The Emergence of Private Cities in America

Gerald Frug
1999 Kritische Justiz  
Die Privatisierung der Städte zeigt sich insbesondere an der Autonomisierung der Vororte gegenüber den Stadtzentren sowie der Gründung von mehr oder weniger exklusiven, privatrechtlich organisierten »communities« innerhalb und außerhalb der Städte. Frug kritisiert die rechtlichen Voraussetzungen und die psychologischen, soziologischen und politischen Folgen der Kommodifizierung des Stadtlebens und der Verdrängung des Aktivbürgers durch den Konsumenten. Die Red. I suspect that most people, when
more » ... hey hear the word city, think of a public place. By public I mean a place that is diverse and open -open to anyone who decides to move there. Public cities are full of different types of people, and the experience of living in them has therefore involved learning how to interact with whoever else is in town. Traditional cities, in other words, are examples of what I call a fortuitous association: a group of people within which you happen to find yourse!f -a group that you have to learn to get along with whether you like it or not. I use the term fortuitous association in order to make a contrast with a voluntary association -a group of chosen friends and acquaintances, like a club or achat group. Learning how to live in a fortuitous association is a very different experience than learning how to get along with a few chosen people -the people that make one fee! comfortable, the people one likes, the people one calls fri ends . Cities have long pro mo ted this alternative vision of collective life. To be sure, it is important not to overstate the kind of relationship with strangers that city residents have . I am not referring here to the romantic not ion often associated with the word community. Cities have not required anyone to bond with strangers; they have not necessitated the generation of feelings of connection or affection. They have required no more than learning how to be comfortable in a world of unfamiliar strangers -how to survive in a world of difference. Cities have traditionally taught this lesson; indeed, it seems to me, they have been the primary place where it could be learned. This public conception of cities is very much under attack in the Uni ted States. Ir may be under attack in Europe as weil. I hope that you will tell me after this talk whether it iso What I would like to do today is to describe the process by which public cities in America have begun to be replaced by private cities. This process has had a long history, but much of the development has taken place in the last fifty years. A good deal of it has taken place in the last decade. The first step was suburbanization.
doi:10.5771/0023-4834-1999-4-578 fatcat:5vjbrr33azg2dglhmay5cm67h4