Since the late twentieth century, the governance of many public spaces in U.S. cities has shifted from municipal control to a variety of public–private partnerships (PPPs). Today, parks conservancies and other PPPs drive operational decisions, including siting, management, and budgets. They function as extrastate actors, working on behalf of the state, in place of the state. Whereas many scholars have written about the effects of this change on spatial access and inclusion in public life, this article examines how the archival records practices of public space PPPs affect popular data access and, in turn, the transparency and accountability attributed to the democratic state. I propose that when extrastate agencies are not required to make their records publicly available or to persistently contribute to the state archive, as state agencies are, the absence diminishes the long-term memory-making function of the state. This dynamic lessens the ability of stakeholders to make claims or to intervene in the democratic governance of public spaces and normalizes the structures of privatization. I use the case of Pioneer Courthouse Square (PCS) in Portland, Oregon, and its adjunct conservancy, Pioneer Courthouse Square, Inc. (PCSI), to illustrate this dynamic.

自 20 世纪后期以来，美国城市许多公共空间的治理已经从市政控制转向各种公私合作伙伴关系 (PPP)。今天，公园保护区和其他 PPP 推动运营决策，包括选址、管理和预算。他们作为国家以外的行为者，代表国家工作，代替国家工作。尽管许多学者已经写过这种变化对公共生活中的空间访问和包容性的影响，但本文研究了公共空间 PPP 的档案记录实践如何影响流行的数据访问，进而影响归因于民主国家的透明度和问责制. 我建议，当州外机构不需要像州机构那样公开其记录或持续向州档案馆提供资料时，缺席削弱了国家的长期记忆功能。这种动态降低了利益相关者提出主张或干预公共空间民主治理的能力，并使私有化结构正常化。我以俄勒冈州波特兰市的先锋法院广场 (PCS) 及其附属保护机构先锋法院广场公司 (PCSI) 为例来说明这一动态。