The social infrastructure of public spaces makes human development, community building, and our democratic society possible.
Although we may not always prioritize them in the same way, parks, trails, recreation centers, and libraries represent public infrastructure that is every bit as important and critical to thriving communities as the transportation infrastructure of roads, bridges, rail lines, and airports and the utility infrastructure of sewers, waterlines, gas, and electric services.
While the public goods of transportation and utilities infrastructure make our modern life possible, it is the social infrastructure of public spaces that makes that modern life worth living. This infrastructure is essential in supporting individual human development and the building of communities and a democratic society. For this reason, public space is our most important and greatest public good.
In his reflections on the critical second opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”) the historian Walter Isaacson asserts that, “These truths became the creed that bound a diverse group of pilgrims and immigrants into one nation.”1 And that creed defined a “common ground” for the people of the new nation.2 As Isaacson writes:
“As we reach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we are embroiled in increasingly polarized debates over policies ranging from health care and housing to immigration and the role of religion in society. One way to restore stability to our politics is to look at issues through the two ideals that are at the heart of the Declaration’s key sentence: common ground and the pursuit of the American Dream.
The concept of common ground has always been part of humanity’s struggle to create a good society. Its simplest manifestation was a physical space: the land that was designated as “the commons.” In feudal England, that was the land where commoners…could all graze their herds. When the first English settlers came to America, such space was set aside in their towns, as with Boston Common and Cambridge Common.”3
Our parks, recreation centers, libraries, and other public spaces represent the modern expression of our shared commons and, quite literally, our common ground. However, distinct from other public goods of utility, transportation, and other forms of public infrastructure, public spaces possess a special dual civic-social function. That is, public space is both a public good in and of itself, but it also provides the means for achieving other public goods. This occurs in several ways:
First, public space is the fundamental infrastructure of our democracy and our democratic form of self-government. Our public streets, parks, and plazas are the places where we gather to exercise our rights of free speech and public assembly, make our collective will known, and when necessary, protest government actions that have come into conflict with the values and will of the people. In the exercise of our rights of free speech and assembly in public space we can communicate priorities and demand improvements, including new public goods that serve the common good and can be shared by all.
Perhaps the most literal and direct example of this was the March 12, 1990 Capitol Crawl protest in which 60 disabled citizens abandoned their wheelchairs and other mobility aids to crawl up the steps of the United States Capitol building – one of the most public of public spaces – to demonstrate the inaccessibility of public spaces and infrastructure. The protest was instrumental in advancing the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in employment, state and local government, public accommodations, commercial facilities, transportation, and telecommunications.
Not only did the Capitol Crawlers achieve legislation that eliminated barriers to the disabled, but they also helped create new universal public goods, for example: the handicap ramps that benefit both the disabled but also able-bodied parents pushing a baby stroller or pulling roller luggage down a city street and those who may be temporarily disabled.
There are countless other important examples of public space speech and protest that have advanced our democracy including the landmark civil rights demonstrations of the late 1950s and early 1960s, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Greensboro Sit-Ins, and the Selma to Montgomery Marches. These are all examples of public spaces – public buses, a public retail establishment, and a public highway – that were the stages for public protest that led to important legislation to prevent discrimination and expand the civil liberties of American citizens.
Secondly, with appropriate levels of community involvement and civic engagement informing its creation, the development of a public space asset can represent an act of community empowerment. The effort of residents coming together to plan and implement a shared vision or objective is a powerful exercise of community will. The shared stewardship, programming, and use of a public space asset can represent further opportunities for community building. The political success and community-building experience of these kinds of public space achievements can encourage and equip communities to pursue other shared objectives, including developing additional improvements for the common good.
Locally, Philadelphia’s $600 million Rebuild Initiative (to which the William Penn Foundation contributed $100 million) is renovating and transforming parks, playgrounds, playfields, recreation centers, and libraries across the city and offers multiple examples of how the development and improvement of public spaces can support community engagement and empowerment.
