Tag Archives: public space

In Defense of BIDs

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Bryant Park from the air on movie night. The flagship success of BIDs.

The September 19th issue of Crain’s New York Business carries a broadside attack on business improvement districts on its front page, featuring a photo of Dan Biederman the founder of Bryant Park Restoration Corporation (“BPRC”), Grand Central Partnership (“GCP”) and 34th Street Partnership (http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160918/REAL_ESTATE/160919896/shaping-a-neighborhoods-destiny-from-the-shadows). The article rehashes a range of charges that were the subject of dozens of newspaper articles published in the 1990s, as well as a half-dozen government inquiries, including those by the New York City Council, the City’s Comptroller’s office, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and a forensic audit commissioned by City Hall. Given New York’s tabloid culture, many casual (and even some well-informed) observers assumed that where there was journalist smoke, there must be fire, but in fact, the BIDs under Biederman’s direction were shown to be models of good not-for-profit governance and transparency, and none of the negative policy arguments have been shown to be of any merit. BIDs work, and Biederman’s BIDs work better than most. They provide essential services without compromise of any important democratic principles. (BIDs Really Work, City Journal, Spring 1996 http://www.city-journal.org/html/bids-really-work-11853.html).

In fact, I would argue that the downtown renaissance, which began in the early 1990s, was catalyzed by the work of Biederman’s BIDs (of which I was a staff member), and particularly by the success of BPRC. The reopening of Bryant Park in 1992, following philosophies articulated by William H Whyte and George Kelling, demonstrated that social control could be reasserted in the urban core. GCP created “clean and safe” programs for the blocks around Grand Central Terminal in a successful effort to reverse what was feared to be the hollowing out of the city center and its occupation by the violent and homeless. Bryant Park and GCP proved that through high quality maintenance (“fixing broken windows”) and active programming, public spaces previously perceived as being dangerous could be made inviting and attractive. Cities all over the country, from Detroit to Houston, and around the world copied and continue to copy the model. Continue reading →

Say It With Flowers

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A view of the planting beds — on the south, shady side.

Nothing gives you more bang for your public space improvement dollars than plants. When people ask me what the one thing they should do to improve public space, my response is always to institute a horticulture program. Improving the perception of public space is about providing visual cues to users that the space is under social control. Colorful, well-maintained plants send that message in a number of ways. The physical material isn’t very expensive and the skills to maintain horticultural materials are widespread and easy to find. Putting plantings in places where people don’t expect them sends a powerful message.

I knew absolutely nothing about gardening when I went to work for Bryant Park Restoration Corporation in 1991. My father grew some terrific tomatoes in the yard when I was growing up (it was New Jersey, after all) and for some reason there was always mint growing outside the backdoor of the house that we put into iced tea. And that was the sum total of my agricultural experience when I arrived in the Park. From that day to this, I haven’t had a personal garden or even a yard. Continue reading →

MAKE NO GRAND PLANS

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The $600,000 Mistake

The $600,000 Mistake

Daniel Burnham was wrong. I learned this from making a $600,000 decision that turned out to be a mistake. Placemaking/tactical urbanism is an iterative process. You need to learn as you go. It is essential to effectively improving public space to take risks – but those risks ought to be small, manageable ones; ones you can back out of with minimal damage. When ideas don’t work out, for example when they aren’t effective in drawing people into the space, then you need to bite the proverbial bullet and reverse course. That is an important part of listening to the community – admitting that what you’ve done isn’t working when they are voting with their feet (in the wrong direction).

At Grand Central and 34th Street Partnerships in the 90’s we created a sidewalk horticulture program. Our President, Dan Biederman, came back from a vacation France where he saw sidewalk planters and hanging baskets and decided that replicating that experience in Midtown Manhattan would improve the streetscape and the pedestrian experience. Our horticultural team, led by Lyndon B. Miller had already scored a great success with the perennial gardens in Bryant Park. So we went to work trying to figure out how to extend that success to the streets around Grand Central and Penn Station. We were furrowing new ground here because, while some smaller American towns had hanging baskets (like Cooperstown, N.Y.), we weren’t aware of any large city where baskets and planters had been implemented on a large-scale. It was several years before Mayor Daley (who sent his staff to spend time with us in Bryant Park to take notes) implemented the spectacular Chicago State Street streetscape redesign, with its beautiful horticulture program – which eventually expanded all over the Loop. Continue reading →

Gentrification and its Discontents

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The claim that successful urban revitalization results in “gentrification” and is therefore a bad thing is one of those hypothetical objections to placemaking strategies that isn’t based on hard data, a phenomenon about which I wrote as an obstacle to the implementation of placemaking strategies. For the most part, the objection to gentrification by “advocates” for lower-income people is an objection to hypothetical “displacement” of existing residents by new, higher income folks. To put it as plainly as I can, while those advocates (and journalists) often point to anecdotal evidence of low-income people being forced from their homes by avaricious landlords, I have seen no reliable aggregate data in support of that theory.

