Why haven’t there been more successful placemaking projects?

Pershing Square in Los Angeles remain under-populated as a result of been insufficiently well-maintained and programmed

A trip upstate to Gloversville last week brought into focus issues I have been thinking about since completing the manuscript for “Learning from Bryant Park” two years ago. I’ve been wondering why there are so few successful public space and downtown revitalization projects across the country, given that several ventures employing similar strategies have been widely publicized for effective public space improvement. The demonstrated key ingredients to downtown revitalization are neither expensive nor complicated. And yet they are not often actually used or well executed. A number of knowledgeable, talented people and organizations have made themselves available to towns and projects as consultants – and while they certainly add value to the places they work on, there still aren’t dozens of success stories. Pershing Square in Los Angeles is the most visible blemish among failed urban public spaces and was the object of my thinking about this issue since completing the book. I wrote the book, in part, as a tool for public space managers to use with stakeholder sceptics of the approach – and a couple of downtown managers have reported buying multiple copies for board members (those people know who they are and have my sincere thanks).

Before the collapse of Pershing Square Renew, working with the gifted Philip Winn of Project for Public Spaces, I made myself available to the various Downtown LA stakeholders to help advance the project. At the request of former local Council Member Jose Huizar, I flew out to LA at my expense to meet with him and his staff. He didn’t show (Huizar was indicted and removed from office in June). I also contacted the newly appointed Chief Design Officer of the City of Los Angeles and asked if we could persuade the Mayor to get involved, without success. Again, flying out at my expense, I met with a very interested local BID leader to attempt to persuade him and the BID to take Pershing Square on as a project. While this individual clearly got what I was trying to communicate to him and was very sympathetic (and has said some very nice things to me about LFBP), the BID remains uninvolved. Most startlingly, using my professional network, I got in touch one of the highest profile real estate and civic leaders in LA. The person who made the connection for me, said that the civic leader would be pleased to meet and talk with me by phone – and then listed for me the actions the civic leader said would be non-starters – these were most of the important things that I felt needed to happen in order for the park to be successful; including wresting control of the space from the Department of Recreation and Parks. The civic leader conveyed that if I wanted to talk about those things, I shouldn’t bother calling him. I sent him a long e-mail explaining what I thought were the key elements to turning Pershing Square around and didn’t hear back. What was up with this? Why has this proved to be to be so hard?

Gloversville, New York. The facade of an unstable structure on Main Street with boarded-up windows.

There are several intractable problems that stand in the way of the effective execution of most public space improvement projects. I can generally place those obstacles into two categories: ego/public reputation and politics/turf. Both of these constellations of issues seem to be somewhere between difficult and impossible to overcome in most places requiring revitalization. Given that post-Covid, we are going to be once again facing a need to persuade the public that public spaces are safe and attractive, these are once again non-trivial problems for many cities and towns. All of these forces impinge on the self-image of individuals and institutions charged with responsibility for parks, public spaces and Main Streets. Getting involved with this highly charged kind of thing is simply not worth taking on for most civic minded folks who are interested in making these places better without having a particular personal interest in public space improvement. There just isn’t enough upside for downtown managers and other do-gooders to get into a public dispute with influential or powerful civic figures and institutions.

Great public placemaking is small-scaled, slow and low profile during the period of execution. It requires a certain about of selflessness – because of its nature, the work is unlikely to bring immediate public attention. It requires the humility to quietly observe, to admit mistakes and make changes. This is the kind of selflessness and humility that Holly Whyte personified.

Most people get into the business of designing, planning and running public spaces with a vision of being like Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, Baron Haussmann, Bernini or Palladio. They want to be recognized in their communities, or even beyond, for their intelligence, wisdom and special talents. That’s part of why people are drawn first to capital projects – to be the center of attention at a ribbon cutting. Council Member Huizar appeared not to be interested in the day-to-day management and programming of Pershing Square. His staff indicated that his goal was a physical project he could take credit for.

For a recent, high profile example, the people who were the promoters of Hudson Yards talked a lot about urbanism and the pedestrian experience – but even more than making a handsome profit, the media the project has generated seems to indicate that they particularly want to be known for having done something BIG and lasting – creating a new neighborhood, making a huge impact.

Architecture and landscape architecture are naturally attractive fields for individuals for whom it is important to draw attention to themselves (and I am by no means implying this is true for all of those drawn to those field). Completed projects are often a permanent-ish monument to their designers. High design projects are intended to draw attention to themselves. My experience is that this impulse can actually be antithetical to the creation or restoration of great modern parks and downtowns. Effective economic development and public space management isn’t about having your name written in skywriting. It’s about the details. It’s about small scale. It’s about iteration. That’s not appealing to most people drawn to be planners or designers. They want to make a mark NOW. Persuading such people to do projects the right way, is damn near impossible. There isn’t much in it for them, given their principal motivation for doing this work.

