9 Ways to Build Better Cities Through Public Places: Part 2
How working differently magnifies the impacts of investments in public places
Through our work in five cities across the country, we’ve identified nine principles for transforming how cross-sector teams work together more effectively to reimagine public places. In the first part of this series, we examined the first four core principles for reimagining the civic commons; today we describe the second five principles and how those principles are changing civic asset work across the country.
Principle #5 Provide the best quality for all that can compete with alternatives in the private sector
For too long, public spaces have been characterized by an emphasis on utility and functionality rather than high quality, intentional design. For too many cities, this means public spaces lack beauty and are largely unwelcoming. Emphasizing the best quality for all provides all residents with spaces that are as enjoyable as any in the private sector.
On Chicago’s South Side, acclaimed artist Theaster Gates is creating a set of community assets that draw in neighbors and visitors from across the region alike. With an eye on harnessing the community’s history and culture, the Stony Island Arts Bank — an iconic savings and loans building transformed into a community space and art venue — puts on world-class art exhibitions, concerts and film screenings. It has also become a place for the community to convene to hear from artists, activists and scholars in an informal setting. While a thoughtfully designed neighborhood coffee shop operating on a social enterprise model, the Currency Exchange Cafe — once a currency shop in the same location — attracts a diverse set of local patrons with its relaxed and inviting atmosphere.
While the Arts Bank has had to straddle tension between its local appeal and attracting those outside the neighborhood, it has found quality programming can do both. By curating events specifically for neighborhood members, keeping residents well informed, and creating a space for their input, trust is being established.
“The Stony Island Arts Bank is a hybrid gallery, media archive and cultural center providing opportunities for neighborhood residents of all ages to share unique experiences and perspectives through exhibitions, film screenings, live performance and educational programs inspired by rich archival collections. This range of tailored programs provides community members and local artists access to world-class arts and culture in a way that would otherwise not exist in Greater Grand Crossing.” — Mallory McClaire, chief of staff, Rebuild Foundation
Principle #6 Welcome everyone and create opportunities for shared experience among people of all incomes and backgrounds
Encouraging the use of public spaces begins with an intentional invitation. For people of all backgrounds to believe they belong in public spaces, they must first experience a welcome. In order to spark deeper civic engagement and provide socioeconomic mixing, public places must reinforce a sense of membership for everyone.
Memphis is a city where public spaces along the Mississippi River have been underutilized for numerous reasons, including a lack of welcome. The Memphis Civic Commons team, responsible for a set of assets located along the Mississippi, has focused on creating welcoming spaces through thoughtful programming, staffing and design to change perceptions and reinvent a citywide culture of enjoying the river.
Wider and versatile park programming across several assets has resulted in bigger and more diverse audiences. The RiverPlay pop-up park — a seasonal park that invites people to play basketball, soccer and football with regular roller skating nights, as well as spaces to sit and enjoy a meal from local food trucks — has drawn in a broad range of participants who might not otherwise recreate by the river. Regular events like Firepit Fridays in River Garden, with free s’mores and warm beverages, and weekly yoga classes in Memphis Park hosted by Downtown Memphis Commission are also drawing a diverse crowd to Memphis’ public spaces and creating opportunities for connection among strangers.
Staffing matters, too. The GrizzFit coaches, trained through the Memphis Grizzlies Foundation, who staffed RiverPlay engaged kids and adults alike in the fun. While Memphis River Parks Partnership has revamped its approach to its maintenance team, moving from jobs focused on a single task (for example, picking up trash) to local park rangers with shared responsibility for greeting visitors, solving problems and still keeping the spaces clean. By all accounts, these River Garden Rangers — who now greet every person who enters the parks — are flourishing in their new positions.
While a truly welcoming public space is one of joy, creating it takes real intention.
“Programming to get strangers to mix with one another, especially across income, race and age, is much harder than it looks. Fortunately, our team has completely bought into this as a civic priority and a moral imperative, and they are willing to test, measure, change and try again. We are learning how to do this in small ways. Now, our challenge is to scale what we are learning.” — Carol Coletta, president and CEO of the Memphis River Parks Partnership and senior fellow, The Kresge Foundation’s American Cities Program
Principle #7 Connect people to nature and invite visitorship via walking, biking or transit
Urban public spaces often remain separate in people’s minds from “natural areas” like designated hiking trails or national forests. Reimagining these spaces means connecting residents to nature in a way that dispels notions of inaccessibility. There is plenty of evidence that when people are able to enjoy nature in their local environment, it can relieve stress, lessen social isolation and encourage exercise, but to connect people with nature often requires changing their perceptions.
Bartram’s Garden is a 45-acre botanical garden and working farm located in Southwest Philadelphia. Open to the public year-round, the garden is situated next to a predominantly low-income community, offering easy access to abundance of open space and natural wonders. A community garden has been established within the farm that grows 15,000 pounds of its own produce and encourages residents to plant their own gardens.
