Negotiating the Use of New York City’s Shared Public Spaces

LinDa Saphan (College of Mount Saint Vincent)

In New York City, millions of people use public spaces on a daily basis when they leave their home and work environments to seek a great variety of other experiences. Individuals’ understanding of what public space is, who should be able to access it, and how it should be used sometimes leads to conflicts as people compete for the limited availability of space. Exercisers, picnickers, dog walkers, nannies, shoppers, vendors, performers, and tourists, along with city officials, are all stakeholders who have different needs and expectations of public spaces. The rules of engagement among these stakeholders are not always clearly defined, necessitating negotiations between residents and nonresidents, buyers and sellers, and authorities to resolve tensions. By definition, public spaces are open to all and somehow the public and city officials must accommodate all users and learn to share limited space.This presentation will investigate a particular case of the use of NYC’s public spaces: Christmas tree sellers. We interviewed 54 Christmas tree sellers in various locations of Manhattan during December 2016, with follow-up in December 2017. Tree sellers are seasonal workers coming from outside of the city, many from the Quebec province of Canada. The findings uncover competing agendas of the users of public spaces and the city officials who control them. Reflecting on these findings, this presentation will address practices of power within the negotiation of public spaces by urban actors, how they interpret, use, and enforce public space in the government-owned infrastructures of NYC sidewalks. For one month, the City is no longer just a mineral environment of granite and stone, but one of vegetation that takes over. The use of the sidewalks by Christmas tree sellers shifts the urban morphology, temporarily creating a new urban space where pedestrians can look up and around instead of passing through.