For the latest info on upcoming Paraformances, call the REBAR hotline:

1-877-YO-REBAR (877-967-3227)

Project introduction

San Francisco’s privately-owned public open spaces ("POPOS") have multiplied in the last twenty years, and as major new development is poised to begin downtown, they promise to become even more common. Taking the form of courtyards, plazas, rooftop gardens, and corporate atriums, fourteen POPOS have been created since 1985. San Francisco’s Downtown Plan enabled developers to build high density commercial development in return for providing spaces that were to be "open to the public" during certain hours and provide amenities such as restrooms, shade, and protection from the sun and wind.

However, what appears to be win-win for developers, citizens, and open space advocates masks a deeper question: just how "public" are these spaces? All are under heavy surveillance; some indicate this with signage, but many do not. Unlike traditional public spaces, where surveillance efforts routinely spark a lively debate regarding the security concerns of the state, constitutional rights, and civil liberty interests, surveillance in these sites goes without question. In San Francisco’s POPOS, the debate appears to be wholly lacking. To what extent, then, should a public space under the unblinking eye of private ownership be called "public" at all?

To explore these questions, REBAR initiated the COMMONspace project. Starting in May 2006, REBAR set out to map, document and probe the explicit and unspoken rules of San Francisco’s POPOS. First, REBAR gathered vital data on the fourteen sites and created a web-based forum for publishing field reports from anyone visiting the sites. Next, in partnership with performance arts group Snap Out of It, REBAR will activate the fourteen POPOS with a series of "paraformances": performance actions inspired by the field reports and designed to probe the spaces’ implicit social codes. The paraformance--an intentional reframing of reality--often begins subtly, as a playful, "plausibly deniable" action by a single individual, and can culminate in full scale, "flash mob"-style occupations that engage the participation of their accidental audiences.

Why Paraformance?

Good public spaces are the physical expression of urban culture at its most generous, cosmopolitan and tolerant. Public spaces presuppose contact -- some friction, even -- between strangers, but from this jostling and grit spring the creativity and thrill of urban life. It's in public spaces we learn behavior from others, where we observe new styles and are exposed to new ideas. Arguably, if there is any space where reality is in flux, it is public space.

In the urban environment where behaviors outside a narrow norm are increasingly met with the response "no, because...", paraformance responds with "yes, and...". Despite trends toward alienation, suppression and paranoia, paraformance pro-actively nurtures the idea of a Benevolent Conspiracy. This Benevolent Conspiracy has the effect of spreading the opposite of paranoia (sometimes called "pronoia") -- a perception paradigm where one suspects that there are forces in society (and nature itself) that are wholly concerned with and committed to our happiness and well-being.

In addition, paraformance is an experimental act that can help us understand the nature of the spaces -- physical and psychological -- in which paraformances take place. Just as measuring any system often will, in turn, alter that system, the changes in a space brought about by paraformances teach about the environments we inhabit.

Further Reading

San Francisco's 1985 Downtown Plan
First envisioned the creation of POPOS in San Francisco.

Kayden, Jerold. Privately owned public open space: The New York City Experience. [Amazon] [Author's web site]
An exhaustive inventory of NYC's POPOS, which preceded San Francisco's by about 20 years.

Legal Info

San Francisco's POPOS are created under the provision of Section 138 of the city's Zoning Ordinance.

The particular legal status of POPOS is, as yet, apparently undetermined. What rights are protected there and how behaviors may be regulated, is not elucidated by the any of the city's municipal codes. Although they are legally required to be labeled "open to the public", it is not certain whether POPOS have the similar protection of rights as traditional public space.

Free Speech
For the purposes of free speech analysis, it is not at all clear whether POPOS should be considered "public" or "private" spaces.

If the spaces are truly "public" then members of the general public would have the entire range of protections guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, including the free speech protections of the First Amendment. And even if the POPOS are considered private space, speech may be protected by a more broadly-defined right articulated under the relevant state constitution. In California, for example, free speech rights have been extended to privately-owned spaces.

In Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins (447 U.S. 74 (1980)), a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court upheld a California Supreme Court decision that allowed individuals to collect petition signatures on the premises of a privately-owned shopping center. In granting mall visitors a constitutional right to free speech that outweighs the private-property interests of mall owners, the California Supreme Court took the position that "all private property is held subject to the power of government to regulate its use for the public welfare."

In upholding the California decision, the U.S. Supreme Court noted that State constitutions could confer broader free speech protections than those afforded under the U.S. Constitution. Thus, though there is apparently no *federal* constitutional free speech protection on private property, state constitutions may be interpreted to extend *state* constitutional protections to such speech.

Since the Court's decision in Pruneyard, few states have recognized any state constitutional right to free expression on private property. Though free speech protections may extend to private property in California, this debate continues, and has been played out differently in various states.

Surveillance
Under traditional free speech analysis, placing a public place under surveillance by video cameras would engender a lively debate to determine the proper balance between civil liberties and constitutional protections (e.g., whether protected speech is "chilled" by the presence of surveillance cameras) on the one hand, and the security interests of the state (e.g., whether there is exists a compelling state interest sufficient to curtail free speech rights) on the other.

In the fourteen POPOS we have identified, all are uniformly under heavy surveillance. And for all of them, this debate seems to have either been either privatized or swept out of the realm of public discourse altogether.

To what extent, then, can these spaces be considered legally "public"?

Project Credits

COMMONspace is a project-based collaboration involving members of Snap Out of It and REBAR. As the project unfolds, this section will be updated with additional project credits.

According to Zoning Code Section 238, POPOS must display a plaque indicating their public nature. This one is from 55 Second Street.

Types of POPOS vary widely. Some are indoors, accessible only by walking past a security desk, while others are part of the streetscape.