Public vs Private Space

Mitchell's discussion of People's park was very interesting to me because of the irony of the space being privately owned by UC but basically controlled by the people of the area. Although UC and the town of Berkley had plans to renovate the lot, there were forces and protesting that kept the park what it was; an open area for the public to express their opinions.

The struggle between the forces reminds me of a similar situation that occurred in Houston. There was a portion of the Heights that had a street that was paved by slaves with bricks. Nowadays the community that encompasses this road is prominently black and is proud of the history behind their neighborhood. The issue at hand was that the street was becoming deteriorated and needed to be repaved or repaired. Although the street was technically owned by the city, the residents of the street kept the road from being worked on. After months of protesting and organizing petitions the neighborhood was able to force the city to historically repave the street with bricks from the same era and reused old bricks that were still good from the original road.