“Placemaker Profiles” highlights the individuals who have captured our imagination about the need to create great places in every community. By bringing together their valuable stories, key insights, and compelling visions, we hope to share their wisdom with our readers, honor their accomplishments, and acknowledge their profound influence on the Placemaking movement.

For more Placemaker Profiles, click here.

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ALAN BARBER

“Greenspace networks are not the space left over after planning, or the spaces between buildings. They are a vital component of ever-larger urban settlements in all developed countries. We neglect them at our peril.”

Alan Barber is an advocate, activist, and critic who has worked tirelessly on behalf of Britain’s public parks and greenspaces for decades. Barber’s efforts at all levels – within communities, through university teaching, and in local and national government positions – has made real and lasting change in the way public parks are managed and prioritized in the United Kingdom. Barber is unfailingly passionate and unafraid to speak his mind. His recent appointment as a member of the Order of the British Empire stands in testament to his years of devotion and commitment to Britain’s public parks.

Biography

Alan Barber was born in Lancashire, UK, in 1942. His love of greenspace was cultivated at an early age; he apprenticed with a local parks department at age 16, and at 21 he began a two-year term of study at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Throughout the rest of his twenties, Barber learned about parks management by working “on the ground” jobs in Lancashire and Manchester.

Barber then became Parks Manager for the city of Bristol, UK. Working in this position, he came to hold many of his current positions on parks management and the role of parks in urban social life. In this role, he founded important and lasting public-private partnerships, increased parks programming, and introduced goal-based management systems imported from industry.

Barber repeatedly witnessed budget cuts leading to the ruin of parks programs and historic greenspaces. This inspired him to begin campaigning and consulting nationally for dedicated parks funding and management. In this role, he served as President of the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management. In 1996, Barber co-wrote a position paper for Lord Rothschild that spurred the creation of a new grant-making parks initiative, funded by the national lottery, that became the largest investment in public parks in the UK; to date, over £300 million has been invested in revitalizing public greenspaces.

Barber went on to help found GreenSpace, a charity devoted to improving parks and involving communities in their care. He also has held several advocacy and teaching positions within government and universities, all devoted to better parks management and preservation.

In 1998, a House of Commons Select Committee – akin to a Congressional investigative hearing – met to consider the plight of public parks in the UK. Barber, who considered this a “real breakthrough,” served as a special advisor to the inquiry, and later to the government Urban Green Spaces Taskforce formed as a result. Barber helped to persuade both these bodies of the need for a national agency devoted to parks issues; in 2003, CABE Space – an addition to the UK’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) – was formed, and Barber was appointed a member of the Commission.

On April 7, 2009, Alan Barber was appointed a member of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen in recognition of his decades of advocacy on behalf of public parks. Upon receiving the prestigious award, Barber noted that: “I am still campaigning and writing about urban parks because I believe they are so important to the life of towns and cities. Their neglect in recent years has been scandalous, especially when they can do so much to encourage healthier lifestyles.”

Barber believes the biggest remaining challenge for greenspaces in the UK is “to reverse the steady decline in budgets for maintaining park systems in our towns and cities. Democracy is a much weaker force in the UK than in the USA. So much is dictated by Whitehall bureaucracy, rather than the wishes of local people. The silo-mentality in Whitehall means that nobody can link the welfare of children, which is a priority, to the care of the environment which children inhabit. A bit more attention to the latter and many of our serious problems with childcare would be reduced.”

Perspectives

The Role(s) and Management of Greenspace

Barber sees public parks and greenspaces as inherently multifunctional, and believes that their management must (but too often doesn’t) acknowledge this characteristic. He views parks as part of a larger ecological, cultural, social, and educational system.

This understanding of parks’ multifunctionality leads to Barber’s CLERE model for parks management. The model highlights what Barber sees as the five key interrelated functions of urban greenspace – its role in Community development and education; as a Landscape with conservation requirements; as an Ecosystem that provides natural services to a city; as a resource for Recreation; and finally, as a contributor to the local Economy. Each of these functions implies an accompanying set of management issues and goals, all of which must be addressed holistically for the greenspace to achieve its fullest potential.

