Building a Compliant Commons: The Story of People's Park at the University of Georgia

This thesis explores the history of People’s Park, a landscape created by students on the University of Georgia (UGA) campus in 1970. Drawing upon archival documents and oral history interviews, this paper offers the first history of the park. It also investigates the connection between UGA People’s Park and its namesake in Berkeley, California, which has been theorized as an “insurgent public space.” Building upon this analysis, this paper compares the UGA and Berkeley parks while situating both parks within the larger discussion of public space and the commons. Despite sharing identical names and emerging during the same historical era, the two parks do not reflect a common political consciousness, as the UGA park builders were considerably less radical in opposing capitalism and social hierarchies. Nevertheless, the comparison speaks to the translatability of ideals and the plurality of approaches used by people to create and control the spaces they desire.