THE MAKING OF PUBLIC SPACES
PLAN 602 HISTORY & THEORY OF CITY PLANNING NUR ATIQA ASRI FALL 2014
INTRODUCTION Public spaces appeared in some of the world’s earliest cities in Greece and Europe. Originally, they only served a civic function by acting as spaces in which people gathered to discuss political matters, resolve disputes and carry out celebrations (D. Mitchell, 1996). The agora, as public spaces were called in Ancient Greece, served as both a forum for political and intellectual debate and a marketplace. These functions carried on in subsequent civilizations throughout the world but with place- and people-specific applications. Today, a broader definition of public spaces is used and it is often implied as all open and publicly accessible places that people go to for group or individual activities(Parkinson, 2012).
Given this broad description of public spaces, the physical form that it takes also varies widely. In the US, the more common public spaces include plazas, squares, malls, playgrounds and streets (Longo, Doberneck, & Lyndhurst Foundation, 1996). As the paper will reveal, the formation of public spaces in American cities combined a range of planning techniques over the postwar years and have been owned and managed by numerous stakeholders—public, private or semi-private. Similarly, the involvement of the public in planning public spaces has also varied with these approaches and as a result has caused some to succeed and others, fail.
While democratic planning is not the sole factor of
successful public spaces, it does often lead to more heavily used public spaces that are safe and clean. Hence, planners today have begun efforts of placemaking (Silberberg, Lorah, Disbrow, & Muessig, 2013) and shifting their approach toward participatory planning that include more democratic processes so as to create more successful public spaces.
To understand the shift towards the current approach, the paper first examines the earliest public space planning movements of the early 20 th century; beginning with the Grand Civic Design Movement led by Daniel Burnham and Frederick Olmstead.
Public Spaces of the Grand Civic Design Movement In the second half of the 19 th century, American cities saw a rapid transformation of vast lands into major parks and park systems. Majority of these public spaces were designed by Frederick Olmstead and were created largely through a top-down planning approach (Purcell, 2014). As cities became congested and unlivable from the high in-migration of those looking for employment opportunities, city dwellers began to seek open recreational spaces to escape the discordant urban environments marked by poverty. Fortunately, during the post war years, political and financial backing for solutions to this urban problem was hardly difficult to acquire, particularly from business elites (Wilson, 1994) who were concerned about overall productivity of cities. The movement, with its strong focus on the aesthetic quality of parks, claimed that design could not be detached from social issues and should ideally encourage civic pride and engagement.
While the planners of the Grand Civic Design movement had intended to sweep away social ills through beautification and monumental grandeur through well-organized public spaces offering social communion, the lack of ‘representative publicness’ (Iveson, 1998) resulted in discriminatory effects. The physical improvements of parks did not address social nor economic issues; instead they became pleasure grounds for upper classes of society (Banerjee, 2001).
Firstly, its peripheral location was often a key barrier for poorer sections of the urban society to access these parks. Prospect Park in New York (Appendix Figure 1), a popular example of the movement, was located in Brooklyn, which was, during the time of its completion, inaccessible for many. Only families who owned automobiles were able to enjoy the public space—exacerbating the inequality in New York City.
Secondly, strong financial backing by business elites meant other stakeholders’ involvement and input was not deemed valuable. In addition, with costs running over $9 million in the case of Prospect Park (Dailey, 2013), public space projects were extremely unpopular with other sections of the society that were faced with poor living conditions and low wages.
Although the planners and designers of the Civic Design Movement had
intended for social reform, many people struggled to benefit from the beauty of these spaces, which were physically beyond reach. As soon as the park systems became increasingly used by only upper classes of society, the activities and functions of the parks began to shift toward those enjoyed by only the wealthy. Golf and archery were prime examples of such activities (Colley, 2013), and these acted as further deterrents for other classes of society from using the public parks.
The Grand Civic Design Movement must be acknowledged, however, for attempting to inspire civic and moral virtue in its people through beautification. Its admirable effort to create public spaces that allowed people to ‘lift [their] gaze from the daily grind’ (Amin, 2008) unfortunately had unintended consequences that were to inevitably lead to its failure in the early 20th century. Especially with the high costs of many of these grandiose projects, the parks were particularly becoming an impractical use of available public funds during the Second World War and were replaced by more rational planning practices led by Robert Moses.
Public Spaces of the Reform Movement Beginning in the 1930s, the goal of instilling civic pride and inspiring moral values through public spaces was no longer primary to planning efforts. Instead, public spaces were created strictly for health, hygiene and active recreational purposes (Banerjee, 2001). In New
York, an important figure in this era was Robert Moses who expanded public spaces in the form of playgrounds and outdoor exercise facilities in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Manhattan. This rational approach (Carr, 1992) was seen as a solution to the crowded and polluted environments of industrial cities in America as they were often erected in inner city neighborhoods, where the working class was the predominant population and where environments were surveyed to be poorest.
