Broken Promises for New York City Public Spaces

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/21/nyregion/nyc-developers-private-owned-public-spaces.html

“Developers have gotten a great deal,” Ms. Brewer said. “Somebody needs to hold them accountable.”

Sometimes, the spaces were illegally occupied by cafes, restaurants and other businesses. And in some cases, hostile architecture, like spikes on ledges, was retroactively added to the spaces, which critics have said discourages use and disproportionately targets people who are homeless. Times reporters visited over a hundred of these spaces and found similar instances of noncompliance.