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Photo from The Atlantic Cities
The transformation of spaces into creative and vibrant places is a current trend in the 21st century. The Internet is full of success stories detailing how cities, in their quest to find distinctiveness, have rediscovered assets of built and physical environments. With these strong and conscious efforts, significant improvements to the livability of whole communities follow. Common to these success stories is placemaking.
In the process of making place it becomes increasingly important to understand how people fit into civic design. And to understand how, it is important to realize the tendency for a built environment to turn its back on people. In order to transform space into place, the connection between people and their built environments must be re-established.
Making Places worth Caring About
In his 2004 TED talk “The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs,” James Howard Kunstler hints at the making of place as creating a sense of place, as having the ability to create meaningful places. These are places of both quality and character. From his narrative, it is clear that buildings play a large role in the making of place as space is most definitively defined by built structures and environments.
A major component of Kunstler’s talk is the relationship between the public realm and a citizen’s ability to perform civic duties. According to Kunstler, this ability derives from a body of culture- a culture of good civic design. Good civic design requires extensive skills and methods; unfortunately, skillful civic design was disregarded following World War II, resulting in a “catastrophe of human environments.”
As a nation we gradually lost the ability to define place and space after World War II. If we don’t know where we come from or what type of people we are, it is difficult to navigate our future. To be in a “hopeful present,” we need to regain the ability to define place and space. This is a difficult task, however. Thousands of places in the U.S. are places not worth caring about. Kunstler proposes creating permeable spaces in built environments- destination spots full of shops, bars, and bistros- where things constantly move in and out of the space, creating a vibrant place worth investing in and visiting.
Re-Opening Our Eyes
In This Land: Visual Pollution (2007), President of Scenic America Kevin Fry narrates a NYT slide show on the miserable suburban landscape found in so much of America. Amidst pictures of dejected spaces, Fry describes America as a “nation going insane” with no sense of who we are or where we are from. Our built environments have been built as places for cars. We live between isolated, concrete environments that are only accessible by car.
With this isolation, serendipity and connection to place is lost. Your chance of interaction with people is diminished, and your connection to these built environments is mostly situational and involuntary. Why care about a place if you don’t feel connected to it? Fry suggests, by re-opening our eyes and seeing the need for increased interaction not only between people and buildings, but also between people and people, we can generate a reversal of these built environments.
Creating Destinations and Experience Centers
Cleveland, Ohio
East Fourth Street in Cleveland, Ohio is a vibrant pedestrian-only street located moments away from Downtown Cleveland’s historic theater district and the Gateway Sports Complex, home to the Indians and Cavaliers. The street is lined with eateries, entertainment venues, and retail and housing complexes. As recently as 2000, this street was solely known for seedy behavior and criminal activity. Collaboration between the government, businesses, and developers paired with the vision of attracting and retaining young professionals to Downtown Cleveland turned East Fourth into one of the most vibrant urban environments in the city.
Los Angeles, California
The Grove sits adjacent to the original Farmer’s Market, a historic landmark established in 1934 on the corner of Fairfax and 3rd. Primarily an outdoor marketplace with retail and entertainment venues, The Grove was designed to emulate historic districts in Los Angeles with plazas and courtyards. A streetcar takes visitors from the historic Farmer’s Market through the heart of The Grove. Since its opening in 2002, The Grove has become a prime destination spot for tourists and Los Angeles natives alike.
Chicago, Illinois
In Millennium Park sits a 66 feet long and 33 feet high bean-like structure formally called Cloud Gate, and unofficially referred to as “The Bean.” The Bean is comprised of stainless steel plates, creating a vast mirrored surface. This giant structure reflects the city skyline, allowing visitors to photograph themselves with the Chicago skyline behind them.
These three spaces provide examples of permeable spaces. By reversing the built environment from a space built for cars to a space built for people, these spaces became interactive places worth caring about. All three examples are propelled by interaction between people and buildings, and between people and people. Connection is thereby re-established and choice is reintroduced into civic design.
Meet Me in St. Louis…In 2015
St. Louis is one city to keep your eye on in the next few years with its CityArchRiver 2015 plan to reconnect the iconic Gateway Arch to Downtown St. Louis- a disconnection that is nearly fifty years old. The construction of Interstate 70 closely followed the completion of the Gateway Arch in 1964. While the intention of the highway was to facilitate greater movement into the region’s center, the highway was responsible for disrupting the city’s street grid and consequently isolated the national monument. As this project takes off, cities across the country will be looking to St. Louis as an example of how to approach reducing the impact of interstates in urban areas.
A major component of CityArchRiver 2015 is to build a “Park Over the Highway,” which will connect the downtown area with the Gateway Arch and the Mississippi River waterfront. Visitors will be able to walk from the Old Courthouse parallel to the Gateway Arch, directly to the Arch grounds, and to the riverfront on one continuous greenway. As a result of additional park acreage, there will be ample space for events, museums, bicycle paths, playgrounds, performance and entertainment venues, and a reinvigorated riverfront.
St. Louis is not only attempting to reconnect the Gateway Arch to downtown, but also attempting to reverse the built environment from one suited for cars to one suited for people. And with this reversal, space and place will be re-defined because connection and interaction between people and the built environment will be re-established. The Arch will once again become something to celebrate, something worth caring about, and at the same time St. Louis will find rediscover its distinctiveness.
See the proposed transformation with the CityArchRiver 2015 Slider Gallery
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Jenna Chilingerian is a CEOs for Cities Summer Success Fellow. Jenna is a Fresno, California native and recent graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles. Jenna received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a minor in Civic Engagement, and earned both College Honors and Summa Cum Laude Latin Honors. She recently moved to Cleveland, Ohio to complete a summer City Success Fellowship with CEOs for Cities.