Streets are our most fundamental shared public spaces, but Irv and Bob and Padgett won't grasp this in a thousand million years.

As I contemplate yet again the abysmal ignorance of New Albany's self-assigned community pillars ... there's this wonderful video up top, and wise words down below.

Although I might sooner teach my cats quantum physics than convince Irv and Bob and Padgett to look and read.

Reimagining Our Streets as Places: From Transit Routes to Community Roots (Project for Public Spaces)

Streets are our most fundamental shared public spaces, but they are also one of the most contested and overlooked. Today, and for most of the last century, we have taken for granted the idea that our streets are primarily zones for cars, parking, and the transporting of goods. This has not been the case, however, throughout most of history. Across many cultures and times – since the beginning of civilization, in fact – the street has held vast social, commercial, and political significance as a powerful symbol of the public realm.

I'll be eighty-something on my death bed, and begin laughing maniacally at the memory of Bob Caesar (a councilman, for Jeeebus' sake) insisting that more traffic would pass by his diamond store on a one-way street FROM a one-way street, rather than on a two-way street from TWO two-way streets.

Of course, he'll have triumphed, and in the year 2048, New Albany' s streets will still run one-way.

But I'll still laugh maniacally.

By the way: Where the fuck is noted two-way streets advocate Jeff Gahan?

From the PPS link.

Ethan Kent interview: Placemaking as antidote to "top-down solutions."

Given that so many of the New Albany governing clique's stalwarts view the sexist, racist and anti-Semitic myth merchant Walt Disney as some sort of god, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that they keep patting citizens condescendingly on their heads, pointing the way to the water slide, and treating us like ignorant little children.

But you see, New Albany doesn't need any more multi-million dollar monuments to make-believe. We need a reality check, and win or lose, this is what I aim to provide in my race for mayor. I'd appreciate your support.

For me, loveability begins increasing once the need to channel and control urban management for purely political funding reasons begins receding. It's time to open this place up, not add further rings of hermetic security to the down-low bunker.

What Makes a City Great? It's not the Liveability but the Loveability, by Irene Pedruelo (Policy Innovations)

There is a lack of consideration for "place" in American urban planning that Ethan Kent finds concerning. It offends him the way ugly typography offends graphic designers. He works as senior vice president of Project for Public Spaces (PPS) in New York, where they are trying to turn the way we shape cities upside down. Over its 40-year history PPS has focused on turning public spaces into great places. How? Just visit their offices in Manhattan. The entrance is like the jungle.

An example of the question-and-answer:

IRENE PEDRUELO: Then why are many trying to suppress this kind of urban planning?

ETHAN KENT: The culture of global development is very much trying to order and organize chaotic streets and communities, often undermining the emergent creativity of these places. It is not to glorify the problems but it's to say that in some ways they are creating better public spaces, better community outcomes, than the more top-down solutions that are being introduced to solve their problems.

"Great Parks We Can Learn From."

In many ways, parks expansion has become a prime motif of the Gahan mayoral term to date. Now we have an independent city parks department, and have added Bicentennial Park (conceived during the Malysz administration). An aquatics center and athletics-oriented park have been bonded and will be constructed.

What can we learn from these three designs for new parks, and retrofits for existing parks, as (mostly) designed by the usual suspects, and as compared with the principles discussed below?

Great Parks We Can Learn From (Project for Public Spaces)

With the importance of parks growing in the public consciousness, now is the right time to revisit the question of what distinguishes great parks from all the rest. Of course, there’s no magic formula that yields a perfect park every time. But the true standouts, the parks that define the identities of their cities, tend to share certain elements that together explain a great deal of their success. The more great parks PPS observes, the more these elements leap out at us ...

 ... Through nearly 30 years of observation and analysis, PPS has identified nine strategies that help parks achieve their full potential as active public spaces that enhance neighborhoods and catalyze economic development. The parks profiled in this article provide excellent examples of these strategies in practice.

• Use transit as a catalyst for attracting visitors
• Make management of the park a central concern
• Develop strategies to attract people during different seasons
• Acquire diverse funding sources
• Design the park layout for flexibility
• Consider both the “inner park” and “outer park”
• Provide amenities for the different groups of people using the park
• Create attractions and destinations throughout the park
• Create an identity and image for the park

Not parking: "Creating places where people enjoy spending time."

Another longer read, but well worth it.

Included are "10 Questions to Help Us Get the Most Out of Parking," and when you answer them with downtown New Albany in mind, try not to lapse into depression.

When it comes to matters like this, do you think it is really possible for us to work smarter? I have to admit, there are times when I seriously doubt it, especially as we're being told that the major priorities are ballfields and an aquatic center.

Finding a Place for Parking, by Ethan Kent (Project for Public Spaces)

Despite what you may have heard, nobody goes to a place solely because it has parking. In fact, the current obsession with parking is one of the biggest obstacles to achieving livable cities and towns, because it usually runs counter to what should be our paramount concern: creating places where people enjoy spending time. As long as the myth persists that economic prosperity depends on parking, local governments will continue to waste public money and distort the public planning process.

