Pretty much, yes. In contemporary economic analysis, the Tragedy of the Commons, the (alleged) overuse of public land, is analysed in terms of externalities. According to Hal Varian’s textbook Microeconomics an externality is a good produced by an agent such that another agent has a preference with regard to that good & there is no market for the good. Which seems to fit your problem. Unfortunately, they don’t offer many solutions, mainly because an externality is by definition not part of a market. Usually, economist try to solve this problem by means of “well defined property rights” (making the good part of a market) or by some kind of intervention (taxes, legislations and so on, in some sense simulating a market). My feeling is that this isn’t going to help much.

The tragedy of the commons is very clear among individuals who lack environmental awerness and environmental ethics. The best solution would be to enforce the law by putting signs warning people from leaving their trash around as the place is continuously monitored by cameras. This will make people abide by governing rules.

In its formulation by Garrett Harding, the Tragedy of the Commons is, at first, an economic problem associated with open access, that highlights the conflict between individual and collective rationality. Hardin used the analogy of herdsmen grazing their animals on a common field: from logical but not collective thinking, the benefits from introducing more animals accrue to individual herdsmen while the costs from overgrazing are shared. Harding aimed to show that, with second-hand environmental implications, "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all." And so, even if the parallel is intriguing, it is something of a stretch to compare littering in a park to the gross excesses to which Harding, a biologist, alluded (or the destruction of such species as whales, to which the theory is most commonly applied). Besides, many historians have refuted the fact that the commons of, say, England, France, or Germany were mismanaged: the nature of their use was determined by the members of the communities as a whole, who regularly met to discuss the affairs and judge breaches of regulations and disputes. The point is that the communities had strong incentives to protect their resources to the best of their abilities, even if that meant not maximizing production. In short, the communities (and their institutions) functioned and the trouble is when they do not or no one "owns" the resource (which is the case of the whales).

The tragedy of the commons is also applicable to shared resources, and when there is no power controlling such resources they usually get abused and mismanaged such as wild lands and streets in many parts of the world where they are trashed and abused by the commons.

I think it is not a special case, in fact it is probably a close-to-perfect example of the Tragedy of the Commons.

Celeste Lacuna-Richman I was hesitant to regard it as a straightforward example because (i) no resource is being consumed (ii) the abuse is aesthetic and is compatible with continued use, (iii) the abusers are in fact paying for regular cleanup with their taxes, and (iv) the abuse is intermittent and short-lived. But (i) and (ii) can of course be nuanced in different ways. As for (iii), even in the absence of such abuse, the cost of park maintenance wouldn't be affected (the difference might at most be on the order of 2 guys standing around watching 2 guys briefly doing work instead of 3 guys standing around watching 1 person briefly doing work 😏).

I think your hesitation is perfectly reasonable. However, I consider it a straightforward example because, originally coming from "the Global South," I have observed countless times how littering often renders land and water resources both as unusable, to live in or even live near to. For people who are at subsistence level incomes and with governments who cannot pay for clean-up, it is a tragedy.

The Tragedy of the Commons although formulated from an economic perspective, it’s more applicable to the environmental issues than to economics. Global warming and acid rain are clear examples of the Tragedy of the Commons.