As reported by WHYY, “Yasmeen Abbott, president of the Vare [Recreation Center] Advisory Council, said [her] group has been on the phone ‘countless hours every day’ to hold elected officials to their promises about the facility, which was among the first on the Rebuild list…she vowed to see the project through until completion and would not let up on city officials, an effort that includes calling and even going to city hall to make sure the vision is completed.”4 Holding elected officials accountable to their commitments in the creation of public spaces represents an important form of community empowerment, equipping communities with the experience and skill to achieve other public goods and improvements.
Once created, public spaces can also function as critical centers of community and community building as Philadelphia City Councilmember Jamier Gautier reinforced when commenting on the renovation of the Kingsessing Library in Southwest Philadelphia, “Kingsessing Library has always been the heart of this community… this renovation honors that legacy while creating a dynamic, accessible space where today’s families can gather, learn, and build the strong community bonds that define Southwest Philadelphia.”5
Finally, high quality and well-programmed public spaces can also contribute to individual human development by supporting healthy exercise and recreation as well as complementing the essential public good of public education. As Temple University psychology professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek has pointed out, “The two best predictors for all child development and success in school…are social emotional regulation and language development, both of which are built up through social interactions…but despite all of this research into active learning, what happens in traditional classrooms in Philly and around the country remains primarily passive.”6
To provide more opportunities for active learning, Hirsh-Pasek has developed the concept of “playful learning” that incorporates “guided, goal-oriented play,” including “open-ended activities and games built into…landscapes and structures [that] target and improve skills in areas such as spatial relations, language development, executive function, and even mathematical concepts.”7 Playful learning installations can occur in almost any kind of public space, including a public park, a playground, a community center, or even a humble public sidewalk or bus stop. But these kinds of child development and learning improvements provide yet another example of multiplicity of the individual, community, and societal benefits of public space.
The act of creating public space can empower communities. Its existence provides the stage for citizens to enact their rights of free speech and public assembly and to advocate and protest. And finally, innovative public space programming can also support the public health, learning, and personal development of the nation’s citizens. For all of these reasons, it is essential that every community has access to high quality and welcoming public spaces – our greatest public good – for our democratic society to remain vital and to thrive.
***
This essay represents the final installment in our Grounds for Expression essay series exploring the relationship between public space and democracy. Our aim was not to suggest that the mere existence of public space alone leads to free speech and public assembly. Rather our objective has been to assert that high quality and welcoming public spaces are the essential places where people gather, interact, engage, and build community toward the creation of a democratic society.
The term democracy can invoke things like voting, self-government, and lawmaking. In the context of these essays, we have been more concerned with the democracy of daily life - the informal sharing of space, the routine interactions that transform strangers into neighbors, and even the expression of people or street power through mass public protests.
As my colleague Jazmine DaCosta has written, the street, the park, the plaza, the schoolyard are not merely the backdrop of democratic life, they are its medium. The bigger ideas of democracy, like casting a ballot or forging a constitution are built on the foundations of people gathering in those places to become visible to one another and to those in power, to practice the difficult and necessary art of existing together, even in disagreement.
So, our ideas of democracy, big and small, rest upon the aim of ensuring that every citizen and every community has access to high quality and inclusive public space to practice the necessary arts of public citizenship, civic participation, and community building.
Notes on cited works
- Walter Isaacson. The Greatest Sentence Ever Written. (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2025), 27
- ibid
- ibid
- Tom MacDonald, "Work begins on one of Rebuild Philly’s biggest project yet: $20 million rebuild at Vare Rec Center," WHYY, June 18, 2022
- Cherise Lynch, "Peek inside Philadelphia's Kingsessing Library after $8 million renovation", NBC 10 News, April 25, 2025.
- Delaney Parks, "Learn to Play to Learn," Philadelphia Citizen, June 11, 2025
- Ibid
