Drake Garden Helps Chicagoans Get Their Hands Dirty

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Since publishing The Great Neighborhood Book, we have continued to receive inspiring stories about how people are creating places in their communities. We plan to share these stories periodically on our blog.

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For over a decade, Drake Garden has been giving Chicago residents the opportunity to get their hands dirty and get to know their neighbors. Located in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago, the garden offers a green, outdoor sanctuary that attracts people from all over the city, whether to work or relax in the garden.

In the 90s, the community decided that a vacant lot that was formerly the site of a synagogue could be put to a better use. Motivated and engaged community members created the Drake Garden Volunteers and worked to turn the lot into a community garden. NeighborSpace, a Chicago-based non profit that supports community-based gardens and open spaces, helped the Albany Park residents secure the land for the garden. NeighborSpace primarily works with community groups that have already established parks or gardens so that the land can be owned by an existing non-profit and can be protected against future redevelopment.

Drake Garden and the work of NeighborSpace help illustrate one of the core tenets of Placemaking: the community is the expert. Community residents did not need outside “experts” to decide what would be the best use of the land that became the garden. Residents took action and created a thriving public space. The garden has been a true success by acting as a community anchor that brings together neighbors who had never even met before in the middle of a dense, ethnically diverse neighborhood.

A large sign at the gardens’ entrance increases the site’s presence on N. Drake St. In the garden, there is a board describing the history of the garden as well as a community bulletin board where residents can post information about upcoming events and gatherings. This creates a means for community connection outside of working in the garden together. Drake Garden is divided into smaller zones with distinct plants and features in each area of the garden. Trees, flowers, shrubs, and open space mingle to create a lush, green environment. Recognizing that maintaining interest in a long-term, community project is hard, programming is a central concern for the Drake Garden Volunteers. The garden hosts such events as block parties and rummage sales in order to make sure that residents have as many reasons as possible to get engaged with the garden.

Drake Gardens also partners with Chicago Cares in order to get volunteers engaged with the work at the garden. This serves as an opportunity for residents from different parts of the city get to work together on a community-focused project. Chicago Cares helps engaged residents in the Chicago area find volunteer opportunities focused on addressing various communities’ most pressing needs.

NeighborSpace recently produced a video depicting a day of work at the garden that took home the Grand Prize in Placemaking Chicago’s What Makes Your Place Great? Contest, covered here on Making Places in September. Placemaking Chicago is a partnership between PPS and the Chicago region Metropolitan Planning Council focused on increasing the reach of Placemaking principles in Chicago. With over 8,000 individual votes cast in the contest, a winning photo and video were named in both the People’s Choice and Grand Prize categories. Amy Roth’s photo of Phillips Park and Ami Shah’s video of the Shops of Long Grove earned them both the People’s Choice Award. Along with NeighborSpace’s video profiling Drake Garden, Sylvia Ortega’s photo of Bush Community Garden of Hope also took home the Grand Prize. Be sure to take a look at the Bush Community Garden of Hope photo on flickr which includes some background on how the Garden got started and how it continues to be a tremendous community asset. Much like Drake Gardens, it is a great example of a community coming together for the sake of improving their neighborhood. The success of the Bush Community Garden of Hope also highlights the importance of effective partnerships as they are working not only with NeighborSpace but also local stakeholders such as the local Homeowners’ and Tenants’ Association and local businesses. PPS’ Great Cities Initiative helps support efforts like the Bush Community Garden of Hope and Drake Garden throughout the world.

Check out the other winning photos and videos at Placemaking Chicago’s website. You can also browse all of the photo and video entries for the contest.

Have you been a part of a Great Neighborhood Project?  Email us your story for use in future profiles. tpeyton (at) pps.org

Placemaking at Harvard Yard: Enhancing the Humanities with Human Activity

The memorable experiences of one’s education often take place in the most comfortable and socially engaging places on a campus.  Campus planning has sometimes been neglectful of allowing for and creating such places, instead focusing more narrowly on single-use facilities and isolated design statements.