The proper management of urban greenspace has farther-reaching benefits, as well. It contributes positively to national and global problems, including environmental issues like climate change and air quality, human well-being, and economic prosperity. Moreover, quality public space fosters and supports civic engagement and community spirit. If citizens feel alienated from their public spaces and institutions, they are less likely to participate (formally or informally) in governance of their communities. Thus, careful stewardship of public space is integral for guaranteeing meaningful democratic participation. This is a cyclical pattern: the less democratic the governing bodies, the more institutionally dysfunctional, bureaucratic, and self-interested the government – and in turn, a government of this sort won’t be a good steward of green space.

The Design Profession

Barber considers the landscape design profession to have “lost the plot,” in his words; he thinks landscape architecture education must refocus on natural and ecological features, rather than cold, sterile architectural elements. He says he “would remove all [landscape architects’] paving catalogues and replace them with plant catalogues. I would ask them to contemplate a world of beautiful colours, of three dimensions and with no geometrical shapes.”

With characteristic wit, Barber describes the need for design professionals to truly listen to the public that will use these spaces, and (echoing William H. Whyte) to have a role in arranging their own spatial experience: “I must have read a thousand articles on seats in public places but I never once read that anyone had asked people which they liked to sit on. I like Paris’s Jardin du Luxembourg because visitors are given a choice of seat, and how they are arranged. In English public places immovable benches are always placed next to trash bins because the architect presumes the public like to sit next to stale food and wasps.”

Design and Management

Barber argues in favor of a closer, more collaborative working relationship between designers and managers of public spaces, and finds that design too often occurs without consideration of how people will actually use the space. Parks, in particular, must be well-maintained and well-programmed to live up to their potential as useful public spaces. He says: “Design and management have to be brought much closer together. I have found good design solutions to management problems but only where designers and managers speak the same language and where they can both communicate with people.”

Good management gives public parks the ability to adapt in response to changing user needs. Fixed architectural elements are not easily adaptable and are “incapable of self-renewal,” in Barber’s words; however, parks can be continuously renewed when managers intervene in an informed, thoughtful, publicly-minded manner.

“People-Power”

Rather than depending on government to make necessary changes to public space, Barber puts his faith in grassroots “people-power” movements. He notes the importance of local community groups (often “friends of the parks” organizations) in influencing the political agenda and engaging with public space. Barber also extols tools like PPS’s Place Game and CABE’s Spaceshaper, both of which involve communities in critically appraising their own local spaces.

Architecture

Though Barber’s writings and work focus primarily on public parks and greenspace, he commends recent architectural innovations like green roofs and walls, noting that “[t]here are few modern buildings in the world that wouldn’t look better covered in plants.” Barber also praises Prince Charles and his views on architecture: “He has a real understanding of the subject, much greater than many of his architect critics. I wish he would champion parks and public places more often. His interventions are well judged and very influential.”

Quotable

“I love public parks; the best seem to effortlessly capture the essence of civilized living in modern urban society.”

“Nothing repays its investment as well as a good public park.”

“In my writing, I am often found campaigning and confrontational, mostly towards an establishment, which does not seem to care.”

“Campaigning for better public parks is my life and I don’t intend to stop until I collapse in a heap.”

Selected Publications

Around the World in Twenty-One Parks. This annotated collection of films of Barber’s favorite parks provides wonderful insight into what makes parks work.

Green Future. Greenspace, 2005.

Time to Bite the Bullet. Green Places, March 2009.

How Green is My Eco-Town? Green Places, November 2008 (with Junfang Xie).

The Final Assessment. Green Places, March 2008.

See also Sarah Jackson’s excellent profile of Alan Barber in Parks and Gardens UK, on which the Biography section of this Placemaker Profile draws.

Contact Info

Alan Barber may be reached at: alan.barber@blueyonder.co.uk. He particularly welcomes contact from students.

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–written by Karen Levy

Photo Credit: Matthew Roth for Streetsblog 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

There are plenty of simple things everyday citizens can do to reenliven their local communities – techniques to engage with your neighbors, revitalize your street, and improve everyone’s quality of life.

Organize an art fair for the kids on your block

It's not hard to get to know your neighbors

Do-it-yourself placemaking in your community makes good economic and environmental sense – but even more importantly, it helps you create a truly great place you’ll be proud to call home.

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.

Children are Placemakers, too!

Mike Lanza has long been an advocate for safe and livable streets that allow children a safe place to play freely outdoors and meet other local children.  He has coined the term “Playborhood” to describe the ideal neighborhood social situation for kids: “A place where children, ideally from more than one family, play outside on their own on a regular basis - i.e. at least a couple days a week.”

