The Dictionary of Human Geography

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public services. Such partnerships have been

promoted as part of the neo-liberalism

agenda for two main reasons. Ideologically,

private companies are presented as more effi-

cient at managing large projects than the pub-

lic sector (cf.privatization). Pragmatically,

undertaking developments in this way can

allow governments to avoid bearing the capital

costs in their budgets – thereby reducing the

public-sector borrowing requirement and, it is

believed, interest rates and/or avoiding large

increases in taxes to pay the upfront costs.

An example of such partnerships in the UK

has been the Private Finance Initiative

launched in the 1990s, whereby contractors

undertake the capital works – building a

prison, hospital, school, or road, for example

• and then lease the facility to the government,
  which pays for the facility through its current
  rather than capital account. In some cases, the
  private contractor may either operate the new
  facility and pay part of the profit to the gov-
  ernment (as with a toll road) or is given some
  role in its management (as with a place on a
  school’s governing body) – this is known as the
  state ‘contracting out’ part of the provision of
  public services.
  Examples of PPPs include New York’s
  Central Park, which is managed for the City’s
  Department of Parks and Recreation by the
  Central Park Conservancy, and an extension
  of California’s State Route 125 south of San
  Diego, which was built by a private company –
  California Transportations Ventures Inc; the
  Lane Cove Tunnel under Sydney Harbour in
  Australia was constructed under a similar
  scheme, with the contractor then operating it
  on a 33-year lease. In the UK, the National Air
  Traffic Services (NATS), which control use of
  the country’s airspace, is part-owned by the
  government (which has a 49 per cent stake),
  with most of the remainder held by a consor-
  tium of companies involved in the airline busi-
  ness: as with many such projects in the UK,
  the work of NATS is overseen by an independ-
  ent regulator, which can control prices and the
  quality of service provision.
  Whether the use of PPPs is either more
  efficient or more effective is open to doubt.
  Some claim that the overall cost of the lease-
  back arrangements will be greater than the
  initial capital costs, so that PPPs in effect
  involve the taxpayer creating profits for the
  private sector, which may be enhanced by the
  private companies’ employment practices: in
  response, others argue that without such part-
  nerships many projects would not happen,
  because the public sector cannot bear their

cost without substantial increases in tax rates,

which would deter other investment and

entrepreneurship. rj

Suggested reading

Bovaird (2004); Walzer and Jacobs (1998); Wet-

tenhall (2003). See also http://www.hm-treasury.

gov.uk/documents/public_private_partnerships/

ppp_index.cfm

public services Services that are provided by

(or on behalf of) thestateaccording to non-

marketcriteria; that is, on the basis of the

need for the services rather than the ability to

pay. Although the boundaries between what

counts as a ‘public’ or a ‘private’ service have

historically been subject to change, together

with which sector has done the providing, in

general services are provided collectively

because provision through the market or the

third sector is believed to be either inefficient,

ineffective or inequitable. Studies inside and

outside of geography have tended to focus on a

number of areas of public service provision

and utilization, such aseducation,health

careand housing (seehousing studies: see

also Walsh, 1995). In each case a particular

type ofcollective consumptionpolitics has

been found to exist, over the provision of the

public service and the conditions under which

it is provided. Geographers have been particu-

larly sensitive, not surprisingly, to the geo-

graphical aspect of provision of services,

related to wider concerns over spatial

inequalities,territorial justiceandwel-

fare geography (Smith and Lee, 2004).

Three arguments have been made for the need

for a geographically attuned analysis of distri-

bution of public services and the level of pro-

vision: first, that service provision varies by

territory; second, that the benefits of a pub-

lic service decrease the further an individual is

away from its provision (cf.distance decay);

and, third, that the location of services matters

to surrounding areas and neighbourhoods, in

the form ofexternalities– these are impacts

that are not part of the initialdecision-mak-

ingprocess, and can be either ‘negative’ or

‘positive’, although in many cases externalities

are both, how you regard them depends on

your own position.

Underpinning much geographical work on

public services is an attention to the restructur-

ing of the welfare state (Pinch, 1997).

Decisions made by thestate apparatus,over

the provision of public services, reflect wider

economic and political processes. Geographical

distribution is often the outcome of a range of

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PUBLIC SERVICES