The Sum of its Tchotchkes

Have you noticed that wayfinding is becoming A Thing? Wayfinding is a planner buzzword that really just means signs to help you find your way around. In the placemaking context, it serves two purposes: it helps establish a community identity, because the signs’ design and graphics establish or contribute to a theme or brand – like the signs pictured below. And, of course, it helps people find a place they’re looking for or maybe discover a place they didn’t know existed.

The signs above all use words to tell you where you are or which way to go. What if you’re not an English-speaker and you're looking for, say, a place to go kayaking? This one helps, kind of… at least you can narrow kayaking down to either right or left.

It’s interesting that the rise in signage has coincided with widespread access to directions by GPS and smartphones. It is almost certainly about establishing a brand or identity for a community as much as providing directions. Even directions can serve a marketing purpose. If you are not familiar with, say, Spring Lake (Ottawa County, near Grand Haven) and didn’t know there was a good place to kayak, the sign above could bring you back there with your boat for another visit. 

There is a level of comfort that comes from signage in places where Siri doesn’t reach – like inside museums or malls, out of the way places, or densely developed locations. Some of the small towns here in northern Michigan have shops or restaurants hidden in back of buildings that you would never find without good signage. There was a great Cuban restaurant in Traverse City that I drove past three times because it was set back from the street and had bad signage. (OK, clearly I am not the best at finding things either…)

The best-planned wayfinding isn’t limited to signs. There’s basic wayfinding and branding, and there’s wayfinding that contributes to a place’s identity, its story. Wayfinding that incorporates maps, apps, web sites, video, and sometimes even live human beings to tell a story is really what creates its identity.

Imagine if Spring Lake’s web site had a map (or even a link to a map) showing kayak launch sites, routes, and places of interest along the way? Or an app that did all those things? Or a paper map? Sadly they don’t. A popular destination up north is Leland’s historic Fishtown. The marker gives you some information about its history. The Leland Chamber of Commerce has a nice web site with a few paragraphs about Fishtown and a Yahoo street map that isn’t scaled to show street names. What about a walking tour of Fishtown with audio about its history, or interactives showing Fishtown now and 100 years ago? Maybe some pictures of those primitive oak boats referenced in the historic marker sign? Ummm… nope. 

A visit to Fishtown would be a lot richer experience if there was better information available for visitors than just a historic marker. Fishtown is what makes Leland unique and not another tchotchke-filled lakeshore town. It makes Leland a destination and Leland celebrates (or capitalizes, depending on your perspective) this history; it’s Leland’s place, its identity. And like Savannah’s lost Unique Quotient, if Fishtown or Spring Lake or anywhere else just creates a brand, not a story, it’s no more interesting than the sum of its tchotchkes.

 HERE is an interesting interview with someone who spent his career designing maps and signage that relies almost exclusively on pictures, not words.

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Ordinary Virtue of the Week: Joy

“May we not be strangers in the lush province of joy.”

Charles Wright, Flannery’s Angel
 

For a long time, contentment was good enough. But a few years ago, finally, it wasn’t. I needed joy.

Pursuit of joy is a deliberate decision, a choice. It’s knowing, then being watchful for things that bring joy. Joy needs tending.

A source of joy for me is serendipity, delight at something unexpected – whether it’s a rock on the beach, or elephants on a Manhattan street. Or a photo of Christopher Walken on a barbershop door.

The stones photo below is by permission of Kim Sheridan, whose blog, thewildedge.net, is a recently-discovered bit of serendipity. Her nature photos are lovely. I recommend it.

The elephant photo is one of those random internet things found while looking for something else. Another source of unexpected delight.

Here's wishing you real joy this holiday season.

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Privately-owned public space and the Knights Who Say Ni

“First you must find... a shrubbery! Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two-layer effect with a little path running down the middle. Then, you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest... with... a herring!”

From, of course, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. All hail the Knights Who Say Ni, possibly the first stakeholders in a privately-owned public space project.

My day job is in state government, in a program that provides development incentives to local government and the private sector. Now and then (particularly in election years), we have a public conversation about what government’s role in the private and local realm should be. Typically government creates incentives for what we want the incented – whether private or public sector – to do. How effective are we? Is it clear to those who benefit from our incentives what we really want? (Is it clear to us?!) And what's the public good that comes from our incentives?

