To the teacher:
Can you imagine your public school being renamed "Coca-Cola High," "McDonald's Middle," or "Nike Elementary"?
If the ever-widening encroachment of private entities into public spaces continues, such a day may not be far off. Although it was not always the case, we as a nation have accepted in recent decades that public trains, buses, and transit hubs would double as billboards for advertisers, and that publicly-funded sports arenas would bear the names of banks, telecom companies, and big-box retail stores. Could things previously thought to be off-limits from private branding - schools, libraries, courthouses, monuments, and national parks - soon bear the names of corporate sponsors? If so, what are the implications of this private branding in public space?
This lesson consists of two readings aimed at having students think critically about this issue. The first reading considers the trend toward increasing corporate branding of public spaces. The second reading looks at the definition of "public space" and its significance for democratic society. Questions for discussion follow each reading.
Introductory Discussion:
How do you react to ads?
Tell students that we’ll be reading and talking about ads today.
Ask students to think of an ad they’ve seen recently in a public space - or of a public space that has a corporate name.
- What was the corporate name or ad, and what was your reaction to it?
- Does it make you feel differently about that public space in any way? If so, how?
- How aware are you of visual ads you see around you every day?
- Do you think they have an impact on you that you might not even be aware of? What would it be?
Reading 1:
Is Corporate Sponsorship of Public Space a Slippery Slope?
Can you imagine your public school being renamed "Coca-Cola High," "McDonald's Middle," or "Nike Elementary"?
If the ever-widening encroachment of private entities into public spaces continues, such a day may not be far off. Although it was not always the case, we as a nation have accepted in recent decades that public trains, buses, and transit hubs would double as billboards for advertisers, and that publicly-funded sports arenas would bear the names of banks, telecom companies, and big-box retail stores.
Could things previously thought to be off-limits from private branding - schools, libraries, courthouses, monuments, and national parks - soon bear the names of corporate sponsors? If so, what are the implications of this private branding in public space?
As Ianthe Jeanne Dugan reported in a December 6, 2010 article for the Wall Street Journal, some localities have considered putting naming rights to public schools up for sale:
Sports complexes, hospitals and the like long have been renamed after big sponsors. Now, the name game is hitting more public places.
Hundreds of naming rights are up for sale nationwide at schools, parks, government buildings and boat launches, as money problems among cities and states create monuments such as Chicago's BP Bridge and AT&T Plaza....
Schools also are getting in on the action. When school opened in Sun Prairie, Wis., this fall, students met in the "Fenske" courtyard, then filed into the "Tubbs" classroom—both named after families—and played in a gym where the scoreboards trumpet "Hallman Lindsay Paints Inc."
In Camp Hill, Pa., officials are offering to name two gyms for $250,000 each, the library for $150,000, and the high-school counseling office for $15,000. Similar moves are afoot in Harrisburg, the near-bankrupt state capital, along with many other districts around the country.
In Newtonville, Mass., residents wrote to the school protesting a plan to sell the very name of the school.
"Let them sell the lockers, the pool, the restrooms—but not the name of the school," said William Huddleston, a retired clinical psychologist in Newtonville. "The notion that one would sell their name for money reinforces to children that everything is for sale."
Public officials justify the sale of naming and branding rights for publicly held spaces is justified as a necessary measure to raise needed funding. As Lisa Rein reported in a May 9, 2016, article for the Washington Post, even America's national parks may soon seek to generate revenue by expanding their embrace of private donors. Rein writes:
The national park system, created a century ago to preserve the country’s natural treasures for the public, has long been a bulwark against commercialization.
But as it jockeys for donors in a more competitive environment than ever, the National Park Service is starting to tread a delicate path, making aggressive corporate appeals without giving the impression that it’s selling public spaces to the highest bidder....
Parks have long relied on philanthropy to pay for improvements, interpretive programs, trail renovations and other projects left uncovered by their operating or capital budgets. Donors got unobtrusive recognition in return—maybe a small plaque near a trail thanking them for their generosity.
But now Director Jonathan Jarvis wants to swing open the gates of the 411 national parks, monuments and conservation areas to an unprecedented level of corporate donations, broadening who can raise money, what that money will be raised for and what the government will give corporate America in return.
"The great thing about the policy is it protects those features of the park that are important to all of us," said Jeff Reinbold, the Park Service’s associate director for partnerships and civic engagement, "but it gives us new opportunities and new tools" to respond to donors who perceive the government as too slow to get deals done.
Critics are wary, however, that such corporate donations could send the country on a slippery slope where nearly every previously public space could one day bear a corporate insignia. Moreover, they argue that opening public spaces such as the national parks to corporate money sets a dangerous precedent in which corporations could come to expect to receive special considerations in return for their money. Rein continues:
But the new brand of philanthropy is drawing fierce criticism from watchdogs and park advocates who accuse Jarvis of embracing a creeping commercialization they say has no place in the park system.
"You could use Old Faithful to pitch Viagra," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a watchdog group that’s trying to rally the park community to fight the plan. "Or the Lincoln Memorial to plug hemorrhoid cream. Or Victoria’s Secret to plug the Statue of Liberty."
"Every developed area in a park could become a venue for product placement," Ruch said. Or, he added, access: "A telecom company could say, ‘Nice mountain. We’ll make a generous donation for the right of way.’ "
Critics worry that corporations will now see openings to demand privileges or influence park policy the way Coca-Cola, already a major donor, did in 2011. After Jarvis started encouraging parks in 2011 to ban the sale of bottled water to save on recycling expenses, Coca-Cola, which owns Dasani Water, balked — and Jarvis stalled the ban at the Grand Canyon. It eventually went into effect.
