Parks-public spaces as places where people come together

Crown Fountain @ Millennium Park, Chicago.

When you think of New York City (Manhattan), besides the skyscrapers, the subways, and the sheer numbers of people on the streets, the other places that come to mind are the great public spaces where people mix--together and doing their own thing. Central Park is the one place that everybody thinks about, but of course there are many other such places such as Bryant Park, Washington Square, even Madison Park.

Last year, Chicago opened Millennium Park, which appears to be successful on the scale of Central Park, Bryant Park, and Washington Square Park combined (Chicago-sized of course). The Chicago Tribune has done a lot of reporting about the Park, and the Sunday issue of the paper has a long analysis of the impact of the Millennium Park on the city, "How Millennium Park created a unique nexus of culture," by their arts critic, Howard Reich. From the article:

It was designed as a lush urban park, a star-lit concert space, a grassy art gallery dotted with high-toned creations, but Millennium Park has become something more. With approximately 3 million visitors streaming into the place last summer, with gospel and jazz and highbrow music set to sing again from its main stage starting next weekend, Millennium Park has become our town square, our meeting place, our focal point for the arts -- at least when the winter winds aren't howling.

I was talking about this article last night, and in thinking about great public spaces in Washington, DC that are true places of mixing, with town square, meeting place, and focal points, we really could only come up with one park--Dupont Circle--which is a micro-space compared to the parks mentioned above.

Dupont Circle photo by Dick Hodgman.

Rock Creek Park doesn't function like Central Park at all, as nice as it is. The National Mall is more of an ornament, and disconnected from Downtown, let alone neighborhoods. Interesting and beautiful in its own way, but it really is part of the Federal City. The parkspaces along the Potomac River, like the National Mall, are disconnected from neighborhoods, and therefore can't be places for residents to come together.

Farragut Park and McPherson Square no. Franklin Square, well I suppose it has potential, but clearly needs a drastic redesign (hmm, if there's any park in the city that is ripe for a Project for Public Spaces "How to Turn a Place Around" public training exercise in placemaking, I guess that would be the place). (Having not lived around Lincoln Park, well I did for a couple months, I can't really comment on that space. In any case, like Stanton Park, it is a solely neighborhood place, less of a place for mixing.)

Freedom Plaza? Don't get me started on what a lousy place that is...
Freedom Plaza. Flickr photo by Hanneorla.

The other place in Washington that truly has the town square, meeting place, and focal point for the arts elements is Eastern Market. It happens that in another context, I wrote about this yesterday.

How do you mediate between the segments? I think of public markets as great places for mixing. For example, Eastern Market in DC always strikes me as one of the only places where the races in DC "mix," and I attribute that to the strong presence of the Market 5 Gallery in North Hall, along with the vendors that must feel more comfortable showing there, because the crafts markets that the Gallery runs on Saturday and Sunday. Now, the Eastern Market area is probably the most vibrant area of the city on weekends, and it wasn't all that long ago when on Sundays at least, the entire street was dead. Now virtually every store is open, the places jammed. (In fact, Marvelous Market is opening a location at 7th and C Streets SE.)

In short, I think much of Eastern Market's specialness comes from the Market 5 Gallery, which I would aver has been targeted for displacement by most of the white movers and shakers in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. I fear that sooner or later, it will be displaced. Market 5 Gallery isn't an "afrocentric" facility, but it is thoroughly rooted in the African-American community.

More from the article about Millennium Park:

Yet in ways that perhaps even its planners hadn't anticipated, Millennium Park has emerged unmatched in Chicago -- and perhaps anywhere in the country -- as a cultural nexus, a gathering place where rich and poor, connoisseurs and commoners, black and white and shades between bask in approximately 24 acres of music, dance, art, puppetry and whatnot.

The implications for this city, a place where races and religions and cultures famously have battled against and pulled apart from one another, are profound. For even though various observers have been unhappy with certain aspects of Millennium Park -- even apart from its running construction delays (it was supposed to open at the turn of the millennium for which it's named, after all), the park's impact on the texture of life and culture in the Chicago area have been undeniable.

"I know it cost a lot of money, but it's just simply the central gathering place for people in this city," says Timuel Black, a revered Chicago historian and author of the landmark book "Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration" (Northwestern University Press)."

In my opinion, it's a plus for bringing about unity, a sense of community among people whose backgrounds -- nationally, religiously, racially -- may be different." It's an opportunity," continues Black. "I think it's a unifying element in the city."

We need places like that in Washington, DC. We don't have them. And the push to maximize profit, such as with the development plans for the Old Convention Center site, which at one time were supposed to incorporate a variety of public realm and placemaking aspects, continues unabated, at a real cost to beauty and vitality.

Index Keywords: urban-design-placemaking