Thanks for the question/comment. I especially appreciate it in a philosophical level.

How would these private streets allow for behaviour that is desirable at the level of society, but may not be desirable from the perspective of individual property owners?

I should first point out that there is no such thing as “behavior that is desirable at the level of society.” Society is a concept, and thus cannot have desires; whereas individuals do have desires. Most behaviors are unlikely to be desired by all members of a society in all situations. However, a free market provides the options and diversity necessary for individuals to assess tradeoffs among various behaviors permitted within various locations.

I don't see why all private landowners would inherently forbid protesting. Private Universities certainly allow protesting. But, if people's desire to protest was hampered by certain property owners' restrictions, those who find it necessary to protest would certainly seek to do business with landowners that would permit protest on their property.

The private sector is already great at providing recreation. For example, I belong to a private gym and have been a member of a private pool. I often go to a privately-owned movie theaters and sporting venues. A friend of mine plays hockey at a privately owned skating facility. I have been to concerts at privately owned music halls. I have played golf at privately owned golf courses. etc… I could go on for paragraphs…

While skateboarding is banned at shopping malls, there are privately owned skate facilities. And I would think the government should have the same concern for its property, and desire to protect its property from being damaged by skateboarders just like a private mall owner.

I find it interesting that you chose to associate land ownership as a class, because I am not familiar with such a class. Are you inferring that such a class exists today? Because, if it exists today, we can clearly see that this supposed class does, in fact, provide recreation as I mentioned above. Or are you inferring that a class system would emerge that would eradicate political and recreational activities? If so, please explain more – I'd like to understand better.

Thanks for the St. Louis information. That sounds like a great topic for future posts!

Aside from being skeptical because of the blockades problem, it seems to me that a shift from public streets to private streets for TRUE cities would be enormously complex and, as far as I know, no true city has ever had such a street system, even at a small scale. So the idea seems very theoretical and impractical.

No doubt, such an exercise would be complex and probably extremely corrupt. I think of all the corruption that happened when the Soviet Union collapsed and those in power looted the public property. For it to work, it would have to be a pure public auction or something like that. If politicians were to run the liquidation, it would probably end up worse than what we have now. Thus, it's a pretty utopian view. But, it's interesting to imagine how the urban landscape would be had neighborhoods been left to private sector development.

I also think imagining a world without public land is valuable as a thought experiment. Taking the concept to its logical extreme helps me validate or invalidate an ideology. Being comfortable with how I imagine a purely private society, I've come to the conclusion that it's wise to move in the direction towards privatization, even if at a slow pace.

Behaviour which is overtly political (such as protests) or purely recreational (such as skateboarding) is often banned from privately owned places such as shopping malls. The landowning class is unlikely to provide for such essentially uncommercial, yet socially beneficial activities.

Adam [webmaster of Market Urbanism], although this might not address your interest in private streets (as a way of fostering what I would call “radical” market urbanism), here's a brief outline of the kind of private streets that I think could be a good idea for cities (and would be, in my opinion, a way of fostering what I see as a more moderate market urbanism). (It's an idea that is inspired by, and which would seem to me to be more compatible with, the writings of Jane Jacobs.)

I think private streets that would be a boon to a cities, like New York, would be those like Rockefeller Plaza (the street not the plaza) and Shubert Alley — that is streets that are a SUPPLEMENT to a city-owned network of public streets and ones that help transform overly long blocks (like those in NYC between Fifth Avenue and Tenth (?) Avenue) into short ones. Such streets would create a number of benefits for both private landowners and the general public (in addition to the ones, liked better maintenance and safety, that you've already mentioned) and would also be relatively easy to create and administer (as the mechanism already pretty much exist — at least in NYC). While Jacobs has already explictly pointed out most of the benefits, I believe there are one or two that, as far as I know, she hasn't explicitly pointed out. Here's a list of all the possible benefits that occur to me at the moment.

THE GENERAL IDEA (I'll use NYC as an example, but the same idea could be applied to other cities with overlong blocks.)

Stop allowing buildings to get zoning bonuses (more FAR or more residential units) for “dead-end,” anti-city “parks” and “plazas” (i.e., urban cul de sacs) and allow bonuses ONLY for mid-block (or close to mid-block) “through plazas” (of a certain width). Such private “streets” could be for vehicles (including trucks) and pedestrians, or for pedestrians only. They could be conventional streets, entrances to underground parking garages (for tenants only), or essentially landscaped parks or plazas. What is important is that they be of a certain width (similar to the width of conventional city streets), easily transversed by pedestrians (e.g., NOT have steps, etc.), and open to at least pedestrians for most of the day / night. (They could be gated at night, say between 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.)

BENEFITS

Here's a rundown of the benefits (and I'll use New York's overlong east-west blocks to describe them — although they could apply to any cities elsewhere that might have overly long blocks):

1) Decreased isolation of overly long blocks east-west blocks. (This is one of Jacobs' main points.)

This would also provide great benefits for the private landowners who create the private street too, as he / she would be transforming his /her “dead” center block properties into more highly valued corner properties. So, not only would the property owner be creating additional streets, he / she would also be creating his / her own additional, and more desirable and lucrative “corner” properties out of less “dead” and less lucrative mid-block properties (“turning lemons into lemonade”).

2) Decreased congestion (especially pedestrian congestion) on north-south avenues. This would be expecially true if a network of private streets went on for a number of blocks. The longer the chain of private streets, the more likely it would be that they would be used by large numbers of pedestrians going north south.