The systematic methods and planning processes of this movement supposedly focused on maximizing social utility unlike its predecessor, the Civic Design Movement, which focused on aesthetics. Parks and playgrounds were perceived as public goods, and the rationale behind their production was to increase overall recreation and improve physical and mental health of populations. Furthermore, design principles and elements for public spaces were codified through Parks and Recreation standards in order to ensure coherence and compatibility of public spaces throughout cities (Coon, 2011). These codes were mandated by state enabling legislation and often simplified the processes of construction and maintenance, making it more economically efficient.
Unfortunately, because public spaces were kept consistent throughout cities by design, regardless of neighborhood demographic and culture, communities were often not consulted in the planning and implementation process. Instead, the top-down and prescriptive nature of the public space program became a form of social control to develop a set of “American values” (Banerjee, 2001). This was especially the case in Lower East Side Manhattan where overcrowded and immigrant tenement neighborhoods were interspersed with exercise facilities that featured basketball and baseball courts, deemed “American” sports (Cranz, 1982) (Appendix Figure 2).
While these public spaces did, to some extent, encourage interaction of people and communities, they often physically appeared as unassimilated features in different neighborhoods due to the standardized elements that disregarded local site conditions. Also, the activities that took place in these public spaces were not built with the consideration of socio-cultural influences of surrounding communities (Carr, 1992). Herein lies the similarity between the Grand Civic Design Movement and the rational Reform Movement in that they both seem to focus on physical determinism and the forms of public spaces more than their function for local communities as stages for social negotiation (Iveson, 1998).
While the well- organized public spaces of these previous eras offered potential for social communion, the lack of consideration for multiplicity (Amin, 2008) means that people of different backgrounds are often not encouraged to interact at a capacity to build neither social solidarity nor cultural understanding. Unfortunately, public space planning approaches were to continue on this path at least until the early 21 st century. It was not until much later that planners understood that they had to seek a balanced approach of control and order and community- participation in order to successfully bridge the gap between form and function of public spaces.
Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) Following the financial governmental cuts of mid-1970s (Banerjee, 2001), an increased reliance on private finances to create open spaces resulted in POPS sprouting in cities all over America. These were typically corporate plazas, arcades, galleries and shopping malls. Created through incentive zoning ordinances, these illusionary public spaces were built in exchange for additional Floor Area Ratio (Coon, 2011). Profit-driven private developers all over the country jumped at the opportunity to add height or bulk to their buildings for a diminutive ground floor plaza. Often, the public spaces had ‘low activity
versatility’ (Nager & Wentworth, 1976) and their access and use were either limited by opening hours or individual privileges.
Although POPS were often lauded as the most architecturally striking spaces with high visual quality (Whyte & Project for Public Spaces, 2001), these aesthetic qualities were overshadowed by numerous social problems such as loitering and drug dealing that were a result of the domination of only one user type—the undesirables (Whyte, 2009). Grace Plaza (Appendix Figure 3) is a key example from New York City of such a detrimental POPS. Despite the architectural flair of its design by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Grace Plaza was critiqued by Paul Goldberger of The New York Times as ‘one of the less successful plazas in New York City’ (Carr, 1992) because of its homogenized users. In the day, it was mostly occupied and used by office workers who bought and enjoyed lunch from nearby eateries or cafés and at night, it became a breeding ground for the homeless. Either way, there was a kind of privatization of the public space either by capital or by the homeless (Parkinson, 2012).
The presence of violence at night intimidated the general public preventing its use by others during these times. In turn, fewer eyes on the plaza led to lower surveillance of the public space, which only made it seem more unsafe. This finding corroborates that of W.H. Whyte in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (2001). In his study of public spaces in New York City during this era, he found that ‘people wanted to be around other people’ and following this, he advocated a thorough understanding of the way people used spaces, and the way they would like to use spaces. Aligning with Jane Jacobs’ sociological concept of “eyes on the street” (Jacobs, 1992), Whyte claimed that if public spaces did not attract many different types of users nor support these users and their activities, they would become vulnerable to under-utility and decay.
The Failings of 20th Century Public Space Planning Up till the early 21st century, planners failed in many respects to create public spaces that involved the public and that served all stakeholders. Despite intentions of inculcating civic pride and engagement, their methods were often physically deterministic and narrowly defined ‘the public’. Public spaces that came into being were inherently expected to respond to the needs of communities, however, often these failed to materialize and instead resulted in inequality and discord between stakeholders. Therefore, by falling short of meeting the objectives and goals set by planners of each era, the public spaces were often declared as being less successful by various parties.
