From sidewalks and schools to the CBC, the public realm is under siege at every turn.

True, this isn’t news, but now that our cities have started to look like a cross between Tim Hortons and Shoppers Drug Mart, we might want to think twice about our unseemly haste to surrender those few corners of town that remain unfranchised, non-retail and commercial-free.

But it may already be too late; in addition to selling off the physical spaces we share, the digital landscape we now inhabit is also private property.

This electronic terrain is like a series of malls, open to all but under constant surveillance. Google now tailors ads to take advantage of our personal browsing habits. Spend time on a website looking at, say, auctions of 19th-century Japanese prints, next thing you know, that’s what’s being advertised when you click on search.

Maybe none of this matters. Perhaps it’s not important that our every move is monitored. But as a result, two of the great, though paradoxical, gifts of the metropolis — anonymity and a sense of being part of something — are now threatened.

Outdoors, illegal billboards and officially sanctioned street advertising block the view; indoors we face endless television and radio commercials. It’s almost worth listening to CBC Radio 2 just for the fact it has no ads. Unlike one of its classical music rivals, Moses Znaimer’s tedious CFMX, programming doesn’t exist to sell soap.

Now, of course, that’s what we all must do. No organization, no service, no imagined public good, shall be exempt. If there’s an opportunity to “monetize,” it shall not be overlooked.

Given the precarious economic circumstances in which we live, this sort of approach appeals on many levels. It seems the right thing to do, especially in the eyes of a conservative political elite unwilling to contemplate an alternative such as taxing the rich, who are now themselves arguing they don’t pay enough.

In the meantime, what has been forgotten is the fact commercialization changes our relationship to the thing being commercialized. In some contexts, say, a supermarket or shopping centre, it’s what we expect. In others, listening to CBC Radio, it’s not. Because most of us find advertising dull, stupid, repetitive and intrusive, we’d rather have less than more. It wastes our time as it exhorts us to waste our money.

Not even our children are exempt from the onslaught. Now Toronto educational authorities tell us there must be “sponsorships” in schools to make up for the funding shortfalls. The kids have said no. Interestingly, they want what they call a “safe zone,” an advertising-free environment.

And there will only be more. Unlike the apocryphal Vietnamese village that had to be destroyed to be saved, the public realm can simply be sold off.

But once that happens, it no longer belongs to us. Organizational needs will be served, but not those of the user. And as institutions are forced to turn themselves into businesses, our connection to them becomes a variation on the relationship between consumers and corporations. They act on their own behalf, not ours.

Again, many would applaud. How often do we hear that government must be run more like private enterprise? That may be nonsense, but — no pun intended — we buy it.

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If each generation remakes the public realm in its own image, ours has looked into the mirror and seen little worth saving. Perhaps it’s time to look again; we might find something to keep after all.

Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca