Justifying and resisting public park commercialisation: The battle for Battersea Park

Urban parks have always been contested and contradictory spaces: highly ordered and elitist, yet valued as democratic places and public amenities. In an era of neoliberal austerity there are greater pressures for parks to pay for themselves and the associated commercialisation often exacerbates conflicts between park users and managing authorities. This paper focuses on how their increased use as venues for commercial events affects the publicness of urban parks. This issue is explored via the case of Battersea Park in London which was used as a venue for Formula E motor races in 2015 and 2016. These events disrupted park access during race weekends, but also in the periods when the venue was assembled / disassembled. The events were resisted by a community action group whose campaigning eventually resulted in the decision by Formula E to cease racing in Battersea Park. The paper analyses how Formula E events were justified and opposed using a form of rhetorical analysis inspired by the work of Michael Billig. Interviews were undertaken with key stakeholders involved in the case and their arguments were analysed to reveal different ways of thinking about public parks. The dispute is understood as one underpinned by different interpretations of who and what a park is for, and by contrasting views on the impact of interruptions to everyday routines. The Formula E events reduced public access, but the dispute surrounding the events arguably made Battersea Park more public by generating debate and by provoking local activists to defend their park

Wicked problems in design and ethics

While the relationship between ethics and design is usually thought of in terms of the application of the former to the latter, it is not as if ethics is a settled body of theory that can authoritatively guide design practice. Depending which theories or ideas we refer to we receive different guidance as to what to do. Indeed, design may have as much to contribute to ethical theory as vice versa. This essay builds connections between design and ethics, looking to the similarities of structure between wicked problems in design and those dilemmas that are of central concern in normative ethical theory. Understanding design and ethics in mutual terms, ethical questions in design need not be understood in terms of external limitations or trade offs between competing priorities. Moreover, the way designers cope with the ethical challenges presented by wicked problems may inform how we approach complex ethical challenges in other contexts, including some of those that arise within ethical discourse itself