Harvard University has been quietly challenging this pattern and opening up to our Placemaking approach.  PPS worked with the university’s North Campus - which previously felt disconnected from the school’s well-known Harvard Yard - to develop recommendations in 2005 regarding seasonal uses and short-term experiments to activate the campus and make it feel more connected to the Yard.  In 2006, Harvard announced plans for a new Allston Campus, which will be built over the next 50 years.  With PPS’s help, this plan is being framed, in part, around key campus destinations and connections to the surrounding community.

This semester, Harvard brought Placemaking to its main campus, establishing a Steering Committee on Common Space to make campus life even better.  The Committee, dedicated to making sure the campus’ physical environment better supports the intellectual and social vitality of the University, has already installed colorful movable chairs and tables in Harvard Yard and the Radcliffe Quad.  A variety of foods will be offered nearby, and student performances will further activate the spaces.  For such a revered space, which never had any seating simply because there never was any historically, this is a big move and we applaud Harvard’s willingness to have a little fun with their most sacred space.

We are excited to see Placemaking being embraced on many college campuses.  A former PPS intern has been leading campus Placemaking efforts on the campus of Colorado College.  PPS has also been applying Placemaking to campuses in the development of new student unions, gathering areas and master plans on for institutions including, University of Madison Wisconsin, Stanford University, Duke University, George Mason University and University of Michigan Flint. Please share with us any examples that you may be involved with.

With Harvard taking these bold but simple steps, we are hopeful that campuses around the world will be inspired to find innovative ways to make their campuses more inviting and more memorable, and better contribute to the public realms of the communities they serve.

Vote on your Favorite Places in Chicago

What is the best public place in Chicago?  Sylvia O. thinks it is a community garden on Chicago’s far South-East Side, Brian S. nominated the Chicago Riverwalk for its “ingenuity and imagination,” and Afshan H. chose Harmony Park, the “go-to place in the Village of Arlington Heights.” The community, of course, is the expert.

The Metropolitan Planning Council, who partnered with PPS to launch a Placemaking Campaign for the city of Chicago last year, has encouraged city residents and visitors alike to participate in their What Makes Your Place Great contest.  From June 3 to July 27, dozens of people submitted entries.  Now, the organization is asking for votes - more than 2,000 votes have already been cast!

From now until Sep. 14, visit PlacemakingChicago.com to view the entries and vote for your favorite photo and video. The site also features a Google map showing the location of each great place.

Four winners, two photo and two video, will be announced on Sept. 25, 2009. One winner in each category will receive a Grand Prize award, selected by a committee of Placemaking experts; and one winner in each
category will receive a People’s Choice award, selected by public vote. In addition to bragging rights and a great prize package, winners will have the opportunity to showcase their favorite places at an MPC event
on Oct. 28, 2009.

Voters are encouraged to review all of the fantastic entries, which highlight not only some of the regions best public places, but also some truly beautiful and inspiring photography and videography.

Great Streets for San Francisco

The San Francisco Great Streets Project kicked off last night with a riveting speech from Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia and champion of livable streets reforms. Peñalosa spoke to the benefits of reclaiming valuable street space for pedestrians and emphasized that the amount of space allocated to cars is not fixed, but rather a political decision that can drastically reshape the city. “There is no such thing as a ‘natural’ level of car use in a city,” he said. “The narrower the street, the slower the speeds, the wider the sidewalks, the better you can feel.” For a full recap of the speech visit Streetsblog San Francisco.

Modeled after the New York City Streets Renaissance, which performed several successful demonstration projects throughout New York City around similar issues, San Francisco’s Great Streets Project is poised to work with grassroots, political and business leaders to “test, analyze and institutionalize Placemaking.” PPS initiated this process in April with a breakfast discussion for city leaders and leaders of community benefit districts to explore the potential of implementing new public plazas and creating streets that function as places. The event also examined the myriad benefits of improving the city’s public spaces and explored techniques for gathering diverse stakeholders to accomplish this vital goal. (Video of event presentations is available.) In the same month, PPS also led a “Streets as Places” training course for SFMTA and other agency staff.