New York, San Francisco, and other cities reward private developers that incorporate public spaces into their projects (known as privately-owned public spaces). For example, you get a zoning variance for more floors if you have a public plaza outside or public passage inside the building. 

However, there may be no qualitative controls after the variance is granted.  Some developers see the public space as an asset to their development, while for others it’s an intrusion. They make seating uncomfortable (or don’t have any), don’t put up signs identifying public space, or just make public spaces so uninviting that the public has no reason to use them. And why not? The private sector doesn’t represent the public interest. Why should we expect them to? Unless public space clearly benefits the development, we can’t expect developers to do anything more than meet the minimum requirements.

Then there’s the problem of who maintains privately-owned public spaces. It's a lot cheaper to maintain an unused concrete patch than a landscaped park with seating and trash cans that might actually be used. Remember Zuccotti Park from Occupy Wall Street? That’s a privately-owned public space. No wonder developers want to hide their public spaces from the public.

An uninviting privately-owned public space in New York City. Spikes prevent use of the planters for loiterers. And everyone else. Spikes are now prohibited.

Without some guidance and collaboration between all the stakeholders, you’ll end up with a smokers’ alleyway, not an attractive public asset. If developers don't benefit from the public space, they will take the path of least resistance – the cheapest or easiest option. Or the one that is unlikely to be occupied.

We need some middle ground between a big picture outcome (Thou Shalt Make Public Space) and micromanagement (a two-layer effect with a little path). It’s not government's place to tell developers where their shrubbery should be. Government could, though, use its incentives to get the kind of process it wants used to reach desirable public space. If your privately-owned public space will be a little path, show us that you went through an inclusive public planning process or at least talked to the neighbors, or that you talked to the parks people and they want a path in that location, or why you want a piece of art instead of a shrubbery, or whatever.

New York City now requires signage to identify public-private spaces. The, um, shrubbery is the program logo, so it’s easy to recognize places that are open to the public.

Some places go a step further and move control away from developers to neighborhoods. In Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, zoning variances may be approved if developers contribute to a fund used for parks and infrastructure (including big 10 foot wide sidewalks) in the neighborhood. Stakeholders from the neighborhood work with city planners to ensure compatibility between development and public spaces. It's a much better system than leaving everything in the hands of developers (or government). The mandated contribution feels to me a little more like buying indulgences, but on the upside, the public amenities are more coordinated and more public good will come from a neighborhood planning process than developers who randomly create 25 little concrete plazas.

A really cool privately-owned public space in New York.

Either way, collaboration is key. Government might facilitate, but shouldn’t be the only ones at the table. Neither, though, should private developers be the only ones deciding what public space looks like. A stakeholders process is more inclusive (though some are more inclusive than others – you could, for example, only solicit input from the other Knights Who Say Ni). Government doesn’t micromanage business or neighborhoods, but the outcome may be closer to what government wants.  With luck, the resulting public space is truly public.

Links

This article is old, but talks about New York’s approvals for privately-owned public space, and the complete lack of record-keeping after approval.  There was an estimated 80 acres of privately-owned public space at the time, and someone finally compiled it in 2000. They have continued to make progress, like the signage pictured above.

This article finds more fault with New York’s (lack of) control or oversight of privately-owned public spaces in the wake of Occupy Wall Street. The author talks about spaces that are badly designed or that closed after a period of time.

Here’s a story about San Francisco’s public-private spaces. Not such a train wreck as NYC, or maybe California’s newspapers are just nicer than New York’s. 

This is a video with a more positive spin on New York’s spaces.

This web page has nicely-balanced reporting on the private-public spaces in New York.

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More Cowbell

Found this last week in the Starland neighborhood in Savannah.

We're Unique, Just Like Everywhere Else

One danger of having communities across the country following the same playbook for placemaking is that we’ll still all end up looking alike. This irreverent author notes that many local officials believe “all we need is to get us some gays and artists and a bike path or two, and our problems will be solved!” Instead of a McDonalds on every corner, we’ll have a Starbucks, a brew pub, a splash pad, and some mediocre public art. 

That’s why the playbook says: focus on what makes a place unique.  Here is a short but terrific editorial about focusing on the unique aspects of a community.  The author argues that every city needs or has basics – “best practices” – like bike lanes and coffee shops, but to be interesting, we need to focus on what makes our communities different from the rest.  Even then, how much unique can there really be?

