Public Spaces Marketplaces And The Constitution

Examines how the Supreme Court has banished free expression from shopping malls and other public spaces. In spite of their public attractions and millions of visitors, most shopping malls are now off-limits to free speech and expressive activity. The same may be said about many other public spaces and marketplaces in American cities and suburbs, leaving scholars and other observers to wonder where civic engagement is lawfully permitted in the United States. In Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution, Anthony Maniscalco draws on key legal decisions, social theory, and urban history to demonstrate that public spaces have been split apart from First Amendment protections, while the expression of political ideas has been excluded from privately owned, publicly accessible malls. Today, the traditional indoor suburban shopping mall, that icon of modern American capitalism and culture, is being replaced by outdoor retail centers. Yet the law and courts have been slow to catch up. Maniscalco argues that scholars, students, and the public must confront these innovations in commercial design and consumer practices, as well as what they portend for contemporary metropolitan America and its civic spaces.

Examines how the Supreme Court has banished free expression from shopping malls and other public spaces. In spite of their public attractions and millions of visitors, most shopping malls are now off-limits to free speech and expressive activity. The same may be said about many other public spaces and marketplaces in American cities and suburbs, leaving scholars and other observers to wonder where civic engagement is lawfully permitted in the United States. In Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution, Anthony Maniscalco draws on key legal decisions, social theory, and urban history to demonstrate that public spaces have been split apart from First Amendment protections, while the expression of political ideas has been excluded from privately owned, publicly accessible malls. Today, the traditional indoor suburban shopping mall, that icon of modern American capitalism and culture, is being replaced by outdoor retail centers. Yet the law and courts have been slow to catch up. Maniscalco argues that scholars, students, and the public must confront these innovations in commercial design and consumer practices, as well as what they portend for contemporary metropolitan America and its civic spaces. Anthony Maniscalco teaches at the City University of New York, where he is the Director of the Edward T. Rogowsky Internship Program in Government and Public Affairs.

"Mean Streets offers, in a single, sustained argument, a theory of the social and economic logic behind the historical development, evolution, and especially persistence of homelessness in the contemporary city. By updating and revisiting thirty years of research and thinking, Don Mitchell explores the conditions that produce and sustain homelessness, and how its persistence relates to the way capital works in the urban built environment. Consequently, he unpacks the structure, meaning, uses, and governance of urban public space. As one reviewer commented, "thinking about the histories under which the homeless have been produced and regulated is vital." Mitchell traces his argument through two sections: a broadly historical overview, followed by an exploration of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence that also expands the discussion beyond the regulation of the homeless and the poor, arguing that this has 'metastasized' to become more general issue, affecting all urbanites"--

The built environment influences health and well-being in a myriad of ways. Some neighbourhoods are plagued by busy roads that are a constant source of danger, noise, and air pollution. In some cities there is inadequate green space for children to play and socialise safely. Yet, this book argues, it does not have to be this way. With focus on human health, well-being, and flourishing, this book explores the ways in which people’s lives are impacted by the built environment and how we can create, adapt, and design healthy and inclusive places. The volume explores the relationship between urban design and human flourishing and initiates broad discussions around relevant questions such as ‘What is a healthy place?’, ‘What influences our perceptions of built environment more? Is it our age or our cultural background?’. The book includes six chapters from internationally renowned authors who attempt to unpack some of the key aspects that urban designers need to consider in order to create places that enable – rather than constrain – individuals and communities to live rich fulfilling lives. This book will be of great value to students, scholars, and researchers interested in urban design, planning, and in exploring how built environment impacts health and happiness. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Design.

American college campuses, where ideas are freely exchanged, contested, and above all uncensored, are historical hotbeds of political and social turmoil. In the past decade alone, the media has carefully tracked the controversy surrounding the speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia, the massacres at Virginia Tech, the dismissal of Harvard’s President Lawrence Summers, and the lacrosse team rape case at Duke, among others. No matter what the event, the conflicts that arise on our campuses can be viewed in terms of constitutional principles, which either control or influence outcomes of these events. In turn, constitutional principles are frequently shaped and forged by campus culture, creating a symbiotic relationship in which constitutional values influence the nature of universities, which themselves influence the nature of our constitutional values. In The Constitution Goes to College, Rodney A. Smolla—a former dean and current university president who is an expert on the First Amendment—deftly uses the American university as a lens through which to view the Constitution in action. Drawing on landmark cases and conflicts played out on college campuses, Smolla demonstrates how five key constitutional ideas—the living Constitution, the division between public and private spheres, the distinction between rights and privileges, ordered liberty, and equality—are not only fiercely contested on college campuses, but also dominate the shape and identity of American university life. Ultimately, Smolla compellingly demonstrates that the American college community, like the Constitution, is orderly and hierarchical yet intellectually free and open, a microcosm where these constitutional dichotomies play out with heightened intensity.

One of the most dramatic images of the French Revolution is of Parisian market women sloshing through mud and dragging cannons as they marched on Versailles and returned with bread and the king. These market women, the Dames des Halles, sold essential foodstuffs to the residents of the capital but, equally important, through their political and economic engagement, held great revolutionary influence. Politics in the Marketplace examines how the Dames des Halles invented notions of citizenship through everyday trade. It innovatively interweaves the Dames' political activism and economic practices to reveal how marketplace actors shaped the nature of nascent democracy and capitalism through daily commerce. While haggling over price controls, fair taxes, and acceptable currency, the Dames and their clients negotiated tenuous economic and social contracts in tandem, remaking longstanding Old Regime practices. In this environment, the Dames conceptualized a type of economic citizenship in which individuals' activities such as buying goods, selling food, or paying taxes positioned them within the body politic and enabled them to make claims on the state. They insisted that their work as merchants served society and demanded that the state pass favorable regulations for them in return. In addition, they drew on their patriotic work as activists and their gendered work as republican mothers to compel the state to provide practical currency and assist indigent families. Thus, their notion of citizenship portrayed useful work, rather than gender, as the cornerstone of civic legitimacy. In this original work, Katie Jarvis challenges the interpretation that the Revolution launched an inherently masculine trajectory for citizenship and reexamines work, gender, and citizenship at the cusp of modern democracy.

The Canadian constitutional reforms of 1982, which included a Charter of Rights and Freedoms analogous to the American Bill of Rights, brought about a convergence with American constitutional law. As in the U.S., Canadian courts have shown themselves highly protective of individual rights, and they have not been shy about assuming a leading and sometimes controversial political role in striking down legislation. In clear and easy-to-understand language, the contributors not only chart, but also explore, the reasons for areas of similarity and difference in the constitutional politics of Canada and the United States.

Low industrial growth, declining agricultural sector and limited expansion of formal sector employment in India have increasingly forced the poor to take recourse to informal sources of livelihoods. Street vending is one such thriving source of self-employment across cities. This book delves into the sustenance and survival strategies of street vendors across 17 cities in India and assesses the issues revolving around self-created markets, livelihood and politics that are contested in public space. It also presents a conceptual and theoretical understanding of different socio-economic and policy concerns pertaining to street vending in the country. The study shows how despite the absence of legal frameworks and institutional support, these urban self-employed informal workers subsist by arranging ad-hoc alternatives, creating informal institutions and negotiating with formal and informal actors in the market. It also discusses the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, and examines how inclusive the legal recognition is for these workers of informal economy. Drawing on exhaustive research and a wealth of primary data, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers in development studies, labour studies, economics, sociology and those in public policy and urban planning.