PPS has helped to intitiate and lead similar Placemaking campaigns in Chicago and Seattle. We look forward to supporting the SF Great Streets Project and building on the momentum that Enrique Peñalosa generated with his speech.

On a related note, PPS is working in Bogotá this week to explore further ways that the city can lead the world in public space innovations.

More information:

Making Great Streets–San Francisco Bay Guardian

Building Quality Communities Around Transit in the Tappan Zee Bridge Corridor

One of the most vital transportation links in the New York metropolitan region, the Tappan Zee Bridge is due for a major upgrade to satisfy growing travel demands. New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), New York State Thruway Authority and MTA Metro-North Railroad are working together to plan a new bridge that includes exciting possibilities for transit that will better meet the needs of Rockland and Westchester County communities along the I-287/I-87 corridor.  Five design alternatives currently being evaluated by NYSDOT range from adding a bus-rapid transit (BRT) link across the bridge (both with and without a designated travel lane) to building a heavy rail link from Suffern to New York City.

A longtime proponent of “Building Communities through Transportation” and “Thinking Beyond the Station,” PPS was hired by NYSDOT, along with the Regional Plan Association and Reconnecting America, to conduct workshops with communities along the corridor to leverage the state’s transit investment and explore opportunities for transit oriented development. The Tappan Zee Bridge project is a terrific opportunity for communities to plan responsibly for future growth around transit and maximize the economic benefits of increased housing and transportation choices, as well as create jobs and improve overall quality of life. Proactive land use planning will also help preserve the state’s investment in new highway capacity.

PPS and its partners will hold two county-wide workshops around these issues this fall, with an open invitation to all interested communities. Specific topics may include creating great places around transit, smart parking, mixed-income housing, regulations and financing for transit-oriented community design, changing roadway design to support livable communities and optimizing transit service. Two-day workshops will then be held in the subsequent year in eight communities (four per county) consisting of in-depth discussion of local issues and local solutions, development of conceptual plans, and presentation of implementation tools. Communities interested in receiving this technical planning assistance must submit an application by July 17^th. This pilot project is also intended for eventual deployment to communities across the state.

For more information, please contact Craig Raphael at craphael@pps.org.

Improving Transit “By Any Means Necessary”

Malcolm X once said that “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” And so we found ourselves in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn at the first annual Bedford-Stuyvesant Malcolm X celebration, as guests of the Malcolm X Merchants Association (MXMA). We were there to educate ourselves about the community’s experience using mass transit in their neighborhood, with the intention of improving the transit service in the community by equipping local stakeholders with tools to influence the transit planning process.

When people think of the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, or Bed-Stuy as it’s better known, transit may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But as with many other urban centers, transit was a key factor in its development, growth, and sustenance.

In 1888, the Fulton Street Elevated line, operated by the Kings County Elevated Railway (KCERy), began operation. It connected the Fulton Ferry with Bed-Stuy. The next large transit infrastructure project was the development of the A subway line, which connected Harlem with Bed-Stuy. The new subway line led to an exodus of African-Americans from overcrowded Harlem to Bed-Stuy. From that point on, the neighborhood has grown into one of the most vibrant in the Brooklyn metropolis.

Bed-Stuy is now served by the A and C subway lines at the Utica Avenue, Kingston-Throop Avenue, and Nostrand Avenue subway stations, the B46 and B25 bus lines, and the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). An extensive list of services compared to many other American communities. But is that translating into quality service for the travelers to and from Bed-Stuy?

