“It’s hard to create a space that will not attract people, what is remarkable, is how often this has been accomplished.”  -William H. (Holly) Whyte

Cities defined by great public destinations are becoming ever more important in a competitive globalized economy.  Examples can be seen everywhere, from the transformation of Bryant Park and Central Park in New York, to the emergence of Lower Downtown in Denver and the revival of once-overlooked cities such as Barcelona, Copenhagen and Melbourne.

Based on more than 30 years of work at Project for Public Spaces, the non-profit organization I founded after working with Holly Whyte, I am convinced that place-based initiatives are the best way to promote vitality and prosperity in cities everywhere.  Our experience helping people in more than 2500 towns around the world improve their communities shows that mobilizing people to make great places strengthens neighborhoods, cities and entire metropolitan areas.

Nearly every city today can brag about at least one success story where determined citizens, guided by the idea we call Placemaking, made a difference in the place they call home. Even downtown Detroit now enjoys a popular town square—Campus Martius— whicnh has brought thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment to the hard-hit city center.  These remarkable turn-around stories did not happen through the grand visions of designers, but rather by the creativity of a diverse group of people who thought imaginatively and applied broad skills to transform their communities into great places.

But the recent trend toward “iconic” architecture—which has gained a big following in the media and among high-profile clients, winning numerous architectural prizes—minimizes the importance of citizen input and dismisses the goals of creating great public places. Instead it promotes a design-centric philosophy where all that matters is the artistic statement conceived by an internationally recognized celebrity. Frank Gehry, an architect of considerable talent and imagination, drew world attention to the iconic design movement with his famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In the process, he inaugurated an era in which designers call all the shots in creating our cityscapes, leaving us with showy buildings meant to be admired from a distance rather than contributing to the vitality of everyday life in a local community.

Gehry's iconic Bilbao Museum makes a singular statement

Gehry’s Bilbao Museum made a definitive design statement when it opened in 1997, putting this Spanish city on the map of contemporary cultural destinations.  But this sort of media buzz enjoys a short life. To make an enduring impact, a place must continually reinvent itself to stay relevant to the times and its setting. The next step for this groundbreaking museum should be for it to evolve it into a great place that keeps people coming back for more than just architecture and art. It needs to become a spot where people naturally want to hang out in order to enjoy the entire experience and energy of an amazing city. Our assessment is that the Bilbao museum does not do that. We have praise for the building as a work of art, but not as a destination.

The two people coming out of the stairs at the sunken entryway were mugged by the two people in the above photo and their camera was stolen. Muggings are common in the empty plazas.

I am a big fan of some of Gehry’s buildings. I think the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park is outstanding – a true iconic architectural achievement. The concert stage, the “Trellis” that spreads an excellent sound system across a large expanse of grass and the seating area are all awesome. I think it is his finest work.

The Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millenium Park, Frank Gehry’s finest building, fosters vibrant public life and contextually creates a real center for Millennium Park.

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The popular real estate and urbanism blog Curbed created this image to describe the ongoing debate (Photo credit: Curbed LA)

This year’ Aspen Ideas Festival lived up to its name with a lively exchange about Placemaking vs. the iconic architecture of Frank Gehry and other “starchitects”. But not in the way anyone expected.

When PPS president Fred Kent, a speaker at the Festival two years ago, posed a question to Gehry in the Q-and-A following Gehry’s presentation, the world-famous architect refused to answer.

When Kent repeated the question about why iconic architecture so often fails to create good public places, Gehry called him “pompous” and waved his hand in a gesture that eminent political journalist James Fallows described as “a dismissive gesture, much as Louis XIV might have used to wave away some offending underling.” Fallows described the scene in his influential blog for The Atlantic.

And Fallows’ blog became the place where ideas about what constitutes great architecture were debated. This was because Gehry refused to engage in discussion about his work, even at an event billed as a Festival of Ideas.