Each year I spend a week or two in Savannah, Georgia, visiting my parents. I try to find different things to do each time I’m here.  Downtown Savannah’s UQ (uniqueness quotient, and yes I did just make that up) is based on beautiful old buildings, historic squares, and Paula Deen.  Savannah heavily promotes the downtown historic district, and excludes or glosses over a lot of great restaurants, arts, and outdoor activities. It’s hard to find information about Savannah’s two-weeks-long music festival, or its crazy-good contemporary arts scene thanks to the Savannah College of Art and Design. Savannah is surrounded by water but access is limited (visually and logistically) and recreational use is not particularly promoted.

Downtown Savannah's Gap store

It also shares a problem with lots of popular destinations -- property (and rent) is so expensive in its downtown core that only high volume chains can afford to be there.  Savannah’s historic squares are surrounded by The Gap and Starbucks, so it’s like suburban anywhere with Spanish moss, a prepackaged HistoryWorld with Panera Bread. And it is losing its UQ. Downtown Savannah is designed for commerce, not community.  To quote Yogi Berra, nobody goes there anymore – it’s too crowded. 

Side note and future post topic: what if the thing that makes us unique isn't a positive? I pondered owning our history, good or bad, as I spent the day walking among beautiful historic buildings constructed by enslaved human beings. Let me know if you have thoughts on this.

Is the problem that we don't know how to do anything other than commerce?  Bill Stumpf, who wrote a great book called The Ice Palace the Melted Away, argues that American cities are built for making things, not doing things.  Rome, London and Paris are cultural centers, while our cities are productive.  Detroit = cars.  Silicon Valley = tech.  New York = money.  Grand Rapids = furniture.  Savannah’s downtown waterfront was built for commerce, not pleasure. As manufacturing has moved outside the US, Stumpf says, “Cities like Pittsburgh, once proud to be known as the Iron City, now profess cultural diversity as their commerce.  American cities are striving hard to shed their exclusively utilitarian images in favor of broad cultural centers complete with art museums, symphonies, and major league sports.” Cultural diversity as commerce.  Are we so uncomfortable with ordinary virtues like civility, pleasure, culture, goodwill, and community that we have to make them productive?  

Here is a story about downtown Pittsburgh’s renaissance.  Contributing factors include public-private collaboration, support for change, and quality of life improvements… that all sound like everyone else’s.  Eds and meds?  Check.  Museums and an arts district?  Check.  Sports teams, farmer’s markets, and the film industry?  Check.  Wait, isn’t that Grand Rapids?  Pittsburgh has very successfully capitalized on its rivers, as GR aspires to do.  And they have Andy Warhol, but we have ArtPrize.

Savannah's Starland neighborhood

Savannah's Starland neighborhood

And Savannah? Its focus on the city’s gracious, historic downtown was so successful that its UQ is threatened. And in the way of the natural evolution of cities, the funky, unique startup businesses that can’t afford downtown rents are colonizing the Starland neighborhood. It’s full of cool old buildings, a memorial marker on the former soda shop ("Paul's Soda Shop / 1930-1955"), a nationally-recognized bakery, great restaurants and cafes, and cheap housing for the art students who help make the neighborhood vibrant. It’s still in transition; Paul's Soda Shop is now the rescue mission.  It is a neighborhood, not so much a tourist attraction. It is a community of ordinary virtues.

Starland Cafe

Outside Foxy Loxy, home of the Bourbon Cinnamon Sugar Cookie

Map geek bonus: this is a very short but interesting article about how Sanborn insurance company and its maps documented development (and in a sense, placemaking) through recent history.  (Which reminds me of one of my very favorite short stories, The Mappist by Barry Lopez.  Highly recommended.)

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Why We Like Ordinary Virtues Better Than Monkish Virtues

“Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man’s fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper. We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices.” – David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

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Let's Do the Time Warp Again

I read a lot about how civilization is coming to an end because we all sit at home with our computers, and downtowns are dying because we shop on line instead of in our communities.  But I never see any real analysis about why.

