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We get pretty excited about our projects- pushing the green features that we can and trying to achieve the best possible designs that normal people can still afford to buy. But I need to come back to each day focusing in on the real goal – creating the best community we can for people.
I just read through a biography of James Rouse who pioneered the development of shopping malls, festival marketplaces, and even a new town called Columbia. We urbanites love to sneer at the shopping mall as a poor substitute for a community center, but I confess growing up in Lodi it was all we had. If we were going somewhere it was usually to the mall. I came to respect James Rouse in that he was attempting to bring community to the suburbs of the 1960’s and 1970’s – quite a challenge! He realized “people seek warm and human places, with diversity and choice, full of festival and delight.” Describing Quincy Market in Boston he says “People don’t come to a festival marketplace for the purpose of shopping or eating… they come for the delight. They come and walk slowly and they smile and they sit and look at other people. There are very few places in a city that people can go with no purpose. They can go not knowing why they are going… this is terribly important to people.”
WOW – how do we make that kind of place? We have ideas. Informal courtyards and tree preserves in our housing projects. A community garden. Definitely coffee shops. The Riverwalk! A park with some water feature to cool off in (Sprayground II). Lively mixed use streetscapes with patio dining.
I bet you have ideas too. I would love to hear other ideas of things we could do to encourage this atmosphere of delight. Is there anywhere you go with no purpose? What gets you out with strangers?
Steve
3 responses so far ↓
1 Steve // Feb 21, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Oh - I forgot 2 ideas - A library and Children’s museum!
2 E // Feb 22, 2007 at 12:28 pm
I was in Paris on vacation last year, and I was constantly amazed at the plentiful, comfortable and attractive public spaces all over that city. I’m not just talking about parks, but small public spaces here and there… it’s hard to explain, but for people who’ve been there before you know what I mean. Little squares with park benches, trees and fountains. Wonderful bridges with as much width for pedestrians and bicyclists as for cars. Countless hidden courtyards and little plazas between or within blocks. I could go on and on. To me, these are exactly the kinds of places we need to put back into our community - because these are the places you find yourself going with no purpose. Cafes, parks, and other “programmed” spaces can function that way too, but typically people go to those places for a specific purpose such as recreation, or surfing the net, or meet a friend for an activity. Which are wonderful things, of course. But I think we really need to try harder to design those little public places back into the community.
3 wburg // Feb 22, 2007 at 4:51 pm
A lot of us are guilty of that particular hangout. I don’t even know how much time I spent wasting time at Sunrise Mall or Birdcage Walk during the 1980s. I suppose they were an improvement on hanging out at the 7-11, or the local Radio Shack.
People do like to congregate around other people, though, whether they have to drive there or walk there, and it kind of behooves the post-automobile thinker to think up ways for people to walk there.
I recommend Ray Oldenburg’s “The Great Good Place” for some discussion of the importance of public hangouts:
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Good-Place- … mp;s=books
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