Citizens Become 'Avengers' to Reclaim Lost Public Spaces
Sungju Jung (Texas A&M University), Jae Seung Lee (Seoul National University), Saehoon Kim (Seoul National University)
We have discovered the potential for citizens to reclaim public spaces lost to private interests. Privately owned public spaces (POPS) are intended for public use but are owned and maintained by private building owners. In exchange for providing POPS, developers receive floor area bonuses and other regulatory benefits. However, many property owners and managers illegally hinder public access to POPS through hostile architecture, restrict amenities, misuse them for parking or waste disposal, and even profit by illegally operating restaurants or cafeterias. These issues are common in cities like Seoul and New York City.
The city government’s inadequate and passive oversight is often cited as a key reason behind this issue. In Seoul, POPS inspections are conducted every 1–2 years, primarily focusing on those in large buildings, which leads to many overlooked violations. Owners often receive advance notice, prompting them to briefly pause unauthorized use and access restrictions, which weakens the impact of inspections. New York City faces similar challenges, with an audit by the New York Comptroller highlighting deficiencies in the city’s oversight of POPS.
Figure 1. Restrictions on public access and illegal misuse of POPS in Seoul's Gwanak District
Many argue that POPS are products of capitalist development, framing their exclusivity as an inevitable flaw. Yet, the potential for citizens to reclaim and reshape these spaces has received little attention. Therefore, we explored the power of citizens to make POPS truly public again.
We selected Seoul’s Gwanak District as the project area because of its chronic issues related to POPS. Twelve nearby POPS within walking distance were chosen as focus sites. We organized guerrilla inspections of these POPS and recruited 50 residents from the Gwanak District as citizen inspectors. Since most of them were unfamiliar with the concept of POPS before the experiments, we provided guidebooks and a brief orientation on POPS and inspection methods. In addition, I recruited 10 local architects with offices in Seoul to participate as expert inspectors, a comparative group to explore citizens’ capabilities. In South Korea, licensed architects who head architectural firms are qualified to be entrusted with official POPS inspections.
Figure 2. Citizen participants monitoring POPS in violation
During the activity, residents mentioned that they were unaware the designated POPS were intended for public use. Many expressed surprise and frustration, with one participant even stating he would go directly to the district office to file a complaint immediately afterward.
The analysis showed a moderate level of agreement between citizens and experts when checking for violations. This suggests that, while citizen inspections may not fully replace expert ones, they can serve effectively as preliminary audits. For qualitative assessments, citizen inspectors consistently assigned lower scores than experts, particularly giving markedly lower ratings for POPS in poor condition.
Astonishingly, during a one-month experiment, citizen inspectors identified four times more violations than official inspections had uncovered over the past three years. This finding indicates that public officials have not been thorough in their inspections of POPS. Based on our findings, some public officials may avoid conflicts arising from inspections due to long-standing relationships with certain building owners. Additionally, reporting numerous violations to higher authorities results in a heavier workload for these officials. Consequently, certain officials often downplay issues, conducting inspections more as a formality and primarily responding only to citizen complaints. However, few complaints are filed about POPS, as most citizens remain unaware of what and where they are.
Following their participation, residents experienced a shift in their perception of public spaces and showed an increased willingness to engage in civic actions, while the expert group showed no such change. Feelings of betrayal upon discovering that familiar spaces they had viewed as private were, in fact, public led to this shift in citizens’ perceptions. However, experts, already familiar with POPS and its associated challenges, experienced no such change; for them, the inspections felt more like a routine task than a novel experience.
Authorities and experts often express concern about citizen participation, believing that citizens lack sufficient knowledge. However, we found that citizens can supplement official inspections of POPS, sometimes providing stricter qualitative assessments than experts. Through this participatory approach, they can develop a sense of identity as active agents in enhancing public spaces. While governments have generally taken a top-down approach to address POPS issues, this approach has proven ineffective. Despite local governments in Seoul gaining greater regulatory authority and the New York Comptroller’s audit calling for stronger oversight, problems with POPS persist in both cities, and responses from city authorities remain largely passive. Not all public officials are fully committed to safeguarding the publicness of public spaces.
Many officials prioritize concerns over increased workload and responsibilities over addressing the public space issues. To address these issues, it’s essential to reveal how private interests have compromised public spaces, propose community-driven solutions, and politicize the issue to encourage officials to take more proactive action. This approach aligns with the practice of critical urban theory proposed by Marcuse. Citizens have the potential to act as powerful overseers to safeguard and reclaim these lost spaces. To counter the strong forces pulling POPS toward private interests and reorient them toward the public good, collective citizen engagement and effort are essential.
Read the full UAR article here.
(This project was conducted as part of Sungju Jung's master's thesis at Seoul National University, with funding from the Seoul Institute.)
Sungju Jung is a PhD student in Urban and Regional Sciences at Texas A&M University. He previously studied architecture, geography, and landscape architecture at Seoul National University. His research focuses on public spaces, citizen participation, and urban design. He has proposed various architectural and urban policies in South Korea and led a citizen participation project related to public spaces. In 2024, he received the Korea Planning Association President's Award.
Jae Seung Lee is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Design—Urban Design Major, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. He received his PhD in planning at MIT. Since 2012, he has taught data analysis and applications in planning, urban planning studios, and planning research methods. His research and practice focus on reciprocal interaction between urban environments, human behavior, and quality of life.
Saehoon Kim is a faculty member at Seoul National University Graduate School of Environmental Studies, where he serves as Associate Dean and a co-director of the Urban Studies and Design Lab. His research focuses on urban design and planning, data-based lifestyle analyses, and innovative urban regeneration. He earned his Doctor of Design degree from Harvard GSD in 2012.