Placemaking

I've been interested in placemaking for a while now -- pretty much since I read The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg back in the '90s. Something about the idea of a place where everyone belonged equally (hence my gratuitous Cheers music link) appealed to me as a shy girl who has trouble meeting anyone -- the thought that there was someplace where it's natural to just run into people... that seemed wonderful. The more I read, the more I liked it. Public spaces really are the backbone of a community, and I don't think it's possible to deny that. Modern architecture and design have often ignored people for the sake of intellectualism. (Case in point, the Johnson building of the BPL. Surrounded by forbidding plinths, windows barred up like prison cells... very bad connection to the McKim building, and a terrible, street-stopping face on Boylston... until you get to McKim, with its wide porch and wrap-around bench.)

You can see the way people straighten their shoulders and perk up in a good space, and the way bad spaces seem to weigh people down.

You can see where it becomes very difficult to know your neighbors when neighborhoods are mowed down in favor of some city planner's notion.

You can see the way fast-running roads cut people off... look at Albuquerque, with six lane freeways running at around 45 mph (official 40 mph) passing for city streets, nothing in walking distance, no little grocery stores, just supermarkets. There aren't even a lot of cheap bodegas in some neighborhoods. Going out means planning it -- driving, parking, figuring out what to do with your vehicle should you join other friends somewhere else. And if you're planning to have a drink or two, arranging for a driver. There are parks with nothing particular to do in them. Usually, there's a play area, but it's carefully noted as for children only, and there's nothing for adults -- no fountains, no food carts, no little knick-knack booths (I got some cute things for my hair at Boston Common, down by Park Street station, and some jewelry, too.) No one is ever there giving a random soapbox sermon to comment on, or a fun street performance. Walking down the street, except in very select neighborhoods, you're not likely to spot something and think, on the spur of the moment, "That sounds fun. I'll do that." There don't need to be "no loitering" signs -- it's implicit.

Only, we need places to loiter. It's important to have places to loiter, to meet with people, to enjoy a spontaneous moment. Somehow, this was forgotten in the midst of a lot of very bad top-down urban planning in the 60s and 70s.

So, I became interested in placemaking.

Today, I linked from the Project for Public Spaces website to a white paper from MIT, which says, "As the cases in this paper demonstrate, today’s placemaking addresses challenges such as rising obesity rates, shrinking cities, and climate change, to name a few."

It took me a while to figure out why this was bothering me so much. I've even thought some of these things. (My personal opinion is that supermarkets are more responsible for our bad diet than McDonalds -- when you go to a place that isn't worth going into if you're shopping for less than a week at a time, you're going to get things that are stuffed with preservatives, so it doesn't go bad on you.) But it finally dawned on me.

This new placemaking is a warmed-over version of the top-down urban planning that got us into trouble in the first place. It's not meant to ease something that people already want and are missing (someplace where everybody knows their name). It's designed to MAKE PEOPLE THINK AND BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY. It's starting with the premise of changing the people in a community.

I don't necessarily think any of the goals is a bad thing. Some, I think are very good things. But they are not things you can impose. It's one thing to add a bike path because you have a lot of people in the city who want to bike a lot. It's another to add a bike path in order to make more people want to bike a lot. It's a great goal, but it's not the business of... well, anyone... to decide, "This is the way the people here should think, so we'll keep at them until they think that way." Look, I like advertising. I really do -- it's kind of the psy-ops department of the commercial and government world -- but be honest when you're advertising something. Make commercials. Make PSAs. (The Australian government managed to make one that went viral... it's not a lost cause, and I'll never be a "dumb ways to die" statistic!) Don't say, "I'm making a better world, and the first thing I need to overhaul are those stupid people I live with."

For one thing, it most likely won't work. A few people may pick it up. Others will move out, leaving it for new people who like it to come in... but if you have an entirely new population, you haven't actually fixed the place. You've kind of killed it. For another, come on... it's a little bit morally questionable to try and force everyone onto the same hobby horse, isn't it? It doesn't even matter what the hobby horse is. I don't care if you start with the premise of "Everyone should bike more" or "Everyone should go out hunting more." Look at the people you've got RIGHT NOW, and look at them as they are in reality. Start there. If the community shifts on its own, the places will shift with it. But don't use placemaking to force a shift.

Give them better spaces, by all means. And you may well find that when a city is more navigable, more people will get on bikes, and want bike paths. OR NOT. In which case, hey, it's a free country, go someplace with a community you like.

Well, if all the placemaking hasn't gentrified it out of your price range.

That's the other thing. In the brag about how much good the Bryant Park turnaround has done, they mention that rents have skyrocketed in that neighborhood, even faster than the rest of New York.

Lovely. Glad to hear the wealthy folk have a nice place to hang out. Too bad about people who can no longer afford to live there, and have to move out to the next place that will be gentrified.

We need to find a way to fix places where everyone lives. People who aren't well-to-do also live in places and use places. They shouldn't be dispossessed in the effort to make their homes better. (This is what's bothering me about some of what I'm hearing out of Buffalo. It sounds like it's really improving for the white collar yuppie crowd... and the blue collar ex-steel workers are getting the shaft again.)

I don't have a good theory about this. The more you improve a place, the more people want to live in it, and the more the market will bear. But it's very unfortunate. We need a mixed group.