Some truths are self-evident. Spaces work best when they are designed for the people, by the people.
I was reminded of this simple (but not often followed) truth when I attended the March 23 Parks & Greenspace Conference, organized by Park Pride each year.
Please read the article my colleague – Delaney Tarr – wrote about the conference last week.
The closing speaker was Melvin Carter, a two-term mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota, who began his talk by saying he was able to open or break ground on 15 new parks during his eight years in office. St. Paul has consistently ranked among the top five cities in the Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore, one of the most objective measures describing which cities fare well when it comes to parks. (Atlanta has been climbing the ParkScore ranking, and it is now at 21.)
At the core of Mayor Carter’s talk at the Atlanta Botanical Garden was the idea of making sure people help design the places meant for them.
One of Carter’s stories at the conference was about his time in high school in St. Paul. Carter grew up in the Rondo neighborhood, and he remembered a cut-through that would save steps rather than going to the corner and taking the concrete path to the school.
“Every day of the week, 2,500 students know it makes more sense to cut across that grass than to walk up to the corner and walk around,” Carter said. “Every day of the week, 2,500 students are voting with their feet, and this sidewalk paved right there is one of the best examples of good governance I’ve ever seen, because somebody along the way decided to stop asking those students to change their behavior to meet the geometric shapes that we built and started paving the ground underneath people’s feet.”
The lesson. Let people decide how to design public spaces.
Immediately, I remembered William “Holly” Whyte, a journalist, planner, sociologist, author, people-watcher and changemaker.
Back when I was attending Georgia State University in the late 1970s, getting my master’s in urban studies, Whyte came and presented his approach to designing parks and public spaces. Observe people. See how they use the space. And then design it. Whyte made such an impression on me that I want to make sure he is remembered.
As the daughter of an architect and the sister of a landscape architect, I have always been fascinated with how cities work or don’t work. Too often I see cities and places designed for cars rather than people. Too often I see buildings designed to serve an architect’s ego rather than connecting the building to the sidewalk and to the street.
Carter spoke of how his Rondo community was cut apart when an interstate was built through the middle. It’s not unique. It happened here in Atlanta at Buttermilk Bottoms (now the Old Fourth Ward and Sweet Auburn community). Use a highway to cut through a part of town where there likely was a concentration of poor people who did not have the power to stop a road that would divide their community.
During his talk, Carter remembered asking a 19-year-old young man, Marcus, if he was going to college.
“College? Look around. I live in a trash can,” Marcus responded to Carter, who was then serving on city council.
“Those words snatched my heart out of my chest. But it’s a reminder to me that Marcus, who hasn’t been to school; Marcus, who’s not an urban planner; Marcus, who’s not an architect. Marcus knows that his physical environment is telling him something about what we think about him,” Carter said. “Marcus is smart enough to connect what we think about who he is today to what his future prospects probably are for his life.”
Carter did take a jab at the popular phrase “place-making,” which he said focuses too much on the physical environment. He prefers the phrase “world-building,” which includes people by its definition.
“I’ve seen too many parks and spaces planned by people who focus on the 10 percent without ever understanding the 90 percent,” Carter said. “So, if we’re going to do world-building the right way, we have to understand the 90 percent.”
When Carter was mayor, an architect came to his office to ask about his vision for a new recreation center. Carter told the architect he had wasted his time coming to City Hall because it didn’t matter what he thought. What mattered is what the children and the community thought should be part of the center.
When he went to the ribbon-cutting, he toured the center.
“Upstairs there’s a floor-level sink for our Muslim neighbors to wash their feet after the prayer, and our parents, our Somali parents, are Muslim parents who come in that space,” Carter said. That meant they wouldn’t have to go home to pray. The center was built to include them.
Another example: At the grand opening of Pedro Park, Carter was surrounded by a group of senior citizens who complained that the playground was unacceptable because there were no swings or slides.
“I was stuck in this conversation with these adults complaining about the inadequacies of this playground,” Carter said. “The reason I was stuck is because I had brought my five-year-old to the ribbon cutting, and I couldn’t get her off the playground.”
It’s about how a space makes people feel, Carter said.
“There’s a proven practice that no city planners anywhere, no parks planners anywhere, no nobody’s using that’s an established best practice for creating a space that’s so vibrant, that’s so phenomenal, that’s so inviting, that’s so enticing, that so in captivating, that not only do people want to be there, but that people feel a sense of ownership over it.”
During the Q&A, I asked Carter if he knew of Holly Whyte, who transformed the way some landscape architects and park planners designed urban spaces. I felt as though the former mayor was channeling the themes of Whyte, who died in 1999 after championing a change in the way parks and public spaces were designed in New York and other cities.
Whyte’s approach was to let people tell the planners how they want to use a space. He did this by using time-lapse film to observe how people travel and used parks, plazas, sidewalks and streets to design spaces that made them feel welcome.
Carter had never heard of him.
But these truths are self-evident. Let’s design places for people by the people.
Today, Whyte’s teachings live on through Project for Public Spaces as well as the Social Life Project. Whyte also wrote a book, “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces,” and produced documentaries showing how people-centered design helped cities thrive.
I’m lucky to have lived long enough to see the continuity of themes over the decades in designing urban places.
Melvin Carter, please meet William “Holly” Whyte. You are kindred spirits from two different generations who continue to show us that people should come first in designing our parks and our cities.