Gehry responded first in the blog, explaining that he didn’t really want to be at the Festival and that at age 80, he gets “freaked out by petty annoyances.” He also charged that Kent (who remained unnamed in Fallows’ first two blogs and Gehry’s response) was “intent on getting himself a pulpit” and “marketing himself at everyone’s expenses.”

Kent responded in Fallows blog on Friday, writing, “That Gehry was dismissive of the subject itself and so self important in his response shows just how far removed he and other proponents of ‘iconic-for-iconic-sake’ architecture are from the reality of urban life today.

“Around the world citizens are defining their future by focusing on their city’s civic assets, authentic qualities and compelling destinations,” Kent continued, “not on blindly following the latest international fads conjured by starchitects.”

But what’s most interesting here is not the heated exchange of opinions following a controversial appearance by the most famous architect of our time. It is the wide scope of debate that has been stirred.

David Sucher took up the issue in several postings on his City Comforts blog.

Frank Gehry has been quoted saying "I do not do context", amounting to barren public spaces and a limited scope of responsibility for the architecture profession.

And Fallows himself—probably as famous in news journalism circles as Gehry is in architectural ones—seems fascinated by all the energy sparked by this question about how to create great public places.

On Friday he began his blog with a sense of amazement, “I used to think that a topic like — oh, let’s see, US-China friction — was controversial, or climate change, or Google-v-Microsoft, or McNamara-v-Rumsfeld. That was before I innocently stepped into the crossfire concerning the effect of “star-chitects” like Frank Gehry on the urban landscape.”

Whatever else comes out of this lively discussion, I think it shows that discussions about how we create congenial public places where people can come together is a major issue of our times.

Public space is not just an aesthetic detail, or minor sideshow for the design community.  It’s central to the fabric of lives and future of our society.  Which is why it’s no surprise that opinions on the subject are so strong.

The public space on the waterfront of Bilbao in front of Gehry's building is a site of frequent muggings as a result of the limited reasons for people to be there.

Related:

PPS Commentary–Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Curbed LA–Frank Gehry Smackdown: Iconic Architecture vs. Public Space

Apsen Ideas Festival–Full Video of Gehry Talk (Kent/Gehry conversation at approx. 54 minute mark)

What: A public square in the heart of Merida.

Why it Works: The Plaza Mayor is a major focal point of Merida taking up the size of one full city block and enclosed on four sides by two lane roads. The landscaping is a simple path system through various types of trees and bushes. There are many benches and low retention walls for sitting. Every Sunday is fair day in Merida. The paths are wide enough to support pedestrian traffic and vendors selling various foods and handicrafts. All roads are shut down within a block radius of the square. The festive atmosphere brings hundreds of local Merideños. There is even live music in the streets at night. People are able to move freely through the square at any time of the day. It often has people walking through after visits to the Cathedral or any of the fine Yucatanese restaurants that border it. At first look, you’ll notice the high amount of people that are circulating through the square. This is a comforting image to someone who is not familiar with the safe and social atmosphere that is present in the streets of Merida.

Read the entire profile here.

Click here to nominate your favorite public space!

Once upon a time, streets once belonged to everyone. They were a “commons” where people walked, biked, boarded streetcars,stopped for conversations.  It’s where kids played and dogs napped. 

But that all changed during the second half of the 20^th Century.  Streets became the exclusive property of automobiles, and everybody else had better get out of the way, or else!

An old Disney cartoon, starring a character looking likes very much like Goofy, shows how this Tragedy of the Street  came to pass. It can be watched on the website of Bike Walk Twin Cities, one of many organizations that have sprung up recently to reclaim the streets as a public space that should be available for everyone.

See it here: http://tcsidewalks.blogspot.com/2009/06/classic-sidewalks-of-silver-screen-21.html

What: A revitalized park at the heart of a small Tennessee town.

