on behalf of the state, in place of the state. Whereas many scholars have written about the effects of this change on spatial access and inclusion in public life, this article examines how the archival records practices of public space PPPs affect popular data access and, in turn, the transparency and accountability attributed to the democratic state. I propose that when extrastate agencies are not required to make their records publicly available or to persistently contribute to the state archive, as state agencies are, the absence diminishes the long-term memory-making function of the state. This dynamic lessens the ability of stakeholders to make claims or to intervene in the democratic governance of public spaces and normalizes the structures of privatization. I use the case of Pioneer Courthouse Square (PCS) in Portland, Oregon, and its adjunct conservancy, Pioneer Courthouse Square, Inc. (PCSI), to illustrate this dynamic.

自20世纪末以来, 许多美国城市公共空间的治理, 已经从市政管辖转移到各种公私合作（Public-Private Partnerships, PPP）。如今, 公园保护组织和其它PPP主导了运营决策, 包括选址、管理和预算。它们是国家体制外的执行者, 代表和代替国家去工作。许多学者都研究过这一变化对公共生活中空间接触和包容性的影响。本文探讨了公共空间PPP的档案记录行为, 如何影响公众对数据的访问、影响民主国家的透明度和问责制。我建议, 当国家体制外机构不需要像体制内部门那样公开档案记录或向国家持续提供档案时, 这种缺失会削弱国家的长期记忆功能。这种变化, 削弱了利益相关者在公共空间民主治理中的索求和干预能力, 并使私有化机制正常化。以俄勒冈州波特兰市的先锋法院广场（Pioneer Courthouse Square）及其保护组织—先锋法院广场公司（Pioneer Courthouse Square, Inc.）为例, 本文对这种变化进行了说明。

Desde finales del siglo XX, la gobernanza de numerosos espacios públicos en las ciudades americanas ha pasado del control municipal a una variedad de alianzas público-privadas (PPPs). Ahora, los entes encargados de la conservación de parques y otras PPPs orientan la adopción de decisiones operativas, que incluyen la ubicación, el manejo y los presupuestos. Funcionan como actores extraestatales, trabajando a nombre del estado, en lugar del estado. En tanto que muchos estudiosos han tratado acerca de los efectos de este cambio sobre el acceso espacial y la inclusión en la vida pública, este artículo examina el modo como las prácticas de los registros de archivo de las PPPs del espacio público afectan el acceso popular a los datos y, a su turno, afectan la transparencia y la responsabilidad atribuidas al estado democrático. Mi propuesta sugiere que cuando no se exige a los organismos extraestatales poner sus registros a disposición del público, o que contribuyan de forma persistente al archivo estatal, como lo hacen los organismos estatales, tal ausencia disminuye la función del estado de crear memoria a largo plazo. Esta dinámica reduce la habilidad de los interesados para formular reclamos, o para intervenir en la gobernanza democrática de los espacios públicos, y normaliza las estructuras de privatización. Uso el caso de Pioneer Courthouse Square (PCS), en Portland, Oregón, y su adjunta conservaduría, Pioneer Courthouse Square, Inc. (PCSI), para ilustrar esta dinámica

Key Words:

• archives
• extrastate organization
• privatization
• public space

关键词:

• 档案馆
• 国家体制外组织
• 私有化
• 公共空间。

Palabras clave:

• archivos
• espacio público
• organización extraestatal
• privatización

Acknowledgments

For including me in the 2019 American Association of Geographers panel “Working the Archives,” as well as this special issue, thanks to Monica Varsanyi and Christian Siener. For assistance in gathering data at various phases of this project, I thank Yael Kidron, research assistant; Mark Ross, public information officer at Portland Parks and Recreation; Mary Hansen, reference archivist at the City of Portland Archives and Records Center; and various staff at Pioneer Courthouse Square, Inc. For reading drafts and giving excellent feedback, thank you to Dr. Elliot Leffler, Dr. Emily Nacol, Dr. Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, and three anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1 See, for example, Gehl (2010), Klinenberg (2018), Marron (2013), and Montgomery (2015).

2 Among these are the Project for Public Spaces, the Trust for Public Land, and the Knight Foundation’s Public Space Initiative.

3 Relationships between these organizations is also significant. In 2009, a highly publicized conflict emerged in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square: the assault of local skateboarders by uncertified security officers from Pacific Patrol Security (Kamph 2010; Bernstein 2012, updated 2019). The private security firm was, in turn, contracted by the Portland Business Alliance (the Greater Portland Chamber of Commerce) to patrol a number of the city’s downtown parks through their Downtown Portland Clean and Safe District (see http://downtownportland.org/). Although outside of the direct control of PCSI, the public space PPP that runs the square, the civil suit that resulted raised questions about accountability among these organizations.

4 The first major U.S. park conservancy was the Central Park Conservancy of New York City, founded in 1980 (Rogers 1987), which has been highly influential. It was preceded by other PPP formations, such as the Privately Owned Public Space program of Manhattan (Kayden 2000).