The statistics tell us that the Utica Ave. subway station, which is at the intersection of Fulton Ave. and Utica Ave., on the A and C lines, carried 4.46 million passengers in 2008, making it the 101st busiest station out of 422 in the City. And although we don’t have a count for how many bus passengers board the B46 at that intersection, we know that the B46 carried 17.3 million riders in 2008, giving it the second highest ridership out of all NYC’s bus lines.  While these numbers are impressive, they don’t tell us the full story of transit service in Bed-Stuy. They don’t explain how and why people use transit, and what improvements could be made to accommodate even more users, and perhaps more importantly, to make the community a better place.

Before we get into the survey process and the results of the survey, I should describe the basis of this project. It is part of a Federal Transit Administration research grant intended to develop tools for public participation in transit-dependent communities. PPS has been working in two pilot study sites, one in LA’s Byzantine Latino Quarter and the other in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Local stakeholders, community activists and merchants have been meeting over the past few months to try out some of these tools. In Bed-Stuy, PPS has worked with the Malcolm X Merchant’s Association and Bridge Street Development Corporation (BSDC) to hold workshops and focus groups that will pilot our public participation tools and, simultaneously, create a community vision for Malcolm X Boulevard and Utica Avenue Plaza.

We went to the Malcolm X festival to gather the type of qualitative information that traffic reports often lack. We set up a table on Malcolm X Avenue, in between a vendor selling homemade earrings, and another vendor selling very random trinkets, with the hope that a few interested people would stop by. We had with us two tools to understand the community’s interpretation of their transit service — one was a short survey regarding the quality of pedestrian journeys, and the other was a large neighborhood aerial for a Destination and Route Mapping exercise. The survey had basic questions that we used to determine people’s destinations, preferred paths, and thoughts on how transit stops could be improved. The map was used to determine positive and negative areas in the community, as well as the paths people chose to get to or avoid those places and why.

Before we knew it, our table was swarmed with community members. The wealth of nuance that they gave us was tremendous. Many of the participants in our research had been living in the community their whole lives and their family histories go back several generations. That’s no small measure in a city as transient as New York City! They described their streets down to the most minor detail, as if they knew them like the back of their hands. “Don’t go down Stuyvesant between Bainbridge and Chauncy after dark because it’s not lit well enough,” one woman said. Another woman spoke of the well-kept landscaping on Decatur between Malcolm X and Patchen. “What about that wine bar opening up on Lewis?” “I don’t like those drug dealers on Fulton,” “There’s Solomon’s Porch on Stuyvesant!” People were blurting out things left and right. Within a few hours our map was filled with green and red dots, and we had 25 completed surveys in our back pocket.

Many community members are not involved in the transit planning process, and as a result, transit service is not catered to their needs. Instead, it is designed to meet the parochial benchmarks of transportation engineers – “level of service” and so on and so forth. But “level of service” isn’t always the best measure for level of service; it doesn’t consider the café down the block that people might want to walk by in the morning to get coffee, or the fact that a vacant block across the bus stop might attract seedy characters. Our pilot project is intended to understand the reality of a community’s transit needs, and equip them with tools to influence transit service to it adapts to that reality - a bottom-up approach, not a top-down approach that we’ve seen far too often.

During our research the community’s main concern regarding their transit experience was safety. Participants mentioned fear of crime in places where certain infrastructure such as lighting was missing. Nevertheless, there was a clear sense of neighborhood pride that people shared. The community spoke with confidence that the streets were theirs, and there was always a glimmer of confidence in their words that they were restoring their community from an era where it suffered greatly from crime, poverty, and political neglect. With the tools that we are helping to develop for Bed-Stuy, and eventually, other transit-dependent communities, we can play a role in empowering them to improve their journey from point A to point B. We want everyone dancing while they wait for the bus, like this gentleman waiting for the B25 in Utica Plaza.

Chicagoland’s Best Places: Nominate Your Favorite!

The Placemaking Chicago campaign is asking Chicagoans to nominate their favorites places.  PPS and Metropolitan Planning Council kicked off the campaign last fall with training courses for municipal and community leaders and publishing PPS’s first handbook for community-based placemaking.  The campaign is now seeking to broaden the conversation in Chicago about places and placemaking by asking “What Makes Your Place Great?” The content will allow engaged city residents to take pride in their neighborhoods, and learn about the interesting ways other neighborhoods capitalize on their local assets and sense of place.

