1894 Bryant Park before the physical changes. Looking north.
A serious challenge facing public space managers is people living in and engaging in antisocial behavior in public spaces. This seems to be a particular issue for cities on the west coast, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Eugene, Oregon. The situation is raising a raft of crosscutting concerns about individual rights, the causes of economic disadvantage in our country today, the sensitivities of upper-middle class urbanites and our society’s stubborn unwillingness to assist those suffering from serious mental health issues, including substance abuse. Conflicting interests and ideologies play out in policy discussions about how public spaces are governed and managed.
Successful restoration of social control to public spaces is not about enforcement. The apparent decline in the quality of the public space experience in the second half of the 20th century was driven almost entirely by how safe people felt they were on sidewalks and in parks. Many felt that the public realm of shared space was out of social control, and as a result, they feared for their physical safety. Some of this fear may have been exaggerated or even incorrect, driven by race- and class-bound assumptions and stereotypes. But even if the threat was not real, the perception of it kept people from visiting, working, shopping in or investing in public places perceived to be unsafe. Much of the success of improved public spaces over the last two decades has been based on improving those perceptions – making public spaces feel safer by employing “broken-windows” management (discouraging low-level disorder and providing high-quality, detail-oriented maintenance) and placemaking practice.
Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica Queens
In Jamaica, Queens, where the negative perception of the Downtown was (and remains) the single most important factor inhibiting economic renewal people living in public spaces never became a major issue. This was especially notable as southeast Queens is entirely a community of color, and therefore, not surprisingly, housed more than a dozen social service facilities serving the homeless – more than 40% of all such programs serving the county.
The reason that so few people lived in the public spaces in Jamaica was because we at the local development entity, Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, partnered closely with Breaking Ground (formerly Common Ground Community, founded by one of my social entrepreneurial heroes, Rosanne Haggerty), the outstanding agency with which the city contracted to provide outreach services to the homeless. Our ambassador team, along with community member Thomas Crater, Jr., who monitored neighborhood conditions from his bike, was assigned to identify people living in public spaces. A description of the individual(s) and their location was immediately forwarded to the street homeless outreach team who then attempted to contact the person and persuade them to accept social services and come inside. Often this was a multi-day, and very occasionally a multi-week, process. Most single adult people who end up on the street are highly service-resistant, and it takes skilled, patient outreach work to persuade them to accept shelter and services. In the more than five years I was involved in the partnership, we persuaded every homeless person whom we identified to ultimately accept shelter and service.
Sutphin Boulevard and Archer Avenue at the Jamaica Transit Center
There are those who argue, mostly, I would assume, out of ideology, that some people have a right to live in public space if they so choose. This ideology seems to be an obstacle to improving both the lives of those living in public spaces and the public spaces themselves. It is important to emphasize that we at GJDC and Breaking Ground started from the assumption that living out-of-doors was not a rational life-style choice. No one who is competent to make decisions about their life choices would choose to live in public spaces. All of the individuals whom we approached had diagnosable mental health and/or substance abuse issues. We worked together to get them shelter and the services they needed and the benefits to which they were entitled.
We also worked with the local providers that operated residential facilities for social service clients in the Downtown to minimize their effect on the neighborhood around them. When we found a problem, we sat down with the agency and worked to find a solution. For example, one agency that housed couples with children locked its doors at an 11 PM curfew. This was problematic for the neighboring park, where the men who were locked out tended to spend the night. The program changed its curfew policy and the problem was solved.
As a result of this cooperative approach with local providers, we had great success in minimizing the amount of panhandling and other aggressive behaviors that occur in other downtowns. Public spaces – sidewalks and parks – belong to everyone, and individuals who dominate those spaces by using them for the everyday activities of their private lives, or to engage in commercial activity, are excluding others from sharing in their use. As an attorney, I recognize what a sensitive area concerning the exercise of personal rights this is. Enforcement based on an individual’s status is a violation of their legal rights and of the norms of a just society. That is why service is preferable to enforcement as an approach to low-level antisocial behavior.
A fence at an entrance of the park in 1983.
Birdseye view during construction
Where negative social ecologies have been created, “breaking the circuit” may be a way to take back the space for the public. Bryant Park had long been a haven for drug dealers and their clients, and some sections of the park were “owned” by them for years. Greeley Square, at 32nd Street and Sixth Avenue had even more long-standing networks of threatening behavior going back decades. Greeley reportedly had individuals dealing in hard drugs, public drinking and frightening aggressive behavior toward pedestrians. Both Bryant Park and Greeley Square were substantially physically restored, and during the capital construction had fences around them. After both of those spaces were reopened, and re-occupied by the public, I realized that the building of the fences and the exclusion of the public for some period of time had disrupted the patterns of antisocial behavior that had established themselves in those spaces. During the restoration work, people went elsewhere, although in neither case were the criminal social systems displaced only to reappear somewhere else. They were broken up.
Greeley Square looking north.
In both cases, we did notice at the time the of the parks’ reopening that some of the former park denizens returned to sidewalks across the street. This is where one of Holly Whyte’s most important principles comes into play: good uses drive out the bad. Active programming of the parks drew the general public in, and the bad actors found they could not retake and dominate the space and didn’t try to re-establish themselves. Bad actors don’t want to be around positive social behavior. They want to be sheltered from sight and activity. Opening spaces up to more people and activities defeats the patterns of antisocial behavior.
Greeley Square today. Catching some rays.
Both Bryant Park and Greeley Square had full-time security and maintenance staff providing “eyes on the street” after they were re-opened to the public. The initial successful programming in Bryant Park was a daily schedule of concerts. In Greeley, moveable tables and chairs and high-quality horticulture, along with occasional events, were enough to draw crowds and keep the drug dealers in the windows of the greasy spoon across the street from the park. When they gave up hope of taking back the park, they disappeared from the neighborhood.
Using enforcement as the sole means of reestablishing social control of public space takes enormous resources to be effective and does not create a long-term solution. Those resources are usually withdrawn after the passage of time and the anti-social behavior returns. It has been proven to be far more effective to work with social service professionals to deal with mental health and substance abuse issues and to make spaces unwelcoming to illegal activity and antisocial behavior by breaking up long-standing social ecologies and replacing them with positive activity. Well run, well-programmed public spaces are a benefit to everyone, regardless of race or class. They are the great social equalizer, where people of diverse backgrounds and economic situations can come together in a democratic society. Half an hour sitting in Greeley Square drives this point home.
Greeley Square postcard image