I’m a student of the strategies for social change that are about bringing people together – not driving them apart. To Dr. King, integration was not only about bringing economic benefit and political power to dispossessed people, but also creating a society where everyone, regardless of background, is treated with equal concern and respect. Social integration is a good in and of itself, creating communities that honor difference. In addition, it seems likely to me, based on observation and experience, that housing and educating low-income people in the same communities as higher income people may well provide those lower-income people with the tools for economic advancement. Segregating and concentrating low-income people seems to lead to higher levels of social dysfunction.

The Furman Center’s most recent “State of New York Housing and Neighborhoods in 2015” (http://furmancenter.org/files/sotc/NYUFurmanCenter_SOCin2015_9JUNE2016.pdf) demonstrates that in New York City displacement through gentrification is not a significant effect, but also tells us some interesting things about the dynamics of improving neighborhoods. I find the Furman Center to be an indispensable, and non-ideological, source of measurable information about real estate trends. They are also quite careful about drawing conclusions from the data – and not confusing causes and effects.

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Learning from the Mistakes of Bryant Park

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BP Before

Bryant Park Before the Restoration

BP After

Bryant Park, from the same angle, taken After the Restoration

The details matter!

There are two widely held mindsets that often stand in the way of public space improvements. The first is the assertion of objections to proposed actions or changes based on hypothetical predictions of negative outcomes drawn from assumptions that aren’t based on actual observations or data. An example is the automatic reaction to proposals for public seating — that they will become a magnet anti-social behavior – particularly for the homeless. This is something that “everyone seems to know,” that, actual experience with public space demonstrates isn’t necessarily the case.

The second is that successful public space or economic revitalization strategies that work in one place aren’t transferable to another place – because one of the two places is somehow unique or different. I have been told that the success of Bryant Park is unique because it is in Manhattan, or that it is in midtown – and therefore programs and strategies that worked there won’t work in other places. In fact, before Bryant Park reopened, we were told that many of our ideas were impossible because of the park’s unique location. Moveable chairs, outdoor movies, elaborately planted gardens all wouldn’t work at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street, we were often told. Now all of those strategies seem obvious successes.

But nothing about Bryant Park’s success was inevitable, and a number of the elements of the park’s redesign were failures (although none of those were among the recommendations made by William H. (“Holly”) Whyte in his 1979 analysis of the park’s problems). The important take-away from this is that these failures were quickly identified and new programmatic or design solutions were created to address them. At the center of great public space management is an iterative process of observing how real people use public space and adjusting strategies to deal with issues as they arise. It is difficult to admit failure, particularly in a political environment, which comes with the territory of public space. But successful public space managers have to be nimble, identify problems and attempt new solutions until they get it right – and be willing to recognize what isn’t working. Continue reading →

Getting It Right

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My only prior trip to Cincinnati was in 2004. The downtown was deserted, particularly the central public space, Fountain Square. The neighborhood north of the downtown, called Over-the-Rhine, is the home of The Cincinnati Music Hall (now under extensive renovation), where the orchestra and opera play, had a terrible reputation and not too many years after my visit was the site of political protests related to racial and economic issues.

But a recent visit showed an incredible transformation. The downtown was lively and busy – including at night and on the weekends. Fountain Square had been redesigned – moving the historic fountain. And while it still has a lot of hard surfaces, it has moveable seating, constant activity, food trucks and really attractive and well-maintained plantings. It was busy all the time, and was surrounded by a lively retail mix.

And Over-the-Rhine has become a dynamic, active neighborhood. Most striking to me was that all of the retail along Vine Street, the main commercial corridor, was local – rather than national chains. The stores were a great mix of interesting food, clothing and other offerings. There was a great deal of development activity – particularly adaptive reuse of architecturally interesting commercial buildings into residential developments. Over-the-Rhine, given its 19th Century history as a home to European immigrants, has an abundance of high quality, funky revivalist structures (French, Dutch, German, Moorish and who-knows-what).

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Photos from Cleveland’s Public Square

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Most/all public spaces can be made to work with good programming and maintenance. Below are some images and suggestions as to how to improve this one.

Low maintenance planting beds send exactly the wrong message -- that the space is designed to defeat human intervention.

Needs more colorful, more imaginative plantings. This is a really inexpensive fix. Low maintenance planting beds send exactly the wrong message — that the space is designed to defeat human intervention.

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