When Cities Are Completely Private

The New York Times has an interesting article (NYTimes reg req) about a mall west of Boston, MA that has expanded and added high-end luxury condos in it.

While this may seem like a puffy feature piece, I feel some critical analysis is required here.

New residents see the development as the best of both worlds, with a downtown downstairs. “It’s like having the city come out to the suburbs,” Ms. Sandell said.

It is true that there will be several hundred people living in this complex. That is on top of the thousands of people who will shop in the mall. But the bottom line is this new "town square" is built on private property.

If something bad happens there, the news media will be expressly prohibited from gaining access to the scene. As it is, media visits to malls for routine retails stories are heavily controlled and monitored (cameras typically have a security escort to ensure the media are sufficiently under control).

• When scaffolding collapsed at a mall at a city north of Massachusetts, the news media were kicked off the mall's property. News crews were never allowed inside to see the damage from that perspective.

• The people in charge of the mall even heckled and individual who was in the mall and happen to take a personal photograph within it.

Certainly the malls are well within their rights as private property owners to restrict what does or does not happen on their grounds. But this is frightening: to have mini-cities built completely on private property (and enclosed indoors) with no public streets with easy access to the area can interfere with the media's ability to do its job if something goes wrong at one of these locations.

Sure, the media is under restrictions all the time: inside stadiums, arenas and any private property we are invited onto. We understand that. But when entire communities are sealed off from anyone with a camera, it seems to me that there could be unintended consequences.