Despite the changing planning and management approaches to public spaces, from physical determinism to focus on functions, a common characteristic of the three main eras identified earlier was the exclusion, control and homogenizing of public space users. This was described as the ‘fall of the public man’ (Mitchell, 2005) and it was the realization of this phenomenon that led planners to shift towards bottom-up planning approaches. Many credited Whyte for this notable shift following his 1969 study for the New York City Commissioner, which highlighted to planners their moral responsibility to create physical places that facilitated civic engagement and community interaction.
By the end of the 20th century there was also a clear move towards increased privatization of public spaces, particularly through ownership, and as a result, this led to an increasing lack of participation in the planning process. Private developers were singlehandedly allowed to decide dominant uses of spaces and restrict access of public spaces built as part of bigger office, retail or residential developments. Unfortunately, city
dwellers did not respond to these places as expected, leaving them abandoned or occupied by unanticipated individuals and groups.
Placemaking—putting public back into public spaces The rapidly globalizing world of the 21 st century has left urban communities today ever more plural (Amin, 2008). As a result, the web of stakeholders and users of public spaces has commensurately become more complex and city planners have had to increasingly adjust their approach to planning public spaces to accommodate this change. Also, as city planners began to respond to the abandoned and unsuccessful spaces formed in previous eras, they have increased mobilization of local and neighborhood communities in the planning process in the hopes of revitalizing these spaces. Although community participation was somewhat evident in the rational planning approach by degrees of tokenism (Arnstein, 1969), groups were not engaged in the design and creative processes of planning public spaces. Mostly, they were provided ‘democratic’ avenues to dissent plans that were already predetermined by planners of the era.
Placemaking encourages planners to ask nuanced questions like “what makes a good place?” and “what—and who—makes a good placemaking process?” (Madden & Project for Public Spaces, 2005). This indicates that planners must first understand the community, political power and social capital all at once before beginning to shape public spaces. In order for this to occur, planners have to engage various communities creatively in shaping public spaces. By being more involved in the process, communities get a more realistic sense of how public spaces operate, how difficult it may to be maintain and finally, why certain features cannot be installed or provided for by the city (Silberberg et al., 2013). With the building of such capacity and knowledge between various stakeholders, a more collaborative public space is created. The important characteristic is therefore fostering
deliberative discussions and civic collaboration to shape successful public spaces. The process, not the end-product, is the emphasis in placemaking and the needs and desires of a community is the greatest driver of public spaces.
One such example of the effective building of social capital and knowledge through placemaking is that of Corona Plaza in Queens (Appendix Figure 4). The 13,000sqft public plaza is located in a densely populated and ethnically diverse neighborhood. Working with their neighborhood organizations, the Department of Transportation (DOT) transformed an underutilized street into a new public space that was designed based on the community’s reactions to a temporary plaza. Design charrettes were held in the actual temporary plaza during a local cultural festival to maximize opportunities for various stakeholders to come forth with suggestions. Although many recommendations from the members of public were not implemented, planners found there was far less disappointment and instead, greater understanding amongst the public of financial or design restraints. Through the temporary plaza and charrettes held, the community was able to get a sense of what was practical in the given space and at the same time, new relationships were built amongst those participating in the design process (Silberberg et al., 2013).
This example of placemaking highlights the focus on benefits of the process in being able to broaden the community, build social capital and work beyond just a physical structure. Effective engagement of community is a crucial characteristic of successful placemaking, however, it must be treated as an ongoing process, rather than a single step in a planning process. Placemaking, therefore, is “never truly finished” (Silberberg, 2014). The
“
Placemaking is never truly finished
”
- Susan Silberberg, 2014
most successful projects of placemaking have been those that acknowledge this and, are furthermore adapted to each community’s social context.
In Corona Plaza, for example, regular community design forums conducted in a traditional town hall setting had failed to previously attract the community of new immigrants given their unfamiliarity with such procedures and distrust of public officials. Planners then adapted to the context and brought the designs outdoors to the plaza itself, during a cultural festival, that many locals attended willingly and enthusiastically. Being context-sensitive and flexible is critical to the placemaking approach as it can offer planners richer information of the local social and political context. Most importantly, it will enable planners to engage a variety of users from the ideas stage to production stage.
The temporary nature of the plaza initiated by DOT also presented many benefits to the placemaking approach. It allowed for easy changes and adaptation to the community’s needs with minimal use of resources and therefore involved less risk in the case that the plaza was to be unaccepted by locals.