Lanza is in the process of turning his front yard into a type of “public outdoor family room” where neighborhood residents can gather to talk, get to know one another and play together.

With many local school-age children headed off to summer camp this summer, Lanza was concerned about both the lack of opportunity for younger children to play freely and safely outdoors, and their missing crucial opportunities to learn and observe play and social interaction among older kids.  To remedy the problem, he’s starting an initiative called Camp Yale.  However, it won’t be a structured camp with strident activities and regulations.  The goal of Camp Yale is to guide children in free play amongst themselves until they are ready to play independently of adults — and then, teach the next generation of neighborhood children by example.

For more information, visit the Playborhood blog!

Playborhoods can also be a part of big cities.  The Come Out and Play Festival, a weekend-long event that turns public spaces into giant play areas for children, will take place in NYC from June 12th-14th.  The event combines new technology, like GPS, smartphones, texting and bluetooth, into classic childhood activities such as kickball, chalk drawing and treasure hunts.  Referencing sense of place, the festival provides an opportunity for children and adults alike to come together around play while exploring thir city in new ways.

On May 2nd Fred Kent gave the opening keynote to 700 leaders of Garden Clubs from every corner of the United States. The message resonated as a natural evolution for their powerful role in communities, leveraging their skills as practical implementers, social networkers and resourceful fundraisers.  The local garden club is often the first partner mentioned at our workshops to help implement short term improvements.  We will now look to Garden Clubs to play a leading role as conveners and facilitators of Placemaking in their communities.

To offer them a tool to support this potential role, PPS lead 200 of the conference attendees in an afternoon “Place Game” workshop to train them to use the tool to evaluate public spaces and kick start placemaking projects.  We were aided in facilitating the large crowd by 20 local partners involved in our Kennedy Plaza effort that saw the workshop as a good opportunity to get fresh ideas from the Garden Club members.

Greater Kennedy Plaza Placemaking May 2, 2009 from Russell Preston on Vimeo.

The video was also posted on CNU New England’s Sustainable Urbanism Summit blog, where blogger Russell Preston says:

A critical piece of creating a sustainable urbanism is pleasing and vibrant Public Space. As we move towards a more resilient way of planning for our villages, towns and cities, as Fred Kent says, we can no longer afford to only create “open space”. Our land is too valuable to not be used, be programmed and be enjoyed.

Portions of Buffalo's waterfront are being revived

Back in the summer of 2008, Rochester native Alan Oberst contributed an article to Buffalo Rising – a local news format blog — that analyzed both Hertel and Elmwood Avenues using PPS’ Ten Qualities of a Great Street.

The city, which has been struggling with population loss and economic downturn since the mid-1950s, is now home to a dedicated segment of the local population working to revitalize city streets and connect important downtown destinations.  As it turned out, I was headed upstate the following week for a family wedding and the folks at Buffalo Rising quickly made time in their busy schedules to invite me to their offices and give me a tour of Buffalo’s waterfront.

The organization’s offices, located in the newly-designated cobblestone district (volunteers removed the bricks one by one to log and then replaced them!), were once used as an ice house to store winter ice from adjacent Lake Erie each winter.  Down the street, a former truck terminal has been repurposed as a coffee shop, restaurant and bar.  Across the cobblestone street, a massive (empty) parking lot fills a city block’s worth of space.  Changes here have not been sweeping, but are happening in small, meaningful ways.

Buffalo Rising’s founder, Newell Nussbaumer, grew up downtown.  In 1993, he returned from college and opened a shop on then-struggling Elmwood Avenue.  The street is now one of the city’s prime location for local businesses, artisans and street festivals.

Nussbaumer started Buffalo Rising as a print publication in an effort to highlight all of the positive activity happening downtown.  It was initially a reaction to the prominent Buffalo News coverage of downtown crime and suburban news.  Buffalo Rising produces only stories about downtown Buffalo.  If the topic being covered is negative, writers try to offer a positive solution for moving forward.  Today, a volunteer staff works on covering local politics, urban planning and positive community action.

