Beaches are a polarizing issue amid the pandemic. Experts say that’s because a frenzy of privatization’ led to smaller, more crowded public spaces.
As Florida’s beaches shut down in April, part of the state’s pandemic stay-at-home order, Josh Davis noticed something strange in Palm Beach county.
A lot of that beach crowd just kind of moved on to the road and the sidewalk. People set up lawn chairs on the grass, said Davis, an ocean rescue lifeguard with the county. If the goal was to keep people from congregating, all it did was really push them a few feet away.
On Monday, when the beach officially reopened, it remained calm. Beachgoers trickled in, keeping their distance from each other, though not usually wearing masks. Davis was relieved.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, beaches like testing and lockdowns have become a polarizing issue. When photographs of a newly opened and crowded Jacksonville Beach in northern Florida flooded social media, critics tweeted #FloridaMorons. In New York City, residents are angry at Mayor Bill de Blasio’s previous decision to keep city beaches closed during Memorial Day weekend.
Beaches tend to evoke more reaction and anger than parks and other public spaces. It’s in large part, experts say, because the US shoreline is increasingly private, and controlled by fewer, and richer, people.
We went from a time, prior to WWII, where much of American shorelines were treated as public land, to a frenzy of privatization where the shoreline was gobbled up, said Andrew Kahrl, a professor at the University of Virginia who wrote The Land Was Ours: African American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South.
Earlier in the 19th century, US beaches were largely public and inhabited by working-class coastal communities, many of them African American watermen, Kahrl said. The coastline wasn’t coveted property, since it was hard to maintain in the face of natural forces like hurricanes and high tide, and it was groups like the Gullah, who were the keepers.
By 1970, however, over 95% of US coastlines suitable for recreation were closed to the general public. To add to those restrictions, many municipalities imposed parking fees and tolled roads to limit entry.
The result is that our public beaches have become smaller and more crowded, while a small group of affluent elite hold the keys to the rest of the coastline. The public’s ability to enjoy the shoreline has decreased in direct proportion to our increasing inequality, Kahrl said.
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