Intro to Urbanism, Part Seven: Places for Community Life

Moving onward with my New Year’s “Intro to Urbanism”, today will be a discussion of public spaces.  (From those coming to the series late, the earlier parts are at one, two, three, four, five, and six.)

In effective urban settings, public places have subtly but crucially different roles than they do in drivable suburban places.  Parks and plazas aren’t only for visiting on Sunday morning with a newspaper and a fresh coffee; they’re also the places one traverses on the way to a transit stop or to daily shopping.  Sidewalks aren’t only for getting from one place to another; they’re also places for chatting with friends or for grabbing lunch at sidewalk cafés.

But the transformation of public spaces into urban roles isn’t always easy, and the design failures have been frequent.  The failures occur because we put public places in the wrong part of the design process.  In the words of Jan Gehl, Danish architect and urban designer, “First life, then spaces, then buildings.  The other way around never works.”

Of course, the other way around is often how development occurs.  The function of the building dictates the building footprint, with the leftover land becoming a plaza.  The subdivision is configured to maximize the lot count, with the awkward leftover chunk becoming a park, even if it falls in a location inconvenient to the new residents.  Gehl, and urbanists everywhere, correctly argue for a different approach.

William H. Whyte, Jr., renowned for his detailed observations of public plazas in Manhattan, noted the frequent failures of public space planning, consistent with Gehl’s expectation, when he wrote, “It’s hard to design a space that will not attract people.   What is remarkable is how often it has been accomplished”.

Within an introduction to public spaces of only a few hundred words, it’s not possible to share the breadth of insightful thinking about public spaces and examples of successful spaces, although resources to help fill that gap will be provided in the post-“Intro” syllabus.

However, as a way of illustrating the careful considerations that go into public space design, I can offer the lessons that I’ve found most pertinent in my work with public spaces.

First, it’s not possible to design effective spaces by listening exclusively to either the general public or consultants.  The public will offer thoughts based on their idealized vision of how they use public spaces, not how they actually use them.  And consultants will have their own idealized visions, or perhaps the need to create pretty pictures for a website, that may not adequately consider the community.

The only effective design approach is to synthesize the thoughts of both, combined if possible with the actual and surreptitious observation of the community using current places.  Watching actual people using actual parks can be remarkably insightful, as Whyte proved with his work in Manhattan.

Second, to the extent possible, people should be allowed to make the space their own.  This is an observation made originally by Whyte, but I’ve regularly noted proof of his conclusion.  Whyte tells the story of a plaza user taking an untethered chair and moving it back and forth several times to find the perfect spot from which to listen to a free concert.  After the last move, the chair was in almost the exact spot where it began but, in her perception, she has shaped the plaza to meet her needs in a way that a fixed bench couldn’t have accomplished.

Obviously, loose chairs aren’t possible in most parks unless the park owner has an unlimited budget to replace missing furniture and a desire to furnish the backyards of homes around the park.  But a collection of different seating options will allow the public to find ways to use the seating in ways that will surprise and hopefully delight the designers.

Lastly, it’s important to remember that different demographic segments will use parks in different ways.  The more affluent, with extra rooms and spacious backyards at home, may use parks only for active recreation that requires more space, such as tossing a football.  But the less affluent, with less inside and backyard space, may look to parks for group gatherings, for quiet time away from the bustle of an overly-full home, or for time with friends away from parental oversight.  All the uses are valid.  Careful design is required to accommodate each of them.

This is a thin and unsatisfying introduction to a rich and important subject, but it’s a start.  The syllabus will provide further resources.

(Note: The photo is of Manhattan’s Times Square in July 2010.  Less than nine months later, the City of New York, having found success with an experimental diversion of traffic, made the change permanent, turning over the square completely to pedestrians.

Predictions of traffic nightmares were unfounded.  Consistent with the theory of induced traffic, commuters quickly found other routes or left their cars home, taking bicycles or transit instead.

It’d be nice to say that the success of Times Square led to similar exclusions of vehicle from public places elsewhere in the country, but it hasn’t happened that way.  Although more conversions will certainly come, it’s likely that each will be battled by drivers just as at Times Square.)

Next time, I’ll write about the roles of streets in urban places.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

More Travel Destinations and Petaluma Also Makes a List

A couple of months ago, I wrote about a list from Planetizen of the best public places in the U.S. and Canada.  I suggested that the list would make a fine set of destinations for an active retirement fueled by wanderlust.

My retirement planning has now become more challenging, but also potentially more fulfilling.  The American Planning Association (APA) has released three lists.  One for the best public spaces in the U.S.  Another for the best streets.  And a third for the best neighborhoods.

And there’s not a single public space, street, or neighborhood on the lists that I don’t hope to visit someday.  Just to buy a deli sandwich and to hang out on a park bench, enjoying the ambiance.  I’m easy to please.

