ancient cities

individuals’ beliefs and behaviors concerning how
society ought to function and be structured as well
as those institutions that grow out of such concerns:
the state and civil society.
Jürgen Habermas, using the term public sphere,
viewed this dimension of the public realm as a specifically
discursive space where individuals, without
regard to social status and without any constraint,
engage in political participation by discussing matters
of public interest. The European coffeehouse of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is frequently
offered as an example of the public sphere; the coffeehouse
itself reflects the spatial dimension of the
public realm, and the political talk that took place
within it reflects the political dimension. While this
discursive activity continues to define the public
sphere, it is increasingly electronically mediated,
for example, through television and the Internet.
Using the term public realm, Hannah Arendt formulated
a similar but more active view of this
political dimension, viewing it as a stage on which
not simply political talk but also collective political
action could take place.
Two key institutions are born out of, and draw
their legitimacy from, the political public realm:
the democratic state and civil society. The state
refers to the organization that, through consent
generated in the public sphere, holds a monopoly
on the legitimate use of coercive physical force. As
such, it functions as the supreme authority within
a territory, creating and enforcing rules (i.e., laws),
which provide a formal structure for the continued
existence of the political public realm. Civil society
includes those organizations that form around
shared interests, but lack the legitimate use of force
reserved by the state. These organizations provide
an arena for discourse and collective action aimed
at influencing or challenging the state. The openness
of the political public realm varies widely
throughout the world and is virtually nonexistent
under some totalitarian regimes.
Many have theorized the erosion of the political
public realm. Richard Sennett argues that the
vibrant and active culture of public political interaction
that once characterized cities has given way to a
culture of privacy and individualism, thereby reducing
participation in the political public realm to the
role of spectator. Similarly, Robert Putnam suggests
that as participation in activities like bowling shift
from groups to individuals, the opportunities to
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form shared understandings or pursue mutual goals
are reduced. Others, however, contend that the
political public realm is not eroding, but rather is
simply being transformed by technologies like the
Internet and cell phones, which allow the discourse
and collective action of public life to take place without
regard to physical proximity.
Economic Public Realm: Public Goods,
Public Finance, and the Market
The economic dimension of the public realm is
complex because it is inextricably linked to the
private realm and in particular to notions of private
property and ownership. It is useful to consider
three components of the economic public
realm. Public goods are publicly held resources
that can be consumed by anyone, including such
things as air or network television. Public finance
is concerned with the provision and management
of public goods, typically through taxation. Finally,
the market is a public institution that exists to
orchestrate the exchange of private resources.
First defined by Paul Samuelson, a public good
is a resource that individuals cannot be prevented
from consuming (i.e., nonexcludable) and for
which an individual’s consumption does not
decrease its potential consumption by others (i.e.,
nonrivalrous). Air is a common example of a public
good because it is unlimited, and all can freely
consume it, but many of the public spaces that
constitute the spatial public realm are also examples.
This basic conception is often expanded to
include goods that do not meet these strict criteria
because they involve costs. Natural resources like
water and government services like national defense
have large (but not unlimited) supplies and are difficult
(but not impossible) to exclude people from
consuming. Such situations give rise to the “free­rider
problem,” wherein rational, utility­maximizing individuals
do not contribute to the production of public
goods because they can consume such resources at no
cost, regardless of their contribution.
One solution to the free­rider problem is to
make individuals’ contribution to the provision of
public goods involuntary by funding them through
taxation. This is, in part, the purpose of public
finance. Public finance exists at multiple levels,
from national to local and municipal, and at each
level, there are multiple interests competing for a