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? Continue reading →