This Place Is…

Downtown sitting

SoHo is clogged with streets and plenty of people lately, but people still find ways to enjoy a seat.

Add comment March 19th, 2007

The Nashville Street Life Project

Hooray for cities that actually practice the people-centered place design process! The Nashville Civic Design Center recognizes that creating public gathering places that attract groups of people is essential to keeping a downtown alive.

Through surveys (to assess people’s perception of places), observation (including behavioral mapping of which parts of the park are used throughout the day and how), and pedestrian counts, they studied Church Street Park’s…

…sociability (are people seen in groups there? is it a good place to meet)

…access and linkages (does the park draw people in? does it have clear entrances?)

…activities (are there good gathering points? are there enough places to sit?)

…and image (how do people perceive this park?).

Check out their preliminary findings (6.6mb PDF, best to right click and download).
LINK: http://www.civicdesigncenter.org/projects-streetlife.html

Add comment September 24th, 2006

How to Engage the Community in Urban Projects?

“Community Planning Centers are customized websites designed by Project for Public Spaces whose purpose is to involve local people more directly and effectively in a public space project.”

These websites make information about planning projects publicly available and invite community participation and feedback. Their example sites…

Omaha by Design

Littleton Places

The principle is excellent, but I’d like to see sites like these take the interactive dimension even further, making it easier for people to share their experiences with places (and not just their feedback, which these sites seem to primarily solicit, because not everyone knows they even have opinions!)

Food for thought: How can a community website engage ordinary, busy, everyday residents? What engages YOU?

• Google’s gotten people to tag their images by turning it into an addicting and relatively mindless game (Google Image Labeler).
• The City of Pittsburgh’s Map Hub has gotten resident cyclists posting their bike accidents and bike resources on a collaborative map.
• An interesting enough flickr photo pool can get thousands of people to expose their habits under the guise of self-expression (while unwittingly providing valuable insights for designers!)

How can urban planners take advantage of collaborative web technologies to understand people’s experiences and needs and in turn create places that succeed?

LINK: About Community Planning Centers

Add comment September 18th, 2006

Evaluating Places 101: What makes a place fail?

Part of the vision behind “This Place Is…” is to encourage ordinary people (not just urbanists and planners) to think critically about the places around them. I haven’t seen a better resource for getting started than the excellent primers from the Project for Public Spaces:

Why Many Public Spaces Fail

William H. Whyte once said, “It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people - what is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.” Today, many public spaces seem to be intentionally designed to be looked at but not touched. They are neat, clean, and empty - as if to say, “no people, no problem!” But to us, when a public space is empty, vandalized, or used chiefly by undesirables, this is generally an indication that something is very wrong with its design, or its management, or both.

The following pairs of photographs illustrate some of the most common problems of public spaces.

Lack of places to sit - Many public spaces don’t even provide a place to sit. So, in their protracted quest just to be comfortable, people are often forced to adapt to the situation in their own way. Sometimes they simply give up (below), or have to sit on briefcases (second image below).

A lack of good places to sit is an equally important issue. For example, a choice of seats in sun or shade can make all the difference in a place’s success, depending on its climate and location. Allowing people to sit near a playground or within view of other activities is also crucial.

Lack of gathering points - This includes features people want or need, such as playgrounds, or places where varying elements–bus stop, vending cart, outdoor seating–combine to create a gathering point. Food is often a critical component of a successful gathering point.

Paris’ Parc de la Villette (top) has seats that force people to sit in unsociable ways, and signs that ask them not to climb on the sculpture. Though located along a stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, this park at Laguna Beach (near top) has loads of activities, food, and places to sit. It is a busy, healthy gathering place.

Poor entrances and visually inaccessible spaces - If a space is to be used, people need to see it and they need to be able to get to it.

A dark or narrow entrance such as those that used to be at New York City’s Bryant Park (top) keeps people out instead of inviting them in. The same entrance (near top), redesigned to be more inviting and open, has kiosks that sell coffee and sandwiches, and the interior of the park is visible from the street.

Dysfunctional features - Oftentimes features are designed simply to punctuate the space, serving a use more visual than functional, instead of encouraging activity to occur around them - as at this waterfront park in Barcelona, below.

Good features, such as the friendly gorilla at the Berlin Zoo (above), encourage activity to occur around them.

Paths that don’t go where people want to go

Paths that lead to nowhere are useless, as demonstrated at this Phoenix, Arizona park (top). The Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, however (near top), show the art of making a path that pulls people along it, or allows them to stop and relax.

Domination of a space by vehicles - There may be a lack of crosswalks, or streets that are too wide, or lacking sidewalks.

A main street is not a highway. One should not fear crossing the street so much that the activity needs to occur in groups, as on George Street in Sydney, Australia (top). Crossing the street should be an easy, comfortable activity. Even if you have to wait (near top, Paris, France)

Blank walls or dead zones around the edges of a place - The area around a space is as important to its success as the design and management of the space itself.

The blank wall (near top) contributes nothing to the activity of the street. In fact, it doesn’t even seem real.

Inconveniently located transit stops - Bus or train stops located in places where no one wants to use them are a good recipe for failure.

A transit stop located in a busy, active place can not only make that place better, but also increase transit use.

From the Project for Public Spaces’ article, Why Many Public Spaces Fail

So do you know of any places that make these mistakes (or that do these things well)? We’d love to see (and post!) your snapshots on This Place Is!

Ready for more? Now that you’ve thought about what makes a place fail…

• learn some questions you can ask to evaluate What Makes a Place Great
• try your hand at reviewing a place for the PPS’ Great Places Gallery or Hall of Shame (but send a link our way if you do!)
  
• or just check out a few of the excellent (and shameful) examples there.

The Project for Public Spaces is at the forefront of people-centered place design. The PPS is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting a people-centric rather than project-centric approach to creating places. Their website is rich in resources for those interested in this subject. We’ll be posting other highlights soon.

Add comment September 12th, 2006