Here’s my theory.  As I said below, cities need relevant amenities to attract contemporary consumers if they want to be viable.  We just need something to do.  That’s really all placemaking is.  Dated downtowns are like avocado green refrigerators (note the resemblance between downtown Cadillac and the kitchen below).  Obsolete.  Maybe that’s why we sit at home and shop on line.  It’s true in my small town for sure – see how there are more people in that kitchen than in my downtown?  The reality is that a lot of our communities are stuck in circa 1972 and aren’t relevant to people today.  And if you’re not relevant, you’re toast.

Downtown Cadillac, Michigan

Groovy kitchen

If you took downtown Cadillac’s most popular restaurant, Clam Lake Beer Company (below), and put it in the building above – same food, same beer, one block away – would it have as much traffic, or does its building (its curb appeal) contribute to its busy-ness?  The exterior of the dated building says “come in for a nice fondue.” Not “we have fantastic goat cheese pizza to complement your microbrew.” (Poetry completely unintentional.)  The updated Clam Lake building and vibe are part of its brand, and make it relevant.  The interior is contemporary, but has the building’s original brick walls and tin ceilings, and black and white metal prints from Cadillac’s past, honoring the building’s and the town’s history. So placemaking (to stay with the kitchen analogy) is like new cabinets, a stainless steel fridge, and granite counters for your downtown.  

There is a connection between relevance and credibility as well.  It’s probably a little less important for a restaurant than, say, a marketing or tech business, but it also is a consideration in the public sector.  If your product, process, or outcome isn’t relevant, how can you have credibility?

So how do you use a credible process to make a community relevant?  Give a voice to stakeholders.  More and more, placemaking includes non-planners in the planning process.  People expect to have a voice; their opportunity for meaningful engagement adds both relevance and credibility to a plan.

A charrette (a French word meaning “a ridiculously long meeting“) is a way for the public to have meaningful engagement in the planning process.  Members of the public are invited to help plan improvements in their communities. Charrettes may be up to several days long, and people can really have a say in the planning process. But using a charrette or other public meeting as the only opportunity for input can limit participation:

• A true multi-day charrette is a time commitment that can discourage participation.
• They could be held at a time that’s only convenient for certain people – daytime meetings exclude some working people, evening meetings exclude others.
• They could be not truly public – I’ve been to a number of meetings that were really for invited stakeholders like the local Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Development Authority, parks director, council members, etc.  People who, by virtue of their position, do represent certain community interests, but are not really the public.  And they are the ones who have been shaping the community all along, so there aren’t any different voices in the room.
• People with child care issues, transportation issues, language barriers, disabilities, or who are uncomfortable in that type of setting have a harder time participating in even short, one-time meetings.

There are ways to participate that don’t involve meetings, like phone and on line surveys. Shorter meetings with different levels of input or participation don’t require a major time commitment.  Or instead of having a formal meeting, set up a table at a crowded event and invite people in to talk.  The best process includes multiple ways to be engaged, so that the collaborators choose how much or how little to contribute.

Because those talented workers we’re trying to attract with placemaking are still in Seattle or Ann Arbor or wherever, they don’t have a voice in Cadillac’s planning process.  The participants in the meetings are the ones who already live here and so we’re providing input on what WE really want, and that’s ok.  It’s our place too.  Retention is important.  Otherwise people and their dollars will keep going to dinner in Traverse City instead of Cadillac, or we’ll stay home.  If Cadillac wants to keep the people who live here now, or at least keep their dollars, we need places to go that are an improvement on a laptop and a Lean Cuisine.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment below.

Links

HERE is an article about a Bay Area community that has been experimenting with a concept called Participatory Budgeting. A percentage of the city budget was allocated for projects selected by voters.  Winners included potholes to scholarships (but look for the proposals that didn’t get on the ballot – those are way more fun).  Collaborators self-selected (anyone could come up with a project, anyone over 16 could vote on up to six proposals).

Because I can’t help myself, here’s one more seriously groovy kitchen from the 70s.

Just... wow.

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Monday Morning

Apologies to subscribers who received an email Sunday morning telling me I needed to choose a template!  I thought I was good to go, but obviously not.  I think I have it fixed now, so my hope is that you are reading this in your email on Monday morning.  Just to make it interesting, here's a favorite quote, from Eudora Welty.

"I was born with the feeling that if time and hurry were forgotten, something quiet and wonderful would happen in their place."

Have a great week!