Why it Works: Although Pegram Park is small in size it serves as the center of the community for the town and the surrounding county. It hosts numerous events throughout the year, including 4th of July parades, Christmas in the park, little league, easter egg hunts, political forums and music events. It is what “makes” the town of Pegram, which has grown from a small rural town and has turned into a small bedroom community. The first and foremost issue the community is working toward is safety and accessibility for all. The park is a center for community in a county that has very few community hubs. Community partnerships and volunteers have come together to find funding to upgrade the park and maximize its potential. A non-profit partnership group named Friends of Pegram Park made up of volunteers and citizens have designed a master plan based off of community input, have written grants, are fundraising and are working together with local government to implement the plan. The spirit behind this project has certainly made citizens become more politically involved in a time of change for the area.

Read the entire profile here.

Click here to nominate your favorite public space.

Great public spaces resemble pornography, at least in the way the U.S. Supreme Court defines it: “You know it when you see it.”

Gazing upon alluring spots like the Old Town of Prague, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, or even the courthouse square in a small town, and you naturally think, “I want to hang out there!” You’re attracted to the place and want to be a part of it, watching the people pass by, soaking up the atmosphere.

While it’s easy to identify a great public space, it’s often quite difficult to create a new one today. Many projects setting out to establish a congenial spot for people to congregate — whether a park, shopping district, plaza, waterfront development, civic building, mall, or revitalized downtown — wind up as miserable failures that  feel hostile to very idea of people enjoying themselves there.

William H. Whyte, a noted journalist and mentor to PPS, once observed, “It’s hard to create a place that will not attract people. What’s remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.”

One reason so few truly good public places have been built in recent decades is that urban planning today is pinpointed on specific outcomes— number of vehicles moved on the street per hour, sales revenue per square foot of retail space, or even unimpeachably admirable aims like the number of affordable housing units built. And these myopic goals are ardently pursued at the expense of creating a place that works for the public as a whole.

Development projects today are considered a success to the extent that cars move fast or  cash registers go ka-ching . But they often fail at the equally important mission of creating lively places where people can feel happy hanging out with their fellow citizens. It’s another example of the tragedy of the commons. The value of a public place to the whole community is trumped by the narrow interests of retailers, motorists, etc.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Throughout the world you can find brilliant examples of recently built public spaces that also succeed marvelously as shopping districts (a number of  new developments in already lively downtowns), transportation corridors ( Portland’s new Pearl District trolley line) or affordable housing (public housing projects like Park DuValle in Louisville and Diggs Town in Norfolk, Virginia, that have been transformed into thriving communities).

All that’s needed is a plan that takes into account a place’s broader role as a public spaces alongside other aims.

The annual Museum Mile festival has been filling 5th Avenue with people since 1978.

Ask any New Yorker about Museum Mile, and odds are they’ve been to the twenty-three block stretch of Upper 5th Avenue that’s home to nine world class museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Jewish Museum and the Museum of the City of New York. But few know that Museum Mile wasn’t designated a place until the late 1970s, when museums and local activists worked with Project for Public Spaces to draw diverse New Yorkers to the arts during the city’s fiscal crisis.

Since 1978, the annual festival celebrating Museum Mile has closed 5th Avenue to car traffic and encouraged people to take over the streets with free admission at the nine famed museums, in addition to live bands, entertainment and art-in-the-street for kids.  The festival creates a lively and unique experience by allowing New York’s most popular cultural destinations to spill out onto the street.  The steady success of this event has provided the vision for NYC DOTs Summer Streets program (they even use our images of Museum Mile on their website).  The burgeoning program is finding great success in partnering with neighborhoods to take a break and celebrate their communities.  Events are already underway this summer.

The Museum Mile festival begins tomorrow at 5:45pm outside the Guggenheim Museum, on the corner of 91st St. and 5th Avenue, and runs until 9pm.  For more information, visit the Museum Mile Festival Website.

When springtime comes, a middle-aged man’s fancy turns to bikes. 

‘Tis the season to skip out of work for a day or two, and log some serious mileage on the old two wheeler.

Here in Minneapolis, I can easily pedal around the city’s famed Lakes or cruise along the forested gorge of the Mississippi River in the comfort and safety of a specially designated bike trail.

