POPS Art! David L. Johnson’s “Rule” and the Legal Landscape of New York’s Privately Owned Public Spaces

July 31, 2026

Left: Seagram Building in Manhattan, New York, Ryan Ng, 2025

Right: Plaza at 375 Park Avenue Rules of Conduct Sign, Sam Brady-Myerov, 2026

By Sam Brady-Myerov

On the sixth floor of the 2026 Whitney Biennial, metal signs line one of the gallery’s longest walls. Some are pristine and solid, while others are weathered and bent, marked by their physical removal. They read: “Rules of Conduct,” “NOTICE,” “No Radio Playing or Amplified Sounds,” “SLEEPING, LOITERING OR DISORDERLY CONDUCT,” “Assemblages of 25 persons or more or public demonstrations,” and “Barbecuing.”

The signs are part of New York artist David L. Johnson’s ongoing artwork, Rule. In 2024, Johnson began removing code of conduct signs from New York’s Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) and reinstalling them in horizontal rows on gallery walls. Now at the Biennial, Rule not only transforms legal transgression into art, but puts viewers face to face with the laws that govern everyday spaces: authority that must be seen to be enforced, yet is often rendered invisible.

Making it POPS

POPS were first created in New York City through the 1961 Zoning Resolution.^[1] The Resolution completely overhauled the city’s land use regulations, replacing the outdated 1916 code. After its adoption, it was celebrated as a “mandate for a better City…a giant stride forward in the City’s efforts to meet the compelling problems imposed by a modern metropolis.”^[2]

Despite its relatively short history, zoning has become one of the defining forces shaping New York City and nearly every urban area in the United States. New York’s 1916 Zoning Resolution was the first comprehensive, citywide zoning ordinance in U.S. history, regulating how land could be used within specific geographic districts.^[3] The code introduced height and setback controls, as well as separate residential, commercial, and industrial districts. It was also amended several times to address the city’s continued growth, rising concerns over access to light and air, and advances in building technology.^[4]

By the middle of the 20th century, the regulations and amendments that had guided New York through the largest building boom in U.S. history had become outdated. Influenced by modern planning theory, urban developers turned to favor high-rise towers that left ground-level open space, adopting Le Corbusier’s pioneering “tower-in-the-park” model.^[5] Take, for example, the Empire State Building and the Seagram Building. Built in the 1930s, the Empire State Building maximizes its footprint before building up into its distinctive wedding cake stacked form. In contrast, the late-1950s Seagram Building features a large plaza at its base, allowing for a straight tower without a setback from the street.

In 1961, the City formally adopted its revised Zoning Resolution, incorporating both the “tower-in-the-park” model and new planning concepts such as incentive zoning and parking requirements.^[6] The Resolution remains the foundation of New York’s zoning regulations, largely because it was designed to accommodate ongoing amendments as the city continues to evolve. It has also become an influential model for urban zoning throughout the United States and abroad.^[7]

The 1961 Resolution is dense and complex—the City even published a Zoning Handbook^[8] to guide readers through it—yet the document follows a consistent commitment to increasing open space. One of its most significant innovations was incentive zoning, in which the City encouraged, rather than required, private developers to provide public benefits in exchange for additional development rights. This is where POPS first emerged: publicly accessible spaces built, owned, and maintained by private property owners in exchange for building bonuses.^[9]

New York City Planning Commission, Zoning Maps and Resolution of the City of New York (Article III, Chapter 33, Section 13 and 15), Page 126–7, 1961

From the 1960s to the 1990s, the POPS program expanded rapidly, particularly in Midtown Manhattan and the Financial District. Under these zoning incentives, developers could receive up to a 20% floor area bonus by incorporating public space into their projects, a significant benefit in New York’s high-density districts.^[10]

Over the following decades, the City expanded the types of spaces eligible for POPS, including elevated and sunken plazas, covered pedestrian spaces, and open-air concourses, while adding requirements for amenities such as seating, landscaping, lighting, and improved accessibility.^[11] The incentive structure also grew beyond extra floor area to include zoning waivers and designation as special zoning districts.^[12] As of 2026, more than 590 POPS exist throughout New York City, providing roughly 3.8 million square feet of public space in exchange for approximately 16 million square feet of private development.^[13]

Writing the Rules

Despite the program’s success in substantially expanding public open space in New York City, its legislative shortcomings became increasingly apparent. A study conducted in the late 1990s, culminating in the publication of Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience in 2000, brought many of these issues to the surface. Led by Harvard University professor Jerold S. Kayden in collaboration with the New York City Department of City Planning and the Municipal Art Society of New York, the study found that while POPS had produced an impressive quantity of public space, the quality of that space was often lacking.^[14]

The study further found that more than 40% of developers had illegally made their POPS private by locking gates, incorporating cafés that limited access to only paying customers, installing hostile architecture, and employing security personnel who restricted public use.^[15] Across all POPS, those constructed during the 1960s and 1970s were identified as having the most significant issues with both quality and public access.^[16]