But it wasn’t always this way. Designated as a public park in 1893, Bartram’s Garden was believed to be a private estate for much of its history, requiring intentional work to dispel misconceptions about its accessibility to neighborhood residents. Programming that includes a boat-share program allows for audiences of all ages to learn to safely enjoy the nearby Schuylkill River, and summer camps are designed to engage the youngest residents in participating with nature right outside their door.
Creating experiences that resonate with the needs of residents has helped demystify and reconnect people to natural spaces and nurture a sense of belonging and participating. The Garden sees over 50,000 visitors annually.
“It’s such a joy to see how Bartram’s Garden has become a place where neighbors are finding new connections with nature and each other. We’ve found that those relationships take many forms depending on people’s interests and previous experiences, so our outdoor offerings have grown beyond community gardening and environmental education to include free public boating and fishing days, as well as a fleet of bikes, trikes, and helmets so that everyone can enjoy our new Bartram’s Mile riverfront trail.” — Maitreyi Roy, executive director, Bartram’s Garden
Principle #8 Provide ecological benefits to the surrounding neighborhood
Investing in civic space can benefit both a neighborhood and the urban eco-system as a whole. When green infrastructure is incorporated into the design, public spaces can work double time, delivering value to the community by serving as a gathering space and improving its environmental sustainability.
In West Philadelphia, an ongoing partnership between the Centennial Parkside Community Development Corporation (CPCDC) and the Fairmount Park Conservancy (FPC) exemplifies the confluence of ecological growth and neighborhood engagement with public spaces. Through the Centennial Commons restoration project CPCDC and FPC have developed Parkside Edge — small gardens, porch swings and benches dotting the historically under-resourced Parkside neighborhood, connecting residents to green spaces in accessible and thoughtful ways.
The project has improved quality of life for residents, and at the same time, offered a set of ecological benefits through a system of rain gardens that manage stormwater runoff to protect waterways from pollution. The Philadelphia Water Department funded and constructed the gardens as part of the city’s “Green City, Clean Waters” initiative, an example of how partnering with and leveraging a city’s strategic initiatives in the enhancement of civic assets has positive impacts on multiple fronts.
Civic engagement has increased through employment, as local residents have been hired and trained to manage these spaces, which also develops a local commitment to the health of the area’s eco-system. Further, there is long-term community investment underway as CPCDC explores possibilities for solar energy production in the area’s existing open spaces, which has both financial and environmentally sustainable implications for the neighborhood.
“For too long, low-income communities of color have been isolated from the environmental decisions that directly impact them, especially considering the disproportionate negative impacts we may see from climate change. This creates an equity gap when it comes to things like green stormwater infrastructure and solar energy. Projects like Centennial Commons and local solar energy production leverage underutilized space for community driven environmental projects that can narrow this equity gap and create a local economy founded on green infrastructure.” — Chris Spahr, Executive Director, Centennial Parkside CDC
Principle #9 Attract additional investment in the surrounding neighborhood in a way that sustains public spaces and benefits existing communities
Displacement of area residents as a result of civic investment has long been viewed as an inevitable reality, leading many in local communities to distrust investment in these assets in the first place. But with foresight, this need not be the case.
The 11th Street Bridge Park project in Anacostia, a southeast D.C. neighborhood, is an example of inclusive development of civic assets doing business differently. The project team created an Equitable Development Plan to ensure that the value created by the park benefitted nearby, historically under-resourced community members. From affordable housing to small business support to community leadership, neighborhood interests are foremost in all of the team’s strategic investment.
The plan also included community engagement and input that is more than a theoretical aspiration. The Equitable Development Plan is informed by the project’s intentional and ongoing engagement with community members, which uncovered widespread concern about a host of issues. As a direct response to concerns, many of which were around the lack of job opportunities, affordable housing and workforce training, the Plan calls for both a safeguard against displacement through access to affordable homeownership and affordable rental housing for local neighbors and for similar access to local job opportunities created by the project. Project leaders emphasized the importance of early implementation as they rolled out the plan seven years before the planned opening of the park.
Intentionally establishing the right value capture mechanisms in collaboration with communities in advance of a significant investment can ensure that benefits are accrued by existing communities. Land value taxes may be a strategy to pursue in one community, whereas community land trusts are a better fit in another.
“Park designers should consistently ask themselves ‘who is this park for?’ At the 11th Street Bridge Park we’re focused on the surrounding neighborhoods. Long term residents who have been through the challenging times should have the opportunity to enjoy these new civic amenities. It’s critical to set clear deliverables for your equity investments to ensure local residents can stay and thrive in place. What gets measured, gets done!” — Scott Kratz, director, 11th Street Bridge Park
The establishment of clear outcomes and regular data collection for measuring success is critical to ensure a public space project is performing and having impact on its community. Reimagining the Civic Commons has a suite of tools for civic asset managers to use to measure and improve the performance of public places. These include a framework for measuring, a set of DIY tools for collecting data about the use and perception of civic assets, reports on metrics from the demonstration cities and a toolkit on how to capture the value of improved public places and put that value to work for the surrounding neighborhood.
Read the full set of case studies, crafted in partnership with The Aspen Institute’s Center for Urban Innovation on our website.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration between The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and local partners.
