Community or commodity?

Increasingly our "public spaces" become geared toward the facilitating the latter.

Are parkettes sensible for a state highway such as St. Claude Avenue? Regarding pre-existing community support, one local architectural historian, commenting anonymously so as not to complicate workplace relationships, observed: “It’s interesting that Candy Chang has produced multiple venues for people to voice their wants and needs for their neighborhoods and yet chooses to ignore what she herself has manufactured. Neighborland and the ‘I Wish This Was’ installations have been described as tools to be used ‘so the future of our communities better reflects our desires today.’ But is there any desire for parkettes in our neighborhoods? A search of Neighborland came up with zero matches for parkettes. If the website is the supposed voice of the people, then haven’t we already spoken?”

Other critics have questioned whether parkettes are truly public or will long remain so. They are intended to be maintained by municipal park services, in partnership with departments of streets and public works. But as already overstretched budgets shrink further, cities have tended to hand them over to private businesses, such as restaurants and cafes that want outdoor seating. Thus does commerce colonize what was intended to be public space, a recurrent theme reflected in many of Civic Center’s ventures.

Because one artist/activist/whatever has a specific desire to see St. Claude to look more like San Francisco, we're setting ourselves up for a new round of Mr. Peanut Parks.  Except these will be right out in everybody's way.

Update: Uh oh looks like The Lens made the story go poof for some reason. Can't wait to see what that's about.

Upperdate: It's back up now with a retraction/correction appended.  Looks like the author was confused about which people or entities were doing what.  But, in my reading of all this, the core point about the parkettes still stands.  Public grant funds amenities of questionable aesthetic value which are likely to be used more or less as private property over the long term. Seems like a bad idea no matter who is responsible.