Bridge the Public-Private Divide

Abstract

On August 13, 2014, the City of Boston held a public hearing on a controversial new mobile application called Haystack. Haystack, an on-demand parking application modeled on Uber, had launched in Boston only twelve days before at a lavish party described by one journalist as something out of the HBO sitcom Silicon Valley. The twenty-four-year-old CEO Eric Meyer found himself at odds over the app with City of Boston legislators within a matter of days. He struggled to refute accusations that the app was profiting off public space, as opposed to selling “information” about parking space availability. At the hearing for legislation banning the app, Meyer warned the city that “to prohibit the app would be a signal from the city against innovation,” calling the decision “ominous” for young entrepreneurs such as himself involved in the city’s nascent tech scene.