The commandeering of shared public spaces for marketing is part of a larger project to convert community space into marketplaces. The Basic idea is to elevate consumer obsessions over civic identity. Shopping Malls may represent the purest example of this dynmaic –a triumph of commercial control over the social messiness of Main Street.
A mall is aesthetically soothing, homogenized, and safe. Main Streets can be loud, motley and unpredictable.
Why does this matter? Because public spaces are one of the few places where strangers can meet and communicate in ways that do not involve selling or buying. It is a place where free speech - and all the civic and democratic benefits that flow from it - can flourish. Anyone can go to Main Street and speak their mind to strangers. That is not possible in most shopping malls.
Under a long line of U.S. Supreme Court cases, the first amendment does not apply to shopping malls because they are considered private, not public facilities. Now that most aspects of public life take place in the suburbs, automobiles, malls, and on television, there are almost literally no free public spaces left in which meaningful civic dialogue can occur. . .
from "Silent Theft, the private plunder of our common wealth" by David Bollier - pg 160
Posted by delpesco at March 3, 2004 10:36 AM