From June 3 through July 27, 2009, entrants can e-mail original photos or videos showcasing their favorite public places across Chicagoland, along with a 250-word-or-less description, to placemakingchicago@metroplanning.org. (Complete rules and submission criteria are available at PlacemakingChicago.com. Entrants may feature places in the City of Chicago or in Chicago suburbs located in Boone, Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties in Illinois; or in Lake, Porter, and La Porte counties in Indiana; or in Racine and Kenosha counties in Wisconsin.)

“Show and tell us not only why your favorite place is special to you, but also how it contributes to your community,” said MPC Associate Karin Sommer, who manages the Placemaking Chicago project. “Is it somewhere people go to relax or meet up with friends? What are some unique ways people use the space? And what is it about this place that keeps you and your neighbors coming back day after day, and year after year?”

PPS has its own catalog of Great Public Spaces, featuring the best places from around the world.  Nominate your favorite here!

More Information:

The Best Places in Chicago [Chicago Journal]

Now is the ideal time to invest in public spaces

In 2006, PPS was hired by the city of Tempe to create a comprehensive open space plan for their downtown, which has experienced rapid growth in recent years. The plan proposed improvements for more than 30 places that made up the fabric of the downtown experience in order to create a more lively, pedestrian friendly environment with a great mix of destinations.

With the economic downturn, much of the exciting new mixed-use development being planned for the downtown has been put on hold. But Tempe’s planners understand that now is the time to plan for their public spaces, because it is just these types of spaces that will attract people and companies to downtown Tempe once the recovery takes  hold.

From an Op-Ed piece in The Arizona Republic: “City leaders are reviving the [open space] plan, saying it’s even more important during this down time to plan for and invest in public-space projects. They’re right. If these building blocks are securely in place once the economy recovers, Tempe runs much less risk of being blindsided by developments downtown and along light rail.”

Visit our website for more information about the new plans for Tempe’s downtown.  On a related subject, check out a recent article from the PPS newsletter, How Your Community Can Thrive–Even in Tough Times.

City Launches Round Two of NYC Plaza Program

The City of New York has announced the first nine recipient sites of its NYC Plaza Program, designed to ensure that every New Yorker is within a 10-minute walk of quality open space.   One recipient, the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, worked with PPS in 2007 to evaluate four sites along the Myrtle Avenue corridor in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill.  Through the Plaza Program, two blocks of a service road will be transformed, with community input, into a community place to sit and stroll.

Applications for Round Two of the program are now being accepted, and the first informational session will be held:

Monday, May 4 from 3:00-4:00pm
NYC DOT
220 Church, Rm. 814
New York, NY 10013

PPS and the NYC DOT agree that qualities of a successful plaza include:

• Accessibility by foot & bike

• Surrounded by a mix of uses

• Flexible and multipurpose

• Food & drink available nearby

• Plentiful seating in various forms

• Opportunities for art

• Sun and shade

• Activities & events for all users

‘Triangulation’ for Chicago’s Polish Triangle

Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council, our partner in Placemaking Chicago, a city-wide Placemaking campaign, continues to make strides in applying Placemaking in Chicago.

Their latest project is the transformation of the intersection of Division Street, Ashland Avenue, and Milwaukee Avenue, at a crossroads also known as the Polish Triangle.  MPC has gathered insight and feedback from more than 700 people, using online surveys, in-person workshops and by starting a public group on the Placemaking Movement - PPS’s online social network.  So far, ideas from the community have included public art and traffic calming.

More information:

• Placemaking in Chicago [pps.org]
• The Polish Triangle networking group [The Placemaking Movement]
• Residents come out in force to shape the future of the Polish Triangle [MPC]
• www.placemakingchicago.com

Photos in this post from MPC’s Flickr page