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作者

Naomi Adiv;Laura Wolf-Powers

来源

URBAN GEOGRAPHY,Vol.40,Issue8,P.1071-1096

语言

英文

关键字

Public space,municipal bathing,admission fees,swimming pool,bathhouse

作者单位

Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University, Toronto, USA

摘要

This paper examines fees for access to New York City’s public swimming and bathing spaces from 1870 to the present. We argue that, beyond generating revenue and rationing space, charges for admission to public bathing spaces have served to condition how permeable those spaces were to various groups of potential users. Municipal actors involved in administering baths and pools have used fees to maintain and order these spaces; to distinguish between deserving and undeserving users; and to include and exclude participants in an ostensibly universal public. Over time, fees have been naturalized, erasing these motivations and giving cause to their outcomes. We problematize the fee in order to address both theoretical questions about the nature of public space and practical ones about how municipal administrators govern amidst competing pressures to serve, develop and regulate urban residents and their communities.KEYWORDS: Public space, municipal bathing, admission fees, swimming pool, bathhouseAcknowledgmentsNaomi would like to thank her co-author, Laura Wolf-Powers, for her generosity of time and spirit in seeing this article through. She would also like to thank the staff at the New York Municipal Archive, and the Wertheim Study at the New York Public Library.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Graduate Center [Dissertation Completion Fellowship];Graduate Center [Doctoral Student Research Grant];Graduate Center [Enhanced Chancellor’s Fellowship];