The realization that creating a place where people want to come and spend time is more important than parking unfortunately eludes many municipalities. Worrying about and wasting public money on parking is taking over the public planning process and subsequently parking is taking over our communities. So how can we put parking in its place and draw people back to public spaces?

One big step forward is to assess the supply of parking in relation to what is actually needed. PPS often works with towns that have excess parking capacity, where the growing number of surface lots and parking structures has choked out the very reason people drove there in the first place. In Salt Lake City, for instance, PPS’s land-use map highlighted the excess parking spaces within 1/4 mile of downtown, showing that the real shortage was of places for people to go, not spaces to park.

This state of affairs arises when businesses compete with each other to maximize their own parking spaces–to the detriment of the surrounding community and, inevitably, themselves. The hang-up on parking is an indicator that a community has no broader vision for itself. Get businesses and other parties to cooperate creatively with each other, and you can create the kind of parking infrastructure that supports public spaces. Here are some questions to get businesses and public officials talking about creative new ways to accommodate parking needs with the public’s desire for lively public places ...

Bicentennial Park, Part Two: "When did the public input process into this park's location, imagined functions, design, and construction occur?"

Recently, when existing trees abruptly began falling, New Albanians became aware that we're in the process of building a $750,000 Bicentennial Park directly on the site of the city's famous Post Office, which was razed sans any meaningful public participation during a previous era of dis-enlightenment in a town notorious both for scant transparency and irony allergies.

As the newspaper's Jeffersonville management snoozed, NAC's Jeff Gillenwater did a little comparative park shopping in North Carolina (published October 3).

Below is 230 N. Tryon Street in Charlotte, North Carolina-- a decrepit, city-owned parking lot next to a long defunct 85-year-old theater. Look familiar? It's only slightly smaller than the corner of Spring and Pearl.

Its neighbor, the Foundation for the Carolinas, has been negotiating with city government to purchase and renovate the theater for some time. In preparation for the then upcoming Democratic National Convention in September, the City decided in mid-July to allow the foundation to turn the lot into a pocket park while it decides on the possible sale. The whole real estate and rehabilitation deal will take several years anyway. The work was completed in less than two months with $150,000 in foundation funds and community donations.

Several days afterward, an as-yet unfinished conversation began in the comments section between Jeff and Pete Andriot, who works for the park's designer.

Pete Andriot said...

Hi Jeff –

A colleague forwarded your post to me, and I thought I could offer some insight into the cost of Bicentennial Park (BP). While the pocket park you chose as a comparison is apt, your statement that it “It's only slightly smaller” is not really accurate. A quick check on Google Earth shows the site in Charlotte to be 70’x90’ (6,300 SF) – significantly smaller than BP at 120’x135’ (16,200 SF). The cost per square foot in Charlotte (~$24/SF) is directly comparable though, if you discount the two major items which BP has that Charlotte doesn’t: fountains ($100,000) and the excavated lawn with steps around it ($40,000).

Fountains are almost always going to be the single largest line item in any exterior development that has one. But they are a vital element in successful urban spaces. Humans are subconsciously attracted to water – the sight, smell and sound of it are stimuli that cause people to want to look and linger (and maybe even play in it!). Fountains are the single most important difference between transient park spaces (which people just pass through) and engaging park spaces (where people will pause and linger). Can your think of any successful urban park/plaza/square in North America or Europe that doesn’t have a water feature? I’m sure there are a few, but they are few and far between.

The excavated lawn and the steps do a couple important things. The biggest thing the lawn does is reverse the site drainage. The prior parking lot used to sheet flow directly into Spring Street and right into the city’s overburdened storm sewer. Now the lawn is lower and is permeable, so the runoff will have a chance to percolate back into the groundwater before it overflows into the sewer (yes, there are overflows to keep the lawn from actually flooding). The steps round the lawn allow for informal seating around the lawn. Individuals or small groups can find a place to site anywhere around the ellipse. New Albany isn’t ready for moveable tables and chairs yet … but the park is designed to handle them if we get to that point someday.

If you want additional comparable projects: Bowling Green, KY spent $2.1M on Circus Square Park as an anchor for their new sports and entertainment district. Mishawaka, IN spent right around $2M as well on Robert Beutter Riverfront Park, a new anchor for redevelopment on the north edge of their historic downtown. Logansport, IN spent $1.6M on Little Turtle Waterway plaza. The Town of Akron, IN (pop 11,000) spent $350k on their Community Square. Two projects that just wrapped up construction in mid-sized cities are Canan Commons in Muncie, IN ($708k) and Main Street Square in Rapid City, SD ($6.5M).

That last example is a significant of money put into a one-acre site, but it underscores my point succinctly. Main Street Square been open less than a year, in a city not quite twice the size of New Albany, and has already spawned over $2M in private reinvestment and redevelopment within one city block. Successful urban parks consistently pay for themselves many times over in kick-started reinvestment. They catalyze urban revitalization.
12:22 AM

Before Jeff replies, let me be the first to express my delight in learning that my town isn't "ready" for movable furniture (are we ready for flush toilets?) ... and that we need a fountain for subconscious water "attraction" when one of the nation's major rivers lies a few hundred yards away ... and never mind my fear that a city congenitally unable to care for existing asphalt-laden parking lots might now be compelled to regularly maintain a water fountain.