An Introduction to placemaking

Kevin asked me for the elevator description of what the blog is about.  Since the elevator ride at my two-story office is brief, the description will have to be really short: Ordinary virtues build civilized communities.  How’s that? 

For today, an intro to placemaking.

Placemaking is ultimately an economic development tool.  Yes, it’s about making quality places to attract or retain people, but the reason for attracting them isn’t really so they can have a nice time. The textbook definition is more about providing amenities that attract talented workers, who in turn shop and eat locally, sustaining a local economy based on small businesses.  There’s an official loop: Talent needs place, place needs business, business needs talent.

This article has some numbers that show why so much effort is focused on placemaking.  It’s worth reading the whole (brief) article, but this is it in a nutshell:

That poll [of millennials], conducted by Harris, found that 68 percent of respondents believe the U.S. economy is fundamentally flawed, and that the path to prosperity lies in building up local communities—not through recruiting companies but by concentrating on these same basic elements of desirable places to live.

 Whether the community is a small town, suburban or urban location, 49 percent of respondents said they someday want to live in a walkable community, while only seven percent want to live where they have to drive to most places.

One key phrase above is that placemaking is not about recruiting companies so much as attracting people who are smart, mobile, or have the kind of work that can be done from anywhere – so more about nurturing small businesses or the office-unchained rather than competing for the few Holy Grails (Holy Googles?).  There’s a lot of talk about attracting and not so much about retaining, but as boomers retire, keeping them and their disposable income needs to be as high a priority as attracting millennials.

The thing is, I think placemaking is a buzzword for what amounts to updating our communities like we update our kitchens.  Cities need amenities that attract contemporary consumers if they are going to be viable.  We spent decades developing malls and bypasses for suburb-dwellers and putting aluminum facades on old brick storefronts and these now just feel dated and irrelevant.  We’re rebounding and refocusing on downtowns, public space, outdoors, and inclusivity. It’s time to update our communities with the public equivalent of a new stainless steel fridge to replace the avocado green one that still kinda works, but how much longer do you really want to look at that thing?  

So placemaking turns on planners because there’s something for them to remodel.  Economic developers love it because it means more business.  But the cool thing is, people like it too, because it means we can get off our couches and have a place to go and something to do.

A surprising favorite...

A surprising favorite quote ...for someone who thinks in table form.

Methodolatry (n): common form of academic idolatry; glorification of the god Method; boxing knowledge into prefabricated fields, thereby hiding threads of connectedness, hindering New Discoveries, preventing the raising of New Questions, erasing ideas that do not fit into Respectable Categories of Questions and Answers.

From Mary Daly's Webster First Intergalactic Wickedary of the the English Language.

Ordinary Virtues?

The concept of ordinary virtues goes back to Plato and Socrates, through time to Primo Levi and probably more contemporary philosophers I haven’t yet read.  Ordinary has a bad rep in our culture.  How many would proudly proclaim our ordinaryness? For me, ordinary virtue is simple civility. Respect.  Courtesy.  Gratitude.  Attentiveness.  Dialogue.  Perspective.  Responsibility.  Ordinary virtues build civilized communities.  And I will take that kind of ordinary every day of the week.

The focus of the blog will generally be on community.  In a physical community, planning and development decisions are made to move cars or segregate residences from industrial parks or, as is now in vogue, to attract skilled or talented workers and the economic benefits they bring.  Planning for this group has become known as placemaking (formerly known as new urbanism, sense of place, cool cities, and a few other tags).  Sometimes the blog will be about the physical attributes that are believed to contribute to placemaking – which is really just creating the infrastructure that makes a location a desirable place to live.

Where I think placemaking falls short is that physical assets alone, no matter how people-friendly the design, don’t make a desirable place.  People are the heart and soul of a community.  The physical assets can be created with civility, or without (for example, sidewalks are people oriented, but as above, design sometime trumps common sense).  Either way, places need people to be functional. The physical assets are made possible by acts and decisions guided (or not) by human civility, the ordinary virtues of people.  Volunteers who open the doors at the museum or clear brush from the trails.  Educators who help children develop ordinary virtues.  Government officials and developers who put people ahead of cars. So sometimes the blog will be about the human side, our ordinary virtues that contribute to a community. 

And sometimes there may just be cat videos. :-)