In the middle of a metropolitan area of 3 million people, I can quickly find myself on a bike trail deep in the woods. Then, ready for some cosmopolitan excitement and a good lunch, I can head downtowns (either Minneapolis or St. Paul) on scenic riverfront trails free of auto traffic.

This extensive system of bike trails is great not just for recreational rides–it’s boosted biking so much that Minneapolis now trails only Portland in commuters who travel to work on two wheels. This surprises most of-of-towners who know us mostly for freezing winters. Yet I bike all winter for work and for fun, and can attest that bike paths are busy on all but the most severe cold, snowy or icy days.

Urban bike paths are becoming a trend across the continent. PPS helped out Indianapolis, a city most known mostly for racecars, in constructing the ambitious eight-mile Cultural Trail bike and pedestrian greenway right through the center of the city. Davis, California has been serious about building bike trails and bike lanes since the 1960s, and now boasts that 17 percent of its daily commuters travel by bike. Boulder, Colorado devotes as much as 15 percent of its transportation budget to bicycle priorities.

Like parks and lively shopping streets, bike paths are important public spaces that enhance the congeniality and community spirit of a town.  They not only provide people with transportation and exercise, but also with the pleasure of meeting up with their neighbors.  At their best, bike and walking trails become a kind of linear town square—the spot where people spontaneously gather after supper and on the weekends. 

Let me map out some of my most favorite afternoons here in Minneapolis.  I bike to Minnehaha Creek Parkway, a dozen blocks south of my house and head east on its winding, waterside path through city neighborhoods to Minnehaha Falls, made famous by 19^th Century poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in “ The Song of Hiawatha.” 

Watching the water tumble over a 50-foot wall of rock fascinates and relaxes me.  Then I amble over to Sea Salt, a independently-run café in a historic park building that serves topnotch fried fish, best enjoyed on the outdoor patio. Sipping a beer while waiting for my shrimp taco to arrive, I plot the rest of my journey. 

From here bike trails lead to historic Fort Snelling, the first white settlement in Minnesota and  Pike Island, part of a state park where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers meet. The Dakota (Sioux) Indians believe this confluence of rivers is the origin of the universe. On a bright spring morning I am convinced they’re right.

Or I can take the bike trail in another direction toward the downtowns of both Minneapolis and St. Paul along wooded riverbank most of the way. Another pleasing option is to tour Minneapolis’s fabled chain of lakes, six of which lie alongside the bike trail in rapid succession. 

While the Twin Cities are legendary for their great park systems, we are equally blessed with a superb network of trails—made possible by visionaries of the 19^th Century who fought to claim local lakefronts, riverbanks and creeksides for public use. These superb public assets have been expanded in recent years through the work of a new generation of visionaries. 

Many communities throughout the country large and small are now installing impressive trail systems and linear parks. Even densely packed Manhattan is thrilled to gain a new wonder—the High Line, an elevated freight train track now reclaimed as parkland.  Most new desirable suburbs now boast bike trails that don’t simply loop around a pond, but carry people to schools, recreation facilities, nature preserves, the local library, farmers markets, restaurants, or shopping districts.  People are no longer content to cycle in circles; they want places to go and things to do.

On a recent Sunday, I headed to the Midtown Greenway, a rail-to-trail  bike and walking path  a dozen blocks north of my house. I followed it more than 20 miles west through the suburbs to Carver Regional Park—a glorious expanse of woods and prairie dotted by lakes and more bike trails. I also stopped in on a tavern and a deli in Victoria, a small town right on the trail.  When I first moved to Minneapolis from Iowa many years ago, I immediately loved life in the big city life—except for one thing.  I dearly missed being able to bike all the way out into the countryside.  The distance was too far and the roads too inhospitable. 

But now thanks to the citizen advocates and park officials in the Twin Cities  who have built an impressive trail system throughout the metropolitan area, that dream is now available any day I have a few hours to spare.