Coincidently, I was on one of the streets just a week ago, Broad Street in Charleston, South Carolina.  Although it was without a deli sandwich, I did find a few moments to sit on a bench and watch the world.  It was a fine experience about which I’ll soon share more.

Unfortunately, the North Bay isn’t represented on any of the APA lists.  However, downtown Petaluma does appear on another list, as a final contender for the Southwest spot on the list of “Prettiest Painted Places in America”.  (A hat tip to Petaluma City Councilmember Mike Harris for tweeting about the list.)

It’s an odd list, lacking the cachet or panache of the APA list.  It’s hard for the Paint Quality Institute to compete with the American Planning Association.  One obvious quirk is the inclusion of Cape Cod.  I spent two days on Cape Cod this summer, driving the entire length from the ship canal to Provincetown, and loved it.  But never once did I remark about the great use of paint.

It’s also curious to see a subdivision, Northwest Crossing in Oregon, on a list that is mostly cities.  However, I had a small but peculiarly pivotal role in the start of Northwest Crossing, so will let the anomaly pass.  (The beginning of Northwest Crossing is a story for another time.)

Despite my quibbles about the Prettiest Painted Places list, it’s good to see Petaluma get noticed.  There are downtown buildings and residential neighborhoods for which the use of paint is truly praiseworthy.

Now, the challenge is to get the North Bay onto the APA lists in future years.  I think Petaluma Boulevard in downtown Petaluma is close to being worthy of inclusion as a great street.  Perhaps all that’s needed is an architecturally distinguished hotel at B Street to close the deal.  And I remain a big fan of Sonoma Plaza.  There are few places where I’ve enjoyed an open air sandwich more.

It can be one of our goals for the next decade.  To truly complete our already great North Bay downtowns and to let the world know about it.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

First Life, Then Spaces, Then Buildings

The quote in the title came across my desk late last week.  The full quote is “First life, then spaces, then buildings.  The other way around never works.”  The speaker is Danish architect and urban designer Jan Gehl.  His master work, “Life between Buildings”, is considered a classic in the theory of public places.

Almost immediately, another quote came to my attention.  “It’s hard to design a space that will not attract people.  What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.”  This time, the speaker is William H. Whyte, Jr. whom I introduced in a recent post as a seminal figure in place-making.  (White also coined the term “groupthink”.   The coinage may be unrelated to his work on public spaces.  Or it may be his explanation of how place-making goes awry.)

The two quotes, although both full of meaning on their own, add up to an even greater insight about public places.  Whyte tells us the place-making often fails.  Gehl tells us that place-making as an afterthought to buildings always fails.  The question this poses is whether too much of our land-use planning is centered around buildings rather than around the spaces in between.

As a matter of fact, yes, virtually all of our land-use planning is building-centered.  Zoning codes, whether use-based or form-based, generally start with the rules for buildings.  Place-making isn’t ignored, but often falls into the realm of “Do the best you can with the space left over.”

It’s not surprising the buildings have the primary place in land-use planning.  Most of the costs and revenues from development are directly tied to buildings.  Buildings are the engine of the land development economic train.  But that is an explanation of why we often end up with weak public spaces, not a justification.

Most of us would likely agree that European cities generally have more lively public places than cities in the United States.  Some of this is probably due to culture.  But I suggest that another factor is at work.  European cities probably also began with buildings, with the public spaces being the remnant land between the buildings.

But the city origins were sufficiently ancient that the buildings wore out or burned down long before our time.  The replacement buildings were often forced to conform to the uses already being made of the public spaces.  Gradually, public spaces reached primacy, which is what we see in heart of European cities today.  Although one can travel to the fringes of European cities and easily find the reverse, proving that not even good examples can necessarily change the planning process.

With our increasing awareness of public places as a key component of urbanism, we can sometimes move place-making back toward the heart of land-use decisions.  A recent example in Sonoma County is the station area plan around the coming SMART station in downtown Petaluma.  The city, the consultant, and the other project participants spent much of their initial effort sorting out the non-building uses, both roadways and public spaces, to ensure that transit and automobile passengers could reach the train station easily, that pedestrians from downtown had an enjoyable walk to the station, and that the neighborhood had places to play.

Only when these public areas were determined, did consideration of the buildings commence.  The result is a plan that has good potential public spaces.

The problem will be preserving those areas when developers begin to look at their options.  There will likely be pressure to let the buildings take back some of the area now allocated to public space.  This won’t be because developers are evil.  It’ll be because developers have investors and banks who must be satisfied before construction funds are provided.  It’ll be the responsibility of the city and the community to resist the pressure.

Hanging in the balance will be a livable community with great public spaces for Petalumans to bequeath to their next generation.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)