Almost immediately after the study’s publication, the City filed eight administrative and three judicial actions against POPS owners for operating illegal spaces.^[17] Over the following decade, city officials continued to introduce new regulations to better document and improve existing POPS: including expanded data collection, updated design guidelines, and policies emphasizing programming and community engagement.^[18]

While these early-2000s reforms focused on improving the design, accessibility, and management of POPS, another major shift in the legal landscape came with the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement. For fifty-nine days, thousands of protesters camped in Zuccotti Park, a POPS owned by Brookfield Properties.^[19] The park’s POPS designation made the occupation possible: by law, the space had to remain open and accessible to the public 24 hours a day, while Brookfield’s authority to regulate activities such as camping or amplified sound remained ambiguous. In the months and years that followed, private owners significantly increased their oversight of POPS. Although the spaces remained legally open to the public, owners explicitly governed by installing strict code of conduct signs.

In 2017, the City passed Local Law 116, later amended by Local Law 250, to clarify how POPS owners could regulate their spaces. The legislation established a standardized city signage system requiring signs that identify each POPS and communicate its amenities to the public.^[20] Although the law primarily addresses information such as hours of operation, accessibility, and contact information, many owners have since installed their own discretionary signs to regulate the behavior of POPS users.^[21]

 

 

The city’s standardized signage emphasizes what a POPS provides to the public, while the owner’s signage dictates how the public is expected to behave within it. Responsibility shifts from the private owner to the individual visitor, replacing information about ownership, operation, and avenues for complaints with warnings of removal if standards of “passive recreation” are not met. Yet under current law, as long as these privately installed signs remain visible and comply with the City’s material requirements, the rules they communicate are enforceable against all users of the space.

Seeing the Signs

David L. Johnson began removing POPS signs in 2024. Just as Occupy Wall Street was a watershed moment for POPS, it was also a formative one for Johnson, who had just begun his first year at Cooper Union. With the occupation unfolding just two miles away, the artist was drawn to the friction between public and private property.^[22] In one of his earliest works, Gates, Johnson rearranged sectional fences that restricted access to Tompkins Square Park, balancing them in absurd configurations.^[23] He would continue working with found and stolen objects that shape access throughout New York City. His 2020 work, Loiter, removes fragments of hostile architecture, including spikes, metal balls, and pipes, and reassembles them in gallery spaces.^[24]

According to Johnson, removing POPS signs “opens up the possibility for, at least on a legal basis, for other types of activity to potentially happen in these spaces.”^[25] Rule, Johnson’s collection of POPS signs featured in the 2026 Whitney Biennial, functions both as an index and as a mode of subtraction. It serves as a record of evolving zoning codes, shifting urban and social fabrics, and the private sector’s ongoing negotiation between building larger and controlling public space. At the same time, Johnson removes the signs just as the signs authorize private owners to remove the public. The work questions which forms of ownership and spatial occupation are recognized as legitimate, and how those assumptions can be manipulated to create new degrees of freedom within the urban landscape.

Reflecting on his artistic thefts, Johnson noted that private owners often respond by replacing the signs immediately and aggressively.^[26] Their absence poses a significant threat: without the signs, owners lose the legal basis for enforcing their posted restrictions. Johnson has acknowledged that removing them carries some degree of risk, but he draws inspiration from the legal transgressions of New York’s graffiti and street artists, the work of conceptual artists Dennis Oppenheim and David Hammons, and the writings of art historian Joan Kee.^[27]

However, the stolen signs in the Whitney’s upper-floor gallery do not offer a complete picture of Johnson’s engagement with POPS. In 2026, Johnson inaugurated Claim, an intervention designating the Whitney’s own property markers as artworks.^[28] Embedded in the concrete sidewalk, these stone signs mark the four corners of the museum’s property line. They outline an outdoor plaza that provides nearly 8,500 square feet of landscaped public space and doubles as an entrance to the High Line.^[29]

Unlike rigid metal POPS signage, architect Renzo Piano designed the museum’s property markers in soft stone, causing them to weather gradually. For Johnson, this erosion—the literal wearing away of private rules and municipal authority over city space—functions as an extension of his sign removals. In a city where codes of conduct derive power from visibility, developers build larger-than-life towers in exchange for offering a fraction of themselves to the public, and private entities quietly rule the public sphere, these signs need to be seen. And David L. Johnson allows us to look at them in their full capacity.

About the Author

Sam Brady-Myerov (Center for Art Law Summer 2026 Graduate Intern) is a second-year master’s student in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art (HTC) program at MIT. She earned her B.A. in Art History and Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis in 2025 and was awarded a Fulbright Research/Open Study Award to Brazil. Her work focuses on urban decoration and the negotiations through which artists, public and private actors, and architects shape shared visual spaces.

