Shopping in the Public Realm: A Law of Place
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2010.00513.x |
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 37, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2010
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 412±41
Shopping in the Public Realm: A Law of Place
Antonia Layard*
Through a case study based in Bristol, this article explores how the `law
of place' has transformed multiple heterogeneous city centre spaces
into a single homogeneous and commodified privately owned retail site.
Drawing on de Certeau, Lefebvre, and humanistic geographers
including Tuan, the article explores how law facilitates spatial and
temporal enclosure through conventional understandings of private
property, relying on techniques of masterplanning, compulsory
purchase, and stopping up highways. It suggests that the law of place
draws on binary spatial and conceptual distinctions to apparently
separate places from spaces, applying different legal rules either side of
an often invisible boundary line. The article questions this legally
facilitated spatial and conceptual enclosure, particularly as it restricts
spatial practices within the public realm. It concludes by rejecting an
urban `right to roam' as insufficiently transformative, calling for a
broader interpretation of Lefebvre's `right to the city' instead.
`The measure of a city's greatness is to be found in the quality of its public
spaces, its parks and squares.' John Ruskin
In September 2008, David Mowatt, a Quaker, was handing out leaflets in a
newly developed retail area in Bristol known as Quakers Friars inviting
people to attend a debate between the manager of this new retail
development and a Quaker economist advocating alternative models of
412
ß2010 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2010 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*Cardiff Law School, Law Building, Museum Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3AX,
Wales
layarda@cardiff.ac.uk
Iamgreatly indebted to comments on an earlier version of this paper from Jo Hunt, Bob
Lee, and Anne Bottomley as well as two anonymous referees and to discussions with the
participants in the Law and Locality Stream at the Socio-Legal Studies Association
Conference in Bristol 2010. I would also like to thank my former colleagues at the
Bartlett School of Planning, UCL for teaching me so much about planning, regeneration,
and urban design. I only wish I had listened harder. Any errors that remain are naturally
my own.
wealth creation.
1
On seeing him, a private security guard instructed Mr.
Mowatt to stop leafleting, explaining that he was on private property where
such activities were prohibited. The security guard directed him to a nearby
public highway, the Horsefair, where Mr. Mowatt was able to continue
handing out his leaflets instead. Standing outside the friary building in
Quakers Friars, Mr. Mowatt was conscious of a newly created sense of place.
The complex had been built in the thirteenth century for Dominicans,
purchased as a Meeting House by the Quakers in the seventeenth century,
and was the place where William Penn (who established the Quaker colony
of Pennsylvania) had married.
2
Having been sold to Bristol City Council by
the Quakers in the mid 1950s to raise funds, and having recently been used
as a Council Registry Office, the friary building was, prior to the redevelop-
ment, widely agreed to be in desperate need of improv ement. Few
Bristolians would have disagreed with the Council's assessment that these
buildings `sit in an austere and beleaguered environment surrounded by large
areas of car parking and the ugly backs of Broadmead's shops.'
3
In fact many
now believe that it has been `splendidly preserved'
4
as a luxury restaurant, a
Brasserie Blanc. Nevertheless, a Quaker inviting people to a debate on
alternative models of wealth creation, itself a longstanding Quaker concern,
leafleting at Quakers Friars, a historically, spiritually, and culturally situated
site, was required to stop. The new private owners, through their security
guard, were empowered to control use and restrict access onto their land.
This relationship between property and place has been a consistent con-
cern for academics and practitioners in relation to urban law and govern-
ance.
5
The concept of place has also been the subject of a long-standing and
still growing literature in its own right.
6
Attempting to translate the link
between property and place into practice, practitioners and academics
413
1Iam very grateful to David Mowatt for telling me of his experience and clarifying
some aspects of Quaker history and practice in Bristol: see
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FfL0diNQxw>.
2
H. Brown and P. Harris, Bristol England: City of a Thousand Years (1964) 26, 82, 106.
3 Bristol City Council, Scheduled Ancient Monuments in Bristol (2004).
4 `BT looks at those buildings which were saved from the bulldozer' Bristol Evening
Post,9February 2009.
5Including, but not limited to: D. Mitchell, The right to the city: Social justice and
the fight for public space (2003); L. Staeheli and D. Mitchell, The People's
Property? Power, Politics and the Public (2007); N. Blomley, Law, Space and the
Geographies of Power (1994); A. Amin and N. Thrift, Cities: Reimagining the
Urban (2002); A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (ed.), Law and the City (2009); D.
Cooper, Governing Out of Order: Space, Law and the Politics of Belonging (1998);
D. Harvey, Social Justice and the City (1973); B. de Sousa Santos, `Law, State and
Urban Struggles in Recife, Brazil' (1992) 1 Social & Legal Studies 235±55.
6Multiple literatures here include M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life
(1984); D. Massey, For Space (2005); D. Harvey, Justice, Nature & the Geography
of Difference (1986); J. Allen, D. Massey, and A. Cochrane, Rethinking the Region
(1998); T. Cresswell, In/Out of Place (1996).
ß2010 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2010 Cardiff University Law School
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