What is a Public Utility? What is Infrastructure? What is a Public Service?

Wikipedia: What is a Public Utility? 

A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and regulation ranging from local community-based groups to statewide government monopolies.

Public utilities are meant to supply goods and services that are considered essential; water, gas, electricity, telephone, waste disposal, and other communication systems represent much of the public utility market.


Wikipedia: What is Infrastructure?

"installations that form the basis for any operation or system"

A way to embody personal infrastructure is to think of it in terms of human capital.

Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area,[1] and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function.[2] Infrastructure is composed of public and private physical structures such as roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, and telecommunications (including Internet connectivity and broadband access). In general, infrastructure has been defined as "the physical components of interrelated systems providing commodities and services essential to enable, sustain, or enhance societal living conditions" and maintain the surrounding environment.

One way to describe different types of infrastructure is to classify them as two distinct kinds: hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure.[4] Hard infrastructure is the physical networks necessary for the functioning of a modern industrial society or industry.[5] This includes roads, bridges, and railways. Soft infrastructure is all the institutions that maintain the economic, health, social, environmental, and cultural standards of a country.[5] This includes educational programs, official statistics, parks and recreational facilities, law enforcement agencies, and emergency services.


Wikipedia: What is a Public Service?

A public service or service of general (economic) interest is any service intended to address specific needs pertaining to the aggregate members of a community.[1][2] Public services are available to people within a government jurisdiction as provided directly through public sector agencies or via public financing to private businesses or voluntary organizations (or even as provided by family households, though terminology may differ depending on context). Other public services are undertaken on behalf of a government's residents or in the interest of its citizens. The term is associated with a social consensus (usually expressed through democratic elections) that certain services should be available to all, regardless of income, physical ability or mental acuity. Examples of such services include the fire brigade, police, air force, and paramedics (see also public service broadcasting).

Even where public services are neither publicly provided nor publicly financed, they are usually subject to regulation going beyond that applying to most economic sectors for social and political reasons. Public policy,[3] when made in the public's interest and with its motivations, is a type of public service.

The Right to Remain in Public Space

Implicit in the City of Grants Pass v Oregon is the decision that there is no right to remain in public space, at least as far as I can infer. 

Presumably, it is not contained in the broader meaning of the rights contained in the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

For more:


- Rights in Public Spaces.

This chapter discusses the rights of low-income persons, including those who “look poor” or homeless, to travel, to become members of a community, and to use public spaces, such as streets, parks, libraries, and post offices. Many localities have adopted “quality of life” regulations that restrict and even criminalize acts that are innocent when done in the privacy of one’s home, such as sleeping or eating, but become illegal when done in public. The chapter sets out the constitutional right to travel from state to state and within a state, and describes the practical and legal barriers that exist to the actualization of that right, such as the absence of public transportation or not having money to buy a car. Attention is given to the constitutional status of residency requirements and how they impact efforts to obtain better housing and schooling. It explores permissible limits on rights to use public spaces, and protections that may be invoked in many typical encounters with the police, such as demands for identification cards or the seizure of possessions temporarily left in a park. Practical advice is given about library services and mail delivery, as well as how to get licenses for commercial activities that make use of public spaces, including street vending.


- “You Can’t Be Here”: The Homeless and the Right to Remain in Public Space.

In cities throughout the country, homeless individuals are continuously relocated from place to place and faced with the quandary that by engaging in basic life activities they are breaking the law. Many of these individuals and their legal advocates have argued that laws prohibiting the homeless from sleeping or sitting down in public make it effectively impossible for them to exist, violating the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments and the right to travel derived from the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the vast majority of courts have rejected these arguments because they do not readily fit into existing doctrines.


- What is The Right to Public Space?

The right to public space is not among the more conventional human rights such as the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to adequate housing, or the freedom of religion or expression. Public space is usually guaranteed by default under the right to freedom of speech or the right to peaceful assembly and association. Still, some countries have made the right to public space explicit in their constitution. Colombia was the first. The 1991 Constitution states, “It is the duty of the state to protect the integrity of public space and its assignment to common use, which has priority over the individual interest.” This constitution was drafted during a time when Bogota, Colombia’s capital, was considered one of the most dangerous places in the world due to political violence and large swathes of the country were controlled by guerilla groups and drug cartels. Citizens were on edge and the public spaces throughout the country were fractured. By guaranteeing the right to public space, the State has made a commitment to protecting the social fabric of the nation.


- The Right to Public Space.

The rights in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights depend, practically, on having public spaces in which to exercise them, including the right to work (whether traveling to work, setting up shop on the sidewalk, lining up as a day laborer, or advertising one’s services), the right to form and join trade unions, freedom of conscience and religion (whether men praying on the sidewalk outside an overflowing mosque, the faithful street preaching and evangelizing, or observers publicly displaying their affiliation through what they wear) and the right to rest and leisure.