World Wide Plaza: the corporatization of urban public space

In the preceding interview, John Habraken argues that planners' antipathy toward articulating space and acknowledging boundaries has led to increasing spatial incomprehensiveness, deterritorialization, and consequently, a growing lack of security in public areas. Although we agree that urban spatial patterns are increasingly fragmented and often incomprehensible, we argue that this is due to the increasingly corporatized nature of "public space", which, contra Habraken, is highly articulated, spatially controlled and manipulated, and thus, "reterritorialized" according to the needs of its sponsor. We examine World Wide Plaza in New York City as an example of this trend.