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Indybay Feature
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project Takes on Public Space - Loss of the Commons
San Francisco--The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP) is releasing a new story map detailing the encroachment of public space by private forces as San Francisco increasingly gentrifies: http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/publicspace.html
Upon a backdrop of San Francisco's commons, including streets, parks, rec centers, POPOS (privately owned public space), public schools, and libraries, the AEMP has detailed 21 stories across the city exhibiting the increased privatization, policing, and reduction of the commons: http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/publicspace.html. From the "Dropbox Dude" incident at Mission Playground to the takeover of public bus stops and parking meters by private tech companies, and from the increased policing of the 16th Street BART plaza to the condoization of Daggett Street, this map offers multiple examples of gentrification's impacts on public space. Not only are residents being forced out of their homes through evictions and unpayable rent increases, but they are further being squeezed out of common spaces across the city.
Like many cities across the country, San Francisco is undergoing a dramatic transformation driven by private interests. The logic of privatization has crept into city planning strategies and accelerated the erosion of public space. From parks and plazas to streets and sidewalks, the transition from public to private management and ownership envelops us, threatening our freedom of movement, freedom of expression, and freedom of recreation in natural spaces.
Public spaces have long been a refuge for those without stable homes. They have also long served as places to organize and build community. As the city reaches a heightened stage of neoliberalization, and as the public sector increasingly partners with private interests, we are witness to an era in which public spaces corrode at an alarming rate. The 21 stories on this map do not detail every example of this phenomenon across the city, but they do illuminate a number of mechanisms at play in expropriating the commons from the public vis-a-vis the collaboration of private and public sectors.
Like many cities across the country, San Francisco is undergoing a dramatic transformation driven by private interests. The logic of privatization has crept into city planning strategies and accelerated the erosion of public space. From parks and plazas to streets and sidewalks, the transition from public to private management and ownership envelops us, threatening our freedom of movement, freedom of expression, and freedom of recreation in natural spaces.
Public spaces have long been a refuge for those without stable homes. They have also long served as places to organize and build community. As the city reaches a heightened stage of neoliberalization, and as the public sector increasingly partners with private interests, we are witness to an era in which public spaces corrode at an alarming rate. The 21 stories on this map do not detail every example of this phenomenon across the city, but they do illuminate a number of mechanisms at play in expropriating the commons from the public vis-a-vis the collaboration of private and public sectors.
For more information:
http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/...
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How lovely that the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project can interrupt its busy schedule of offering condolences on the death of the repugnant Google housing criminal Jack Halprin to supply yet another barrage of harmless and demoralizing statistics. For this information to have a material impact on the problem it describes, this information would have to imply some kind of immediate, real world action.
The most outstanding feature of the galloping demographic ruin of San Francisco is not that it is taking place, but that it is happening without any credible real world resistance...
1. The source of the housing, gentrification and displacement problem, both in San Francisco and in the Bay Area at large, is the prevailing economic climate.
The only way to have a positive impact on this problem is to damage the prevailing economic climate. Today´s prevalent economic climate can be attacked and damaged.
2. Much of the power of the market is in the psyche of the believer. The way to damage the prevailing economic climate is to engage in actions that will undermine and degrade investor confidence. These people are used to getting their way. They are not accustomed to resistance. They will scare easy.
3. Convenience is the paramount aspiration of today´s US bourgeois conformists. If it is repeatedly driven home to bourgeois conformists that they are going to be ceaselessly inconvenienced when they shop, party and move into working class neighborhoods, they will go away and seek convenience elsewhere.
None of this is quantum mechanics. Why is there no effort in the Bay Area to engage in the kind of bare-knuckle direct action tactics that can define the problem in class terms, and establish a dynamic that will do an end run around the political process, elected officials and their hapless liberal camp followers?
The most outstanding feature of the galloping demographic ruin of San Francisco is not that it is taking place, but that it is happening without any credible real world resistance...
1. The source of the housing, gentrification and displacement problem, both in San Francisco and in the Bay Area at large, is the prevailing economic climate.
The only way to have a positive impact on this problem is to damage the prevailing economic climate. Today´s prevalent economic climate can be attacked and damaged.
2. Much of the power of the market is in the psyche of the believer. The way to damage the prevailing economic climate is to engage in actions that will undermine and degrade investor confidence. These people are used to getting their way. They are not accustomed to resistance. They will scare easy.
3. Convenience is the paramount aspiration of today´s US bourgeois conformists. If it is repeatedly driven home to bourgeois conformists that they are going to be ceaselessly inconvenienced when they shop, party and move into working class neighborhoods, they will go away and seek convenience elsewhere.
None of this is quantum mechanics. Why is there no effort in the Bay Area to engage in the kind of bare-knuckle direct action tactics that can define the problem in class terms, and establish a dynamic that will do an end run around the political process, elected officials and their hapless liberal camp followers?
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