A portion of this article first appeared in Parks & Recreation magazine. Reprinted with permission from National Recreation and Park Association.

How does owning a vacation house at Yosemite sound? Or a beach cottage near the shores of Acadia National Park? Do you dream of hiking the Grand Canyon right outside your front door, or taking a dip in Crater Lake after getting home from work?

This is not some far-fetched fantasy of zealots who want to privatize our national parks. Actually, it’s a pretty close description of my own modest home—and probably yours too. I live just a few blocks from Lake Harriet, a national treasure where I swim and x-country ski, walk in the woods and spot bald eagles soaring through the skies. And all of this happens right in the middle of inner city Minneapolis.

Lake Harriet, you see, is a city park, part of Minneapolis’s cherished Chain of Lakes. But chances are good you’ve got something similar near your own home. It may be a wading pool and woodpeckers instead of a lake and eagles, but it’s no less of a treasure.

Boston's Public Garden

City parks are your own Yellowstone—a spot to relax and reflect and revel in nature as well as to enjoy a picnic or shoot hoops. They can also be the neighborhood version of New York’s Times Square or Washington’s National Mall, providing a gathering point where you run into friends and feel a part of the action. The local park is often the place where we celebrate local festivals, play sports, attend community meetings, join classes, and ooh! at fireworks on the fourth of July.

I believe that local city parks—even humble ones with only a playground, flower patch, Little League diamond and benches beneath the trees—are part of our birthright as Americans every bit as much as majestic national parks.

This is not meant in any way to minimize the wonder of our national parks, recreation areas and state parks—especially now that many of them face serious issues of upkeep and diminished funding. I will always remember the childhood thrill of clambering across a snow field during August high up in Rocky Mountain National Park or learning to body surf as a teenager at Cape Cod National Seashore. Even as a seasoned travel writer on assignment for Better Homes & Gardens, I was spellbound by the experience of seeing a buffalo herd up close at Custer State Park in South Dakota. Each year my family and I count the days until our annual trek to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in northern Wisconsin, which I have come to look upon as a restorative retreat as much as a summer vacation.

Yet these are once-in-lifetime—or, at best, annual—peak experiences. Lake Harriet and Minneapolis’s other fine parks are wonders that I can visit every day. And I often do, walking the dog after breakfast or biking around the lake in the evening.

These parks are where my son’s soccer team plays spring, summer and fall; where he learned to ice skate, sled, and ski; where he organizes capture the flag tournaments and where his eighth grade graduation ceremony will take place. My wife Julie and I visit Lake Harriet three times a day when the cherry trees and lilacs are in bloom, and we sit out on a blankets to hear jazz, folk, Latin, polka and classical concerts at the bandshell throughout the summer. We make a ritual of long family walks on Easter, Summer Solstice, Thanksgiving and Christmas, then join with other families on New Year’s Day to stomp through the snow for a short but sweet cook-out on New Year’s Eve.

Lake Harriet is part of the fabric of my life, woven through my memories and daily rhythms. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, not even a seven-bedroom beach house with the Atlantic ocean lapping at my front door in Acadia National Park.

Reprinted with permission from Parks & Recreation magazine, National Recreation and Park Association.

People gather on the north stairs leading up the the cathedral

What: Helsinki’s main town square serves as a concert venue, a meeting place, a place to people watch and a reminder of the state’s history.

Why it Works:

Senate Square has been the main square of Helsinki since the 17th century. It was transformed into its current form in the early 19th century, when Russian Tsar Alexander II, moved the capital of Finland from Turku to Helsinki. The buildings on the four sides of the square represent the four powers of the state as conceived at the time: senate, church, university and commerce. The old merchant houses are now mainly occupied by city offices, but there is also a nice café, and a bazaar. While the square is a popular tourist destination, the steps on the north side are commonly used as a meeting place, a venue for student meetings, sun bathing or even studying.

Read the entire profile here.

Click here to nominate your favorite public space!