This morning, minutes before the city had threatened to forcibly remove the Occupy Wall Street protestersfrom New York’s Zuccotti park, the city backed down and said the protestors would, in fact, be allowed to remain.

Many of the activists have been sleeping in the park itself, and the owners of the park had decided that they would need to clear out in order to clean up their space.

It was more than just a simple clean-up though — when they came back, the park owners also said they could no longer use sleeping bags, tarps, or other means of camping out.

That crisis has been averted for the moment, but how is it that the protesters have been allowed to camp out for this long in a public space, anyway?

We went to Mitchell Moss, professor of urban policy and planning at NYU, for details on the latest incident in the long history of New York City protests.

According to the Moss, New York is used to being the stage for all kinds of marches and protests — but usually only for a couple of hours. Parks run by the city close at a certain hour, and it is in fact only because this park is privately owned that Occupy Wall Street has been able to set up camp at all.