Here is Jeff's response.

I very much agree, Pete, that public space and placemaking are important elements in community building.

Given that, we'll start at the beginning: When did the public input process into this park's location, imagined functions, design, and construction occur?

Since you work for the design firm responsible, I'm hoping you can explain the format used for the various charrettes, detail the input received, and characterize how Rundell Ernstberger Associates interpreted that information into the location and design, especially since you mention judgment of that for which New Albany is or isn't ready.

I read the two daily newspapers that cover New Albany, view the city web site fairly regularly, follow city government on Facebook and Twitter, and have checked the Rundell Ernstberger web site a few times, but seem to have missed that.
1:29 AM

We await further dialogue. Thank you CM CeeSaw: Can we have another?

Link: Bicentennial Park, Part One: "Whom Does Design Really Serve?"

Bicentennial Park, Part One: "Whom Does Design Really Serve?"

Professionals are against participation because it destroys the arcane privileges of specialization, unveils the professional secret, strips bare incompetence, multiplies responsibilities and converts them from the private into the social. 
– Giancarlo De Carlo

De Carlo’s truly versatile quote, which would have applied just as meaningfully to last year's professionally-designed "Come To City" marketing campaign (an DNA-imposed "solution" rejected in the wake of high public Dudgeon), prefaces a piece at the website of the Project for Public Spaces. Jeff Gillenwater brought it to my attention, and it's a recommended read in the wake of secretive planning and subsequent tree toppling at the future site of Bicentennial Rent Boy Park.

Whom Does Design Really Serve?, by Fred Kent (pps.org)

On a recent trip to Toronto, I visited Sherbourne Common, a waterfront park designed by Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg. Walking around the park, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were actually passing through an elite museum’s pristine sculpture garden. Everything is placed just so, in a way that has created an environment so totally uninviting and ignorant of how human beings want to use public space that I knew, within moments of arriving, that what I was seeing was undoubtedly an “award-winning” design ...

The author contrasts this award-winning but profoundly uninviting space with another one in the very same city.

 ... Dufferin Grove Park, of course, has not won any major design awards. It is not designed, in the sense that we think of that word today; but it is highly cultivated. So much thought has gone into questions like “How do people want to use this space?” and “How can visitors to the park be involved in its continuing development?” The park’s managers have gone to great lengths to make sure that their public space is welcoming and inspiring to the broadest range of people possible: young to old, quiet to rambunctious ...

Community involvement versus top-down "gifting" of designs from the same old trustworthy suspects -- the bugbear of New Albany as long as any of us can remember.

Communities do not think “we need to talk to a designer” when they want a new park; they talk to each other, and to their elected officials. Architects, landscape architects, and urban planners come later (if ever), and would benefit enormously from increased public interest in what they do. Involving people in shaping public spaces not only benefits those individuals and their neighborhoods through the development of social capital, it benefits designers by making what they do an integral part of a sacred community process instead of an expensive “extra.” Designers have a great deal of knowledge that is infinitely more resonant when it is used to help everyday citizens articulate their needs and create public spaces that are responsive to the communities they serve.

Keeping these ideas in mind, we'll turn next to an unfinished conversation between Jeff and Pete Andriot, who works for the park's designer.

Part Two: "When did the public input process into this park's location, imagined functions, design, and construction occur?"

He's baaacck ...

As Bluegill noted at the time:

This is another textbook case of "I'm ignorant and angry about it."

Well, he's even angrier now, and we're again obliged to refute.

There was a spirited debate here earlier in the week, when an eastender expressed alarm over the dire threat to humanity (and pedestrians) posed by the notion of converting Spring Street back to two-way traffic.

Open thread: Entitled to one's own opinions on two-way streets, but not one's own facts?

Today he's back with the suggestion that Spring Street should be one way from Silver Hills to Silver Creek, and Main Street be made one way the opposite direction for cosmic balance.

LETTERS: April 19, 2009 (scroll down)

In the process, only the briefest mention is made of the writer's original obsession with pedestrian safety, which has been replaced by a determination to make these one-way streets even more "arterial" than they were before.

Mr. Bledsoe, if you're reading (in a specific, not general sense), would you please consult this website: Traffic Calming 101, and report back to the Tribune with your finding? Or, report back to us?

Or, merely acknowledge the existence of extensive, well-researched arguments in opposition to your own view (and respond to them if you will)?

Please?

Open thread: Entitled to one's own opinions on two-way streets, but not one's own facts?

Here are two viewpoints on the merits of two-way street conversions. The first comes from a Tribune reader (scroll to the bottom):

LETTERS: April 16, 2009

The second comes from people who know what they're talking about:

Traffic Calming 101

Discuss if you wish.