Nussbaumer had been a key player in ensuring sidewalk and curb redesign, starting a local children’s parade, community composting, and a local garden walk where residents open their gardens to the public. Recently, he’s been busy advocating for better bike parking to encourage cycling between downtown destinations.  He has also been at the forefront of “Buffalo Homecoming,” an event designed to bring Buffalo expats back home once a year to remind them about their hometown’s sense of place.

To the west from the roof of the Buffalo Rising building, Nussbaumer points to a rail track filled with light rail trains not in use.  Buffalo’s “subway” currently runs in a straight line down Main Street.  While the rail is heavily used during home hockey games at the HSBC Arena, located at one end of the rail route, there are no transfers to other lines or accessibility to some of Buffalo’s neighborhoods that have recently seen revitalization.  Main Street, closed to cars when the light rail started service, has become a virtual dead zone and the city is readying to retrofit the street and bring the cars back.  Nussbaumer heavily advocates a rail extension, which would allow much improved access to Buffalo’s intriguing waterfront.  This extension might be an easy place to start, as the tracks extend towards the waterfront currently for rail car storage.

Nearby, one is able to catch a glimpse of Buffalo’s inner harbor between the massive buildings that make up the local General Mills plant.  Newell took me to a dead end street where a bridge had been taken out by a large ship some 25 years earlier.

Nussbaumer looks out over the disconnected river

General Mills, however, stood in the way of rebuilding it in the hopes of protecting their privacy and keeping pedestrians away.  The area is now completely cut off from the outer harbor and it only accessible by traveling all the way around the area and across a busy highway.  As our group was looking out over the missing bridge, a cyclist rode up to ask us how to reach the outer harbor.  I assumed it was a friend of Newell’s making a joke, but the cyclist was a stranger, truly looking for a point of access.

A cyclists comes by, unable to access the outer harbor

Nearby, Newell showed me some signs of citizen action, mostly small but significant.  Next to the General Mills plant, locals have built their own mini dock with access to the street, a wooden sign pointing towards Swannie House across the street.  Local blue collar bar Swannie House has become a popular hangout for both factory folk and activists.  Outside, if the wind is right, one gets a whiff of toasted cereal from the nearby plant.  I can’t help but imagine how interesting it would be if the factory opened its doors to tourists, playing on the great cultural role many of their cereals play in the American narrative.

The outer harbor is the site of much current contention.  The Skyway, an elevated highway that looms large and grey between the city and the waterfront, is still a working roadway despite frequent closures during cold, icy weather.  Nussbaumer and Oberst enthusiastically offer creative ideas for the structure (“Paint it red!” “Install windmills!” “Hanging condos!” “Turn it into a high-line-style park!”), but the city has a long way to go before its ready to consider such unconventional solutions.  The highway was recently named in a list of elevated roadways primed for transformation by the Congress for the New Urbanism, indicating its potential for significant evolution.

Along the lake, Route 5 is about to revert back to elevated highway status.  Local advocacy group Buffalo-Niagara Riverkeeper has conducted several traffic studies and created an alternate plan that calls for the transformation of the road into a boulevard that connects the city at large to the waterfront.  Buffalo Rising has been instrumental in circulating information on the project, as well as alternate designs.

More information:

• PPS’s approach to waterfronts [pps.org]
• Buffalo Rising
• PPS’ Placemaker Profiles [pps.org]

Today, First Lady Michelle Obama will put a shovel in the ground of the White House lawn. Mrs. Obama, like many home gardeners, is celebrating this first day of Spring by getting her home garden ready for the season, and she promises that the garden will be maintained by the entire First Family, President Obama included. The 1,100-square-foot plot will soon supply the White House with fruits and vegetables for the Obama’s healthy, family meals, and the total cost to plant the garden will be just $200.

This isn’t the first First Family to use the nation’s lawn for a garden; President Adams and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt both tended to their own White House vegetable gardens, and President Wilson even used a flock of sheep to mow and fertilize the grass!

Perhaps Mrs. Obama always planned on planting a garden if she moved to the White House, but a great deal of thanks still goes out to those people and organizations that worked tirelessly to make this happen. Both The White House Organic Farm Project and Eat the View spent the past year advocating for a White House garden and gathering signatures from thousands of citizens who wanted to see “the people’s lawn” used for something healthy, active and social. This garden will not only supply the First Family with fennel, spinach and blueberries, it will be a symbol that our front lawns can be used for more than just landscaping. Now, let’s hope that President Obama reconsiders his position on beets!