Public property is property, which is dedicated to the use of the public. It is a subset of state property.

The term may be used either to describe the use to which the property is put, or to describe the character of its ownership (owned collectively by the population of a state). This is in contrast to private property, owned by an individual person or artificial entities that represent the financial interests of persons, such as corporations.[1] State ownership, also called public ownership, government ownership or state property, are property interests that are vested in the state, rather than an individual or communities. Public property is an oxymoron. Because everybody is said to own public property, nobody owns it. Nobody enjoys control of its use, nobody is responsible or liable for its misuse. "Public" property has no owner, so either it's not property, or else it's not public. The word "public" would seem to imply that the property in question is under the control of the actual public, which would be the citizenry. The word private would seem to imply exclusivity. What is commonly called public property, however, is under the direct control of the state rather then the public. So the fact that it is labeled as being public property is very misleading and disingenuous. In contemporary terminology, the term public property is an obfuscation of what should be called state property. In reality, those who constitute the state, in conjunction with a small amount of wealthy elites from the public who are in patronage with the state, directly and exclusively control what is called public property. If the actual public were truly in control of it, they would be able to directly determine how their portion of it is used as individual or sell their portion of it. Instead, they are taxed to maintain the exclusive control over the property by bureaucrats. The public does not directly determine how the property in question is used. They are denied the true implications of ownership over it, despite being the ones who bear the cost for its maintenance. Institutions such as corporations and central banks are chartered into existence by states and granted special legal privileges and protections. So-called private institutions that are in patronage with the state and that are granted the privilege of externalizing their costs onto members of the public are no longer independent. They may be viewed as extensions of the government. While to some extent they may still be under the control of certain private individuals, usually a very exclusive group, that control was granted to them by the state. They are dependant on the state for their existence and often the state is one of their main customers.