Faux public spaces reduce visitors to consumers or threats

Evidence

Because it interfaces between the theme park and the actual city, CityWalk exists somewhere in between, almost like a movie set, where visitors can consume the supposed diversity of an urban environment while enjoying a feeling of safety that results from its actual homogeneity. In an essay about such spaces, Eric Holding and Sarah Chaplin call CityWalk “a ‘scripted space’ par excellence, that is, a space which excludes, directs, supervises, constructs, and orchestrates use.” Anyone who has ever tried any funny business in a faux public space knows that such spaces do not just script actions, they police them. In a public space, ideally, you are a citizen with agency; in a faux public space, you are either a consumer or a threat to the design of the place. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 80

Categorization

• DEFINE: Contrast of citizen-with-agency vs consumer-or-threat is the key opposition empowering the ‘not withdrawal’ defense.
• ADDENDUM: Mirrors ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ structure: ostensibly diverse surface policing an actual homogeneity — same dynamic as moral panics over dress.
• XREF: connects to: Place-specific haunting opposes the placeless corporate ‘third place’ — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2430; High-quality exhibits and a guest-welcome feeling curb vandalism better than barriers do — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 352; Public green space doubles as political space threatened by privatization. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 1136 (+1 more)