Suggested Readings

1. Visit the 2026 Whitney Biennial through August 23 to see David L. Johnson’s Rule and Claim. Admission is free every Friday from 5:00–10:00 p.m. and on the second Sunday of every month. Find tickets here.
2. Explore New York City’s Privately Owned Public Spaces through the NYC Department of City Planning’s Interactive POPS Map and Database, or visit Advocates for Privately Owned Public Spaces (APOPS).
   1. ZoLa (NYC’s Zoning & Land Use Map) also offers a great resource to examine the city’s zoning regulations and planning initiatives.
3. Jerold S. Kayden, Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience (2000).
4. Read Joan Kee’s Models of Integrity: Art and Law in Post-Sixties America (2023) or watch her Art Matters Lecture to explore the relationship between conceptual art, legal transgression, and artistic practice.
5. Explore the original design standards for New York City’s early POPS through Appendix E of the New York City Zoning Resolution.

Select References

1. New York City Planning Commission, Zoning Maps and Resolution of the City of New York, N.Y.C. Department of City Planning (Dec. 15, 1961), available at https://www.nyc.gov/assets/planning/downloads/pdf/zoning/zoning-nyc/zoning_maps_and_resolution_1961.pdf. ↑
2. New York City Planning Commission, Zoning Handbook: A Guide to the Zoning Resolution of the City of New York, N.Y.C. Department of City Planning (1961), available at https://www.nyc.gov/assets/planning/downloads/pdf/zoning/zoning-nyc/zoning_handbook_1961.pdf. ↑
3. New York City Department of City Planning, Zoning in NYC, N.Y.C. Department of City Planning (2026), available at https://www.nyc.gov/content/planning/pages/zoning/zoning-nyc. ↑
4. Id. ↑
5. Id.Ana Torres Barchino et al., The “Tower in the Park” in New York City (1930–1965): A Comparative Analysis between Cooperative and Public Housing, Journal of Planning History, 25(2) (Nov. 20, 2025), available at https://doi.org/10.1177/15385132251379786. ↑
6. New York City Department of City Planning, Zoning in NYC, supra note 3. ↑
7. Id. ↑
8. New York City Planning Commission, Zoning Handbook, supra note 2. ↑
9. New York City Department of City Planning, Privately Owned Public Spaces, N.Y.C. Department of City Planning (2026), available at https://www.nyc.gov/content/planning/pages/our-work/plans/citywide/privately-owned-public-spaces. ↑
10. Id. ↑
11. Id. ↑
12. Id. ↑
13. Id. ↑
14. Jerold S. Kayden, New York City Department of City Planning & The Municipal Art Society of New York, Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience, John Wiley & Sons (2000). ↑
15. Id. ↑
16. Id. ↑
17. Jerold S. Kayden, What are POPS?, Advocates for Privately Owned Public Spaces (2024), available at https://apops.mas.org/about/what-are-pops/. ↑
18. Id. ↑
19. Matthew Bolton, Stephen Froese & Alex Jeffrey, This Space Is Occupied!: The Politics of Occupy Wall Street’s Expeditionary Architecture and De-gentrifying Urbanism, In: Welty, E., Bolton, M., Nayak, M., Malone, C. (eds) Occupying Political Science, Palgrave Macmillan, New York (2013), available at https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137277404_6. ↑
20. New York City Department of City Planning, Privately Owned Public Spaces, supra note 9.Local Law No. 116 of 2017, N.Y.C. (2017) (codified at N.Y.C., N.Y., Admin. Code § 25-114).Local Law No. 250 of 2017, N.Y.C. (2017) (amending N.Y.C., N.Y., Admin. Code § 25-114). ↑
21. Madeline Brown, Alex Donahue & Madlen Simon, Visual Mixed Messaging: The Role of Signage in Public and Private Governance of New York City Interior Privately Owned Public Spaces, Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding, 7(1) (Dec. 20, 2023), available at https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2470-9670.2023.v7.i1.a135. ↑
22. Ella Martin-Gachot, David L. Johnson Turns Hostile Architecture Into Art. His Biggest Inspiration? New Yorkers, CULTURED (Nov. 21, 2024), available at https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2024/11/21/young-artist-david-l-johnson-interview/. ↑
23. David L. Johnson, Gates, David L. Johnson (2011–2013), available at https://davidljohnson.nyc/Gates. ↑
24. David L. Johnson, Loiter, David L. Johnson (2020–ongoing), available at https://davidljohnson.nyc/Loiter. ↑
25. Nate Heiges, David L. Johnson, Rule, June 2, 2026, The Selection Committee Radio Show (June 9, 2026), available at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/david-l-johnson-rule-june-2-2026/id1591970247?i=1000771874412. ↑
26. Id. ↑
27. Id. ↑
28. Id. ↑
29. Whitney Museum of American Art, The Building, Whitney Museum of American Art Press (2018), available at https://whitney.org/press/the-building. ↑