Furthermore, while it may seem like common sense for state and local governments to take money from wherever they can get it to maintain public spaces, critics maintain that there’s a hidden cost of selling off these spaces for corporate branding. Historian and professor of education Jonathan Zimmerman argued in an October 6, 2014, article for Salon.com:
In several other cities, meanwhile, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s logo festoons manhole covers and fire hydrants. A few municipalities have sold ads on their police cars. And seven states now allow pizza chains and other companies to advertise on school buses.
That’s good news for business, which can engage old customers and target new ones. And it’s good for our cash-strapped local and state governments, which can make long-needed improvements to crumbling infrastructures. Everyone walks away happy. Right?
Wrong. Our public spaces communicate important lessons about who we are. By selling these spaces to private interests, we teach our children — and ourselves — that nothing is truly shared; that everything is for sale, typically to the highest bidder; and that the clutter of commercial messages is the price we have to pay to sustain our common lives...
But the real problem is selling names in the first place. If we want to improve a road or a school, we should tax ourselves to do it. By delegating the task to a private donor, we erode our shared spaces and the civic sentiments they inspire. A truly public enterprise demonstrates our faith in one another. And a facility papered with advertisements suggests the opposite: that we lack real community, so we need to put ourselves in private hands.
The debate surrounding this issue is unlikely to subside as long as corporations make ever-bolder attempts to place their logos in spaces once considered off-limits.
For Discussion:
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
- Imagine that our school was called "McDonald’s High." Would that affect the way you viewed our school? Why or why not?
- What do you think of expanding corporate branding to public spaces? Should it be allowed? Why or why not?
- Defenders of corporate branding argue that it is an effective way for public institutions to raise money to sustain themselves. What do you think of this argument?
- What do you think of Jonathan Zimmerman’s view that "a facility papered with advertisements suggests ... that we lack real community, so we need to put ourselves in private hands"?
Reading 2:
Why Public Space Matters
Naming a public park for a private company doesn’t mean the park is no longer public. But it does convey corporate sponsorship, and introduces commercialism into what had been a noncommercial space, blurring the line between public and private space.
The debate surrounding the expansion of corporate advertising in public places raises a basic question: What is the difference between "public" and "private" space, and why is this distinction important?
In the United States, we tend to take public spaces—and the underlying ideals of democracy and equality that they embody— for granted. As architecture critic Inga Saffron wrote in an April 30, 2016, article for the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Want to visit a public park in China? It'll cost you.
Many parks in China charge admission, usually a fraction of a yuan. That's small change if you happen to be a tourist, as I was two years ago. But if you're a service worker looking for a green spot to spend your lunch break, or to carve out some solitude during your daily routine, the fees can add up.
In America, we have a tradition of treating public space differently. Urban parks are the physical embodiment of our democratic system, maybe the only place in our increasingly lopsided society where rich and poor can come together as equals. Anyone can walk into an urban park, sit on a bench, and enjoy the sunshine, gratis. At least, that's how it is supposed to work.
What does it mean when spaces we assume are public are, in fact, private? As geographer Bradley L. Garrett wrote in an August 4, 2015 article for the Guardian, private ownership of public space can restrict our ability to express ourselves freely in a democracy:
The geographer David Harvey once wrote that "the freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is ... one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights". Generations of urban theorists, from Lewis Mumford to Jane Jacobs to Doreen Massey, have suggested that the place where cities get "remade" is in the public rather than private sphere. Part of the problem, then, with privately owned public spaces ("Pops") - open-air squares, gardens and parks that look public but are not - is that the rights of the citizens using them are severely hemmed in....
[W]hen space is controlled, and especially when the public is unclear about what the legal or acceptable boundaries of activity are, we tend to police ourselves, to monitor our behavior and to limit our interactions, especially after embarrassing confrontations with security....
"By claiming space in public, by creating public spaces, social groups themselves become public," [geographer Don] Mitchell writes. "Only in public spaces can the homeless, for example, represent themselves as a legitimate part of ‘the public’."
Of course, many public buildings and spaces bear the names of wealthy donors. But as journalist Anne Schwartz wrote in a May 13, 2002, article for the Gotham Gazette, there is an important distinction between this practice and the sale of naming rights to corporate entities:
The New York Botanical Garden features the Con Edison Pond Gallery, the Texaco Kids and the Mitsubishi Wild Wetland Trail. The new baseball stadium for the minor-league Brooklyn Cyclones is named after the local energy company, Keyspan (formerly Brooklyn Union Gas). The Children's Museum of Manhattan includes the Time-Warner Media Center...
So when Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested recently that the city's parks could be named after corporate sponsors as a way of helping to pay for their upkeep, it was a logical extension of a trend, begun with stadiums and now being adopted by non-profit institutions, to trade the rights to a name for corporate dollars....
Many buildings and public spaces - hospitals, theaters, plazas, gardens - are named for philanthropists who donated money for their construction or renovation: in Central Park, for example, there are the Delacorte Theater and the Wollman Rink. How is this different from naming a public space after a donor that happens to be a business?
Critics see many differences. These public places have been named for individuals being honored for their generosity, public service, or importance to history - not as a quid-pro-quo with profit-making companies.
In a society founded on the principles of freedom of speech and expression, the value of spaces where the public can congregate freely should not be underestimated.
For Discussion
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
- What are some arguments for why public space is important in a democracy?
- Does giving a public space a corporate name change how you experience that place? If so, how?
- Does the branding and control of open spaces by private entities affect public speech and expression
- Do you think naming a public institution after a corporation is the same as naming something after a wealthy individual? Why or why not?