5 The question of physical access has led to empirical spatial analyses of urban parks distribution (Talen and Anselin 1998; Talen 2000; Wolch, Wilson, and Fehrenbach 2005; Rigolon et al. 2018); studies of gatekeeping structures, such as legal mechanisms (Mitchell 2003; Staeheli and Mitchell 2007) or fees (Adiv and Wolf-Powers 2019); ethnographies of spatialized cultural forms (Low 2000); and studies of shifts in political and economic control of city spaces (Smith and Low 2006). Access is also central to models for representing publicness, such as Németh and Schmidt’s (2011) triaxal model and Varna and Tiesdell’s (2010) star model.

6 This model is not without its critics. Scholars have shown the racist patterns of park siting under this regime, as well as a hierarchical form of decision making, unamenable to citizen input (Byrne and Wolch 2009; Taylor 2010; Low and Iveson 2019).

7 Note that many in the former group are writing in the North American context, whereas in the latter many are writing from Europe.

8 This is also not Easterling’s (2014) “Extrastatecraft,” in which the author referred to “[massive] global infrastructure as the medium of polity,” but rather described institutions that are tied up in state apparatus to govern formerly state-controlled territory.

9 In the state of Oregon, nonprofit organizations also file an “annual report” with the secretary of state; however, it does not include budgetary or personnel information.

10 “The Square is not part of the Downtown BID, although the BID does contract with Pioneer Courthouse Square, Inc., to provide cleaning and security for the space” (see https://www.pps.org/article/pioneersq).

11 These members are listed on official letterhead in correspondence from PCSI to City Hall, dated 14 January 1986.

12 Extensive searches on the PCSI Web site, as well as the Web sites of the municipal archive and the City of Portland Charter and Policy Documents, yielded no current MOU regarding the exact protocols for how many of each category belong on the board, nor how they are elected or appointed, nor how citizens might try to join.

13 Other spaces with alternative funding structures in Portland include Forest Park, Washington Park, and the Rose Garden. The Portland Parks Foundation also has independent fundraising capacity.

14 I do heed Langstraat and Van Melik’s (2013) assertion that there is “a bias towards well-known primary (or ‘flagship’) urban spaces” (431) in the public space literature, to the exclusion of everyday places that are used by far more city dwellers in outlying neighborhoods (432).

15 Chapter 3.76 of the City of Portland Code and Charter outlines the laws surrounding Public Records, including public access to records. Subsection 3.76.040 outlines the Authority and Duties of the Archives and Records Management Program.

16 Some obstacles also prevented me from procuring some data from the city of Portland. First, for documents that have not already been digitized, there is a fee schedule, although it can be waived or reduced. (After I had completed my research, a 2019 court case on this matter determined that “the City [of Portland] is hereby enjoined from charging excessive fees for routine email and document searches”; Cushing 2019.) More important, the Parks Department was not able to provide some materials because they had been destroyed seven years after they had been created, on the advisement of city lawyers. Indeed, whereas some states embargo their archives for a given period, many state agencies destroy certain detailed financial records. Other materials were missing, perhaps forever, as the result of a building retrofit and an office move. That notwithstanding, I note that the individuals who worked on acquiring documents for me were very helpful and considerate, and worked closely with me to try to acquire the records.

17 Although we were able to obtain seven of these, at the time of publication, only one (2015–2016) was available on the PCSI Web site.

18 Section 9.11 states “PCS[I] will maintain a set of all financial, vendor, employee and operating records relating to the Square. At any time during the Term, the City shall have the right… to inspect and audit the books, records, invoices, deposits, canceled checks, or other financial data or transactions of PCS…” Section 9.12, Reporting, requires PCS to “provide PPR with annual reports provided to regulatory entities… Additionally, PCS will provide PPR with regular reports prepared for the Board and its committees…” (City of Portland 2008).

19 A link on the PCSI Web site at the time of publication announces that “Board meetings are open to the public and held regularly on the last Tuesday of every other month at 11:30 am.” A link then connects to an e-mail address where you can request the location (see https://www.thesquarepdx.org/management/).

20 The federal FOIA was first proposed in 1955, passed in 1966, and amended by Congress to strengthen its powers in 1974, after the Watergate Scandal (Electronic Frontier Foundation 2020).

21 The mandate of the City of Portland Archives is “making city administrative and historical records accessible to the public and City employees for research and inspection in accordance with Oregon’s public records laws” (City of Portland 2021).

22 Additionally, “the state” is spread out among agencies’ scales. In addition to the Portland municipal archive, one might find information on PCS at the archives of Multnomah County, Metro (regional government), and the state of Oregon.

23 Difficulty procuring municipal records is not unusual: Krinsky and Simonet (2017), for example, reported a great deal of secrecy regarding the internal governance and decision-making processes of the New York City Parks Department.

24 In some cases, this is explicitly mandated by the state. Ogborn (2003) offered the example that “material deposited in the British Public Record Office is routinely closed for 30 years” (13).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Naomi Adiv

NAOMI ADIV is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include administrative and budgetary contests in and through urban public spaces, and public swimming and bathing spaces in North America.