@article{THESIS,
      recid = {4348},
      author = {Jiang, Xixi},
      title = {Open Enclosures, Enclosed Publics: Contested Spaces in New  York City’s Open Streets Program},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {M.A.},
      address = {2022-08},
      number = {THESIS},
      abstract = {In an effort to counteract the claustrophobia of  Covid-induced quarantine and promote socially-distant  activities, the New York City Department of Transportation  introduced the Open Streets Program in April of 2020. By  closing down select streets to through traffic, the Program  aimed to (re)orient streets as spaces where collective life  can take place at an extraordinary moment when the pandemic  opened up a previously unavailable area for reimagination.  However, once implemented, Open Streets have been actively  interpreted and appropriated by private entities in  divergent ways: while those incorporated into Business  Improvement Districts in commercial areas help to  perpetuate capitalist formations of enclosure, residents  from low-income neighborhoods contest this usage by  self-mobilizing around the maintenance of the streets, at  times even informally enacting interventions against the  Program’s oppositional forces. As such, this paper roots  itself in the tension between participatory urban  citizenship and the prevailing capitalist mode of  territorialization. In navigating this multifaceted  phenomenon, it also grapples with the fact that “Open”  Streets come into being through the erection of barricades,  an instrument typically associated with violent tactics of  enclosure and dispossession. Ultimately, the Open Streets  Program may pose new potential for a radical reframing of  the notion of enclosure.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/4348},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.4348},
}