I’m not exactly being judgmental here – I’m simply making an observation. Great design is a wonderful thing – and great designers are a rare and valued talent. But making a beautiful landscape, building, or development isn’t necessarily the same thing as contributing to making a public space that people want to be in and visit often. The path-breakingly designed park or plaza doesn’t necessarily create the secondary effects that improve the area around it. It is an end in itself.

Even my extremely thoughtful, serious-minded (and incredibly nice) colleagues in Gloversville started my recent visit by talking up the construction of a new park with a splash pad (without a plan for the ongoing stream of considerable resources required to maintain the works of the splash pad and the rest of the park) a ten minute walk from the middle of downtown, and a major new streetscape project for Main Street (with a bunch of the au courante traffic calming features – bump outs and (difficult to maintain) distinctive crosswalks. This is habit of mind that is very difficult to shake. There are other, much less expensive projects, that Gloversville probably ought to be focused on in the short run. In any event, Gloversville already has a vest pocket park in a former alley right in the center of town that isn’t properly being taken care of and needs maintenance and programming. That’s where the focus ought to be not on building new infrastructure.

The biggest obstacle to the improvement of Pershing Square is that the Rec and Parks Department (which already spends about $4 Million on the park) is adamant that it control every aspect of the park, including capital projects, maintenance and programming. When Pershing Square Renew proposed a daily market (to be run by Urban Space Management – which has the secret sauce to the success of this kind of programming) to animate the Square, Rec and Parks demanded that it retain any of the revenue generated from the market and arbitrarily rejected the physical plans for set up. There is no downtown public space project that has been successfully executed by a municipal parks agency of which I am aware. Period. Therefore, Rec and Parks has effectively taken the position that they do not want the park to be the Bryant Park of LA. Private philanthropists are not going to donate money to a not-for-profit to be turned over to a municipal agency to finance public space improvements using municipal procurement and project management processes that are notoriously expensive and slow. It was completely unrealistic for the City of LA to expect the project to be privately financed and publicly built. That just doesn’t happen.

Commissioner Henry Stern, late of the New York City Parks Department, called parks department properties “The Emerald Empire.” He saw himself as a parks imperialist, constantly at work expanding and protecting the empire’s boundaries. He made clear to me on several occasions that he would never cede the kind of authority held by the Bryant Park Corporation (under an arrangement made by his predecessor, Commissioner Gordon Davis) for any other park property ever again. Was this because of some philosophical objection to privatization of public space? I don’t think so. It was about turf, pure and simple; controlling physical territory. Henry was a very, very smart and savvy guy (he also used to say that the court jester is always the smartest person in the room), and he was a bureaucratic master. Protecting his domain, he viewed as an essential part of his job description. In public affairs, actors are often assessed on how many people work for them, the size of their budgets and the amount of real estate they control. It’s a inherent vector; an essential element of the culture. Getting parks departments and mayors to give up functional and/or economic control of public spaces – whether it be the sidewalks of downtown or square miles from City Hall, is inevitably a major undertaking – requiring vast amounts of political capital. For almost any rational person, the “game” just isn’t worth the candle.

Metro Tech Plaza in Brooklyn where someday I may return to my cube. Also under-populated and programmed. Right in the middle of Downtown.

Successful public space projects happen in those cases when serious, dedicated, persistent people who are interested in improving the public realm are involved and where high profile civic leaders use their political influence and/or the municipal leadership is either sufficiently mature and forward thinking and/or desperate (or a little of both) to transfer control over the public space to a privately governed entity. Often, these efforts are successful when the economic environment around the public space is so deteriorated that the promoters are concerned about depreciating value of their real estate – giving them an incentive to push the political envelope. It is a thankless task, with little direct, immediate personal reward for the initiators and the possibility of an unpleasant public fracas. But the benefit to the public, as Bryant Park and Campus Martius in Detroit have demonstrated, can be enormous. Advocates for public space improvement need to be provided with sound arguments and evidence regarding the potential benefits from public space revitalization done right, and as much political/social air cover as can be mustered to support their advocacy. Perhaps part of the problem in LA is how well the properties adjacent to Pershing Square are doing economically despite the space’s degraded condition. The situation isn’t bad enough to force government’s hand to release its grip.

While in Gloversville I did my best to try to articulate sound placemaking goals, that don’t take much in the way of resources. They do require quiet observation and time. The tactics I suggested won’t provide an opportunity for ribbon cutting and the results they produce will be difficult to establish credit for. Gloversville’s business improvement district was recently dissolved, partially as a result of the usual issues discussed above standing in the way of downtown revitalization. This was certainly a set-back. But Gloversville has the benefit of a Mayor, in Vince DeSantis, who is a quiet, serious forward thinker on issues affecting downtown in the Holly Whyte mold and in Ron Peters an economic development chief who is willing to take risks. They have the capacity to lead the charge to push back against the discredited ideas, egos and silos that prevent effective public space improvement.