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

I am so pleased to have published my latest academic article in the Professional Geographer: The Archive and the Square: Access to Archival Records Surrounding Privatized Public Space

There are many mechanisms for privatizing urban public space; one of the most common in North America and Europe is public-private partnerships (PPPs). In this article, I examine how one of the effects of PPPs is restricted access to the records of the private organization, and lack of inclusion of those records in the state archive.

If you really want to take a deep dive into what defines public space as public, based on procedural questions of access, this is an article for you. I used the case of Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, and the private non-profit organization that runs it (Pioneer Courthouse Square, Inc. or the Square), to demonstrate how these limits on access to records can affect a researcher (me) or other people or organizations that would like to know how these kinds of organizations make decisions around programming, personnel and budget, under the auspices of urban public space.

Let me know if you hit a paywall: naomi.adiv@utoronto.ca