Lorraine O'Connell- Activity #3 public vs. private

Lorraine O’Connell
Activity # 3 -Private Versus Public

I walked from Broadway to Greenwich St. in Tribeca to Canal Street. I originally went to go over to Pace University to visit a friend but thought I might as well explore the place. Tribeca is an amazing place full of a hipster kind of feel and was extremely close to SoHo so that feel was added into the area. Being in that area I expected to see the same kind of feel that we have around Hunter College since it was a college area of Pace University and also Borough of Manhattan Community College. But it took on a different look when I had to explore the area in the sense of private versus public. It was a lot of walking but passed by very fast. I went on Wednesday which was a very nice day to go. I loved the feel of the area, it was very old fashioned and seemed to high class for it to be still existent. There were cobblestone streets and what seemed to be really expensive over priced housing. But Jane Jacobs would appreciate the fact that there were sidewalks and that they were full of bustling people going about on their normal routines., or exploring as I was.
The one thing I loved most about the area was that there weren’t that many chain places. A lot of the pharmacies and restaurants were privately owned. The normal chain stores you’d see otherwise in Manhattan weren’t there but don’t get me wrong there were a few chains but for the most part they were privately owned. The privately owned parts of Tribeca was probably everything, all the stores were privately owned and some stores even required for me to buzz or ring a bell to be allowed in which surprised and also turned me off from wanting to go in. Some places seemed to be too good to enter in. All the stores were little boutiques or thrift shops or stores not normally seen in New York City and were privately owned. The only thing that seemed public in the area were the sidewalks until we got to Canal Street were the streets were swarmed with vendors so the streets now became an extension of the shops leaving us with no private space.
The only thing that could have possibly been a private area would’ve been a park we walked that was gated. I didn’t attempt to enter since no one was in it and there was a gate surrounding it so I assumed it was a park that belonged to an apartment building nearby.
The city is swarmed with hundreds and hundreds of streets, stores, parks and so much more but nothing seems to be a public area anymore. Things that were once a public area for people to socialize and become a community but instead our city has become a place of commerce and capitalism and that is all instead of a place of gathering and coming together. I determined what was public and what was private by just looking at it. If it seemed like anyone was allowed to be there then I considered it public but I saw very little of these places except for the few stores. Then the private areas was obviously everything else which was a little disappointing because I would hope that there were places everywhere in the city where any person could go just because they wanted to but I guess not.
Overall I had a lot of fun with the project and got me thinking about Jan Jacobs and helped me visualize what she meant by everything she said about sidewalks and its impact on a neighborhood. This also helped me understand or visualize the public versus private argument.