3) More aesthetically pleasing open spaces. (Today's current zoning bonuses encourage ugly mid-block “plazas” with exposed raw sidewalls.)

4) More functional opens spaces (unlike the mono-dimensional open spaces of today's bonused “plazas”), as the open spaces would both “open up” the city (create beauty) AND create other additional urban benefits too (increase functionality). (See more about this above and below).

While I don't mind such private streets being similiar to conventional city streets, the general public seems to have an obsession with parks and plazas. So, it should be noted that these new private streets could also be essentially landscaped parks or plazas — which is what Rockefeller Plaza [the street] has essentially become, although it was originally nearly identical to a regualr NYC street — as long as such private streets also allow for convenient pedestrian thu traffic.

5) More prestigous frontages for properties, both commercial and residential. Instead of having a building with a “nothing” frontage in the middle of a drab overly long block, a developer could create a very impressive mid-block auto drop-off for his property. (This is the original use of Rockefeller Plaza [the street], and I think Rockefeller Center changed this original use because of the Center's high profile and fear of post-9/11 terrorism and also for the needs of the “Today” show — which wouldn't be applicable to other properties.)

6) More high quality street-level commercial space for the properties' owners. (That is formerly “mid-block” retail space would become higher quality retail space with the creation of a private street.)

7) For the public at large, the increased supply of high quality retail space would also mean more competition in an area and lower rents overall. This could translate into more “affordable” retail space, especially for those businesses that don't really need high traffic “avenue” locations (e.g., laundromats, dry cleaners, day care centers, antique shops, etc.). (Even if zoning allowed it, it would be unlikely that such businesses would locate in the center of long, isolated blocks.)

So, for instance, had developers of high rises been induced (through FAR bonsues) to create a private street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West on Manhattan's Upper West Side, as Jane Jacobs seems to suggest in “Death and Life,” such a street could have increased the amount of “practical” retail space on the Upper West Side and would thus have created more “affordable” alternative spaces for laundromats, dry cleaners, day care centers, etc. (i.e., the kind of businesses that in boom timess have been priced out out of Columbus Avenue and Broadway, the Upper West Side's only two commerciall thoroughfares).

Bascially the city would be creating, through market mechanisms (instead of through eminent domain), MORE city thoroughfares (i.e., urbane “capillaries”) to “digest” additional congestion (to mix metaphors) — instead of just adding additional congestion to the city's existing arteries, as it now does today with its bonused “plazas.”

Although, I'm actually inclined to disagree with the idea that cities should have create networks of private streets INSTEAD OF networks of public ones (see further below), I realized the other day (when posting at Austin Contrarian about “tipping points”), that I forgot to mention to you an example of private streets that you might enjoy hearing about. Plus I'd also like to add an example to the categories already mentioned.

POSSIBLE NEW CATEGORY:

The private streets of St. Louis (which seem to be somewhat different from the private streets of today's gated communities).

In the 1970s (?), Oscar Newman (an architect / planner famous for his book “Defensible Space”) came out with a second book called “Communities of Interest.” His first book had focused mostly on public safety (e.g., discussing exactly why public housing projects were so unsafe and how their vulnerabilities could be reduced); his second book, though, focused on both public safety and its implications for racial integration and highlighted, in this regard, the private streets of St. Louis (which seem to me to be slightly different from the private streets of gated communities). Oscar Newman found that the privately owned streets in the area he studied (not all the streets in the area were privately owned) were not only safer but more likely to stay racially integrated. If you Google words like “private” “streets” “St. Louis” on the internet, there are some websites that give some general information about them. If I remember correctly, however, Newman's book (now out of print, I assume) had more information, though.

By the way, despite some similarities to Jane Jacobs (e.g., in a way, “Defensible Space” seems to be a scientifically done study that backs up Jacobs writings about street safety), Oscar Newman (who died a few years ago) seems to actually have been an “old time” leftist who's work is somewhat in opposition to Jacobs' thinking about cities.

ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES AND REFINEMENTS TO EXISTING CATEGORIES:

I would put “Rockefeller Plaza (the street)” in the same category as Shubert Alley and Washington Mews, but keep Rockefeller Center's network of underground passageways in the category of master-planned developments.

Forgot if I mentioned it already, but the original World Trade Center/World Financial Center set-up is also an example of a master-planned development with an extensive network of private pedestrian streets — although in this case it's a little complicated. Some parts of the network were originally owned by two different public authorities, (the Port Authority and the MTA), portions of the complex were later privatized by one of them (by the Port Authority), and one portion of the complex was owned from the beginning, I believe, by a private development company (Olympia & York?), who was nevertheless leasing the land from a third public authority (the Battery Park City Authority).

WHY I'M SKEPTICAL ABOUT THE IDEA OF CITIES SUBSTITUTING PRIVATE STREETS FOR PUBLIC ONES

Aside from being skeptical because of the blockades problem, it seems to me that a shift from public streets to private streets for TRUE cities would be enormously complex and, as far as I know, no true city has ever had such a street system, even at a small scale. So the idea seems very theoretical and impractical.

Plus, it seems to me that all the benefits, without the negatives, are already available through other means (e,g., block associations, business improvement districts [BIDs], etc.). So, for true cities at least, it kind of seems like a Rube Goldberg contraption, an unnecessarily complex way to accomplish something that can actually be done very simply.