Skateboarding as an example of needing to "triangulate" and "connect" when doing planning

Dan Reed of the Just Up the Pike blog also blogs at Greater Greater Washington, and he wrote about efforts to create a skatepark in the Silver Spring area a couple weeks ago, in "Downtown Silver Spring needs a large skatepark."

I have been thinking about the skateparks issue (as one of many issues as part of parks planning and youth planning) for awhile because it's an illustration of the failure to take into consideration the variety of demographics and interests that ought to be systematically addressed during parks planning and land use planning generally.

For example, one of my criticisms of planning processes is that typically they rely on unsystematic data collection (i.e., web surveys). But the data appears scientific because formal (online) questionnaires are used, the reality is that the survey data is unrepresentative in all likelihood, because it is merely the collection of responses from the people who filled out the form.

Face it though. Planning processes are constrained by both money and time, and usually systematic surveys of citizens are not conducted. Usually the interests are represented by the people who come to meetings, complemented by site visits and evaluations, and ideally benchmarking against other functions and facilities in other communities, within a framework of best practice planning theory and typologies. In my opinion, when planning processes don't look outward as well as inward, they tend to be overly narrow exercises.

In the case of the DC Bicycle Master Plan for example, the bulk of the people who responded to the online survey were a bunch of men under the age of 40. What about women? What about families? What about children? What about teenagers? What about seniors? What about visitors? What about people from specific ethnic/language groups? Recreational vs. transportational interests? etc.

It's great that people responded to the survey, but if the point of planning is to serve "all" (or at least most) of the people, then more systematic ways of collecting opinion need to be utilized, to ensure that multiple audiences/segments/customers/demographics are heard and are responded to and planned for within the context of a particular study.

Parks planner David Barth of the firm Glatting Jackson writes (and makes presentations) about state of the art parks planning and he has a powerful concept called triangulation that helps us address this problem.

Triangulation* means considering needs from at least three vantage points. Multiple perspectives ensures a more accurate assessment of community needs and helps to make choices and set community priorities. See "Parks System Master Plans: Tools for Sustainable Communities."

In short, for people who play soccer, every park should be a soccer field. For people who believe parks should be passive spaces, every park should be simple open space. For people who participate in indoor activities, every space should be a physical building, a recreation center with facilities for the activities they are interested in most, with less interest in providing space for activities they don't participate in. Etc.

Triangulation starts from the philosophy that multiple needs must be met, in a systematic fashion, by planning for a comprehensive set of facilities of all types, across an entire jurisdiction (city, county, region, state, etc.), in a way that best balances conflicting preferences and interests, recognizing that the interests of all citizens need to be addressed in some fashion.

* Project for Public Spaces uses the same word but with a different meaning. William Whyte called triangulation the process by where "some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to other strangers as if they knew each other." (p. 154, The City).

Fred Kent extends this idea with what he calls "layering" or "layering attractions" to build and strengthen places as the "external stimuli" where more of those kinds of inkages can happen.

[PPS has] plenty of suggestions for creating the sort of clutter on a street that people like, for the way buildings ought to behave — don’t create blank walls, don’t confront pedestrians with the heating and air conditioning infrastructure, don’t lard a block with curb cuts — and for layering attractions that gather people in. “If you have a children’s reading room inside and a playground outside,” says Kent, “then you put a coffee shop, a Laundromat and a bus stop right there, you will create the busiest spot in your community.” (From Governing Magazine, "Pride of Place," April 2005.)

And in her dissertation on trails planning, Anne Lusk (now at Harvard School of Public Health where she researches bicycling and health issues) extended Whyte's observations into the concept of the social bridge:

Except for a minimal number of elements, the environment does not facilitate interaction between strangers. While someone could hold open a door and a person passing through could say thank you, necessary ADA regulations are making many doors automatic. If social capital is to be increased and interaction between people who know one another and people who do not know one another improved, environments that might foster positive interaction should be built. At the destinations, social bridge elements could be incorporated in the built environment. These social bridge elements include four types: 1) Assist, 2) Connect, 3) Observe, and 4) In Absentia.

("Design Guidelines for Greenways," from the concluding chapter of Dr. Anne Lusk's dissertation titled "Guidelines for Greenways: Determining the Distance to, Features of, and Human Needs Met by Destinations on Multi-Use Corridors." University of Michigan.)

Jan Gehl, in Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space calls this "to assemble or disperse" in city and site planning:

To Assemble or Disperse
To Integrate or Segregate
To Invite or Repel
To Open Up or Close In.

In the comment thread to the earlier entry on People's Counsels, one respondent quoted from the American Institute of Certified Planners code of ethics:

"We shall provide timely, adequate, clear, and accurate information on planning issues to all affected persons...."

"We shall give people the opportunity to have a meaningful impact on the development of plans and programs that may affect them. Participation should be broad enough to include those who lack formal organization or influence."

"We shall deal fairly with all participants in the planning process...."

While residents are not required to be "ethical" or concerned with maximizing the response of municipal services to serving multiple needs (as cost effectively and as comprehensively as possible I would add), I would hope that would be a basic concern of all of us as "citizens" in a "democracy."

Elected and appointed officials need to step in a lay out a better groundwork for our participation as citizens in these processes, and for ensuring the maximal amount of service to a maximal number of residents-citizens in the public services that we provide from the municipality as a whole.

While this won't cure nimbyism, it should at least put out into the open the most nativistic aspects, and only by naming and addressing and modeling the behaviors that we desire we will begin to achieve and receive more of the kind of behavior we want.

Where to start?

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote ("A courageous call for civility") about this in the context of civility and the soon to be launched "50 state tour on civility" by the National Endowment of the Humanities, kicked off by a speech last month entitled "Bridging Cultures," by the chair, Jim Leach, a former Congressman.

It's worth reading both the article and the speech.