In more recent years, a more extreme form of placemaking has occurred in some cities and this has often been referred to as guerilla urbanism (Hou, 2010). Normally, this occurs when communities and individuals are struggling to find their place and expressions in the contemporary city, therefore leading them to appropriate or ‘reclaim’ public spaces, often without permission or authority of governments. In these insurgent cases, public space becomes an arena of civic exchanges and debates amongst individuals and groups but what comes out of the process is a more open and inclusive space. Like placemaking, guerilla urbanism is participatory and spontaneous, open and inclusive and reflects the subjectivity of multiple actors, albeit in a contestable way.
Guerilla urbanism has been a worldwide movement where individuals have made changes to their streets or neighborhoods using creative interventions and often, it is undertaken in the style of Do-It-Yourself. Interest groups and communities, with or without the necessary authorities, spontaneously transform their public spaces. The distinction between this approach and that of placemaking described earlier is its clear objective to solve urgent and sometimes political problems that exist in the area or city. These problems are also usually related to rights and needs of the city dwellers (Hou, 2010).
A popular example of this ‘tactical urbanism’ (Silberberg et al., 2013) is the parklet (SF Planning, 2014) movement that has been observed in cities all over the world. Governments, planners and even small community groups have created parks from parking spaces to reclaim their rights to streets from the more dominant automobiles. These newlycreated public spaces are located where a consensus was reached by various members of the public as to the need to renew street life and reintroduce human activity in these spaces. Despite the hopeful advances made by placemaking, recent disputes have emerged regarding the limits of achievable equity in the process. As the process gains tract among planners, governments and the private sector, it is increasingly being misused to reignite economic development in neighborhoods and cities and therefore neglecting issues of social equity (Fainstein, 2010). Placemaking’s ability to activate public spaces, improve local business viability and public safety has unfortunately resulted in exploitation by for-profit organizations and is increasingly being confused for the process of commercialization. Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) across New York have claimed to engage in the process of placemaking to revitalize public spaces such as Bryant Park to serve its various users and stakeholders. However, many activities and events organized by the BIDs
throughout the year like annual Christmas Fairs or Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week instead only benefit few businesses in the district and result in certain members of the public to be excluded from the space. These events often do not involve local communities’ engagement and planning or merely involve one-off community consultation. This type of process often confuses itself with the iterative and ongoing process that placemaking actually entails and does not understand that community involves all those who are affected by local policies and interventions and who, often, are not part of the construction of public spaces. As a new method of planning for public spaces, placemaking still requires more time and practice to establish its core ideas of civic engagement and systemic social empowerment (Webb, 2014) amongst planners, as these are essential to the implementation of equitable public spaces. Another issue with placemaking that is increasingly being raised is the credibility of local knowledge (Arefi, 2014). As mentioned in the case of Corona Plaza, placemaking gives legitimacy to different voices in a community as well as different knowledge and understanding of a place. It is this inclusive and comprehensive knowledge capacity that makes the practice of placemaking distinguishable from previous types of public space planning processes. However, is this local knowledge appropriate and is it limiting the experts’ role in the planning process? While some may argue that local knowledge is ‘uninformed, irrational and unscientific’ (Arefi, 2014), proponents remain positive that the inherent cultural characteristics of local knowledge contain relevant memories, history and know-how that is required for “…professional knowledge about design, planning, engineering, and so on, …[to] be situated and transformed in relationship to the people in places” (Schneekloth, 1995). The problems relating to equity and knowledge credibility in placemaking that have been highlighted are of course still speculative given the primacy of the method but they
must be acknowledged in order for planners to evaluate the process in the future. Overall, it is clear that the 21st century approach to planning public spaces has clearly empowered communities and the public to take ownership of spaces between buildings. Conclusion Public spaces today are increasingly conceived and being built by citizens who have been acknowledged by planners to have the vision, inspiration, and drive to transform their own surroundings. Public spaces can no longer be places solely determined for active recreation or for specific groups of users as was once perceived by planners. Instead, it must be representative of citizens’ efforts and function as an important stage for the public to express their cultures and concerns. Particularly in today’s world of plurality, public spaces, as with the rest of the built environment, must enable creative intercourse amongst persons and also the intercourse of persons with their environment (Talen, 2000). Public spaces, as well as its planners, must also be adaptable to the changing demands of diverse urban populations and so placemaking can never truly be finished.
Appendix Figure Lawn Tennis in Prospect Park (Source: philaprintshop.com)
Image by T. de Thulstrup. "Lawn Tennis in Prospect Park." July 11, 1885. NA
Figure Desario Playground & East River Park in Lower Manhattan (Source: peoplemakeparks.org)
Figure Grace Plaza in NYC (Source: pps.org)
Figure Corona Plaza, Queens (Source: urbanomnibus.net)
Image by Neshi Galindo, Courtesy of Queens Museum of Art
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