"My street". Reflections on the relationships between locals and particular places and on what this implies for the use of these places.

When we say "my country," we never imply anything about possession; instead, we refer to belonging. Arguably, the same applies to "my city". However, we often describe relationships close to possession concerning particular places in the city or the street we live in. In this paper, I ask how the urban experience influences the kind of relationships between a person and their place and what they are or are not entitled to do concerning this place. I develop my argument by referring to three case studies. 1. The dog walkers. My neighbour from a nearby street and I walk the dogs every morning. The dogs tend to attack each other. My neighbour says: "Your dog is aggressive; you should walk her only in your street, not mine." What does he mean by 'my street'? He is not even the house's owner – he rents there temporarily – so he does not mean that he has some property rights. Nevertheless, he implies that the fact that he resides there gives him some advantage over me concerning the use of the street. This is a widely shared intuition. Can we justify it? 2. The rival NGOs. During the ten months of protest against the government's attempts to change the Israeli regime from a liberal democracy to an authoritarian regime (December 2023 - October 2023), two NGOs clashed over the use of a particular location in the city of Tel Aviv. One NGO, End the Occupation, started to demonstrate in a particular location where Achim Laneshek had been demonstrating for a couple of weeks. These NGOs have rather different agendas; hence Achim Laneshek thought that End the Occupation was damaging their political activity and demanded that they leave the place. In reply End the Occupation claimed that nobody had a right to an exclusive use of public urban space. Yet, Achim Laneshek argued that continuous and lengthy use of a particular space gives them priority in its use. The latter is a widely shared intuition. Why? Is the rationale similar to that of Locke's proviso? 3. The sidewalk café. When I lived in Oxford, there was a local café that became very popular. Therefore, during the summer, it put tables on the sidewalk to serve the many customers. However, Oxford is a walkable city, and pedestrians hurrying to their work in the morning found these tables annoying as they had to get off the sidewalk and walk on the busy street, which was dangerous. The question here is not only the interest of the café owners vs. the pedestrians. It is a more complicated case because the stakeholders are those who think that neighbourhoods must have flourishing cafés and that this is part of what constitutes a good, vibrant city vs. those who want the city to remain walkable. Thus, the question is how to reason about this within the context of urbanity and city life and not only the particular space.