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This is the first I've heard of the acronym POPS--privately owned public spaces! I love it! (and what a great example of the "refusal of the easy dyad" you write about elsewhere). And I would love for us to follow this lead, spending some time exploring the politics of play in Philadelphia's private-public spaces. Certainly public art highlights this dynamic--I'm thinking of all the work of the Mural Arts Program, which does not own the murals it designs and executes, and which has an often uneasy relationship w/ the neighborhoods in which it exhibits (and where, by exhibiting, it hopes to upgrade...). MAP has a very explicit public improvement agenda (it began as the anti-graffiti network), and walks an interesting line in response to the questions Serra raises, re: whether art (public art in particular) need be "pleasing," "democratic," "for the people"--whether, indeed, it appropriately attempts to educate "the people" into an aesthetic different from the one they currently inhabit....

Behold the Open Door @ 17th and Snyder