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Manshel, Andrew W. Learning From Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns, and Public Spaces. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020.

Reviewed by Katie Uva

On an August night in 1993, I was five years old and sitting in Bryant Park on a blanket on a lush bed of grass with my parents, their friends, and 2,000 fellow New Yorkers. We socialized, ate snacks, and took pictures of ourselves with a guy in a gorilla suit. As the sun went down, we settled in to watch “King Kong” on the big outdoor screen. It was the first year that the park, with support from HBO, screened films on the lawn, an activity that has continued for nearly three decades. It is one of my formative memories of growing up in the city, and I later realized that most of these details—a kid at a large social gathering in Bryant Park, sitting on a luxurious lawn in Midtown at night—would, a few years earlier, have been almost unimaginable. But I was growing up in the midst of a massive transition from the high crime, poorly maintained, economically distressed New York of the seventies to the lower crime, better maintained, more prosperous (though more deeply stratified) city of the late 1990s and 2000s. 

The process and planning philosophy behind these changes is the subject of Andrew W.  Manshel’s Learning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns, and Public Spaces. Manshel was the Associate Director and Counsel for the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation from 1991-1998, pivotal years in the turnaround of the park and the city. He argues that Bryant Park is one of New York’s great success stories, and that it should serve as a model for other local neighborhoods (in particular he focuses on downtown Jamaica, Queens) as well as communities around the country. 

Bryant Park’s revitalization, the result of changes large and small, is best seen in Manshel’s compelling and detailed description of how the BPRC settled on the park’s now-iconic green French bistro chairs, the trial-and-error journey to the park’s centerpiece, that impeccable lawn, the plantings that create a cheery scene every spring, and the park’s famed public bathrooms, with their flowers and classical music, that have been variously described as “luxurious,” “the Tiffany’s of public restrooms,” and “fit for Brooke Astor.”  

Manshel views Bryant Park as the embodiment of William H. Whyte’s ideas about placemaking: that a space should be designed in response to peoples’ established needs and their observed behavior, and that careful concern for park maintenance and design creates a sense of safety, leading to a decline in crime and antisocial behavior in public spaces. William H. Whyte studied Bryant Park in the late seventies and early eighties, and a nice feature of the book is an appendix including his observations. Whyte’s initial report allows readers to see how his observations and principles guided the eventual changes to the park. Manshel appends a few key points of his own:

• Maintenance and programming is actually more important than design and construction.
• Placemaking is an “iterative process” of small steps responsive to public use and feedback.
• Embracing some commercial uses can be good for the long-term health of parks. 

When it comes to the larger implications of placemaking for economic development, the book takes a turn for the controversial and even defensive. Manshel, a strong proponent of business improvement districts (BIDs), is dismissive of those who criticize public-private partnerships, conservancies, and BIDs as undemocratic entities that may drive gentrification. Notably, Manshel repeatedly places “gentrification” in quotes as if to question its very existence. He does the same for “progressives” and “community activists,” as if to imply that those who may oppose BIDs and their development plans have ulterior motives or are merely obstructionists.

In his section entitled “Gentrification is Good,” Manshel cites a 2015 Furman Center report to support the idea that gentrification leads to greater integration and the improvement of neighborhood quality of life; the report claims that the majority of those who move into gentrifying neighborhoods are moving into new units and are “not, for the most part, displacing existing residents [emphasis Manshel’s].” These are debatable claims that need more evidence; if Manshel wants to make a convincing case for gentrification he should have earnestly considered concerns about its effects—rising rents, displacement, the loss of affordable retail space, and over-policing. Instead, he sidesteps most of those issues and dismisses the rest as trivial. 

BIDs and other forms of public-private partnerships can be effective in improving maintenance and fueling economic development. That said, as numerous urbanists like Susanna Schaller, Tarry Hum, and Samuel Stein have noted, these changes can also be deeply disruptive to parts of the community, often pitting property owners against renters and leading to displacement. Even if one agrees that Bryant Park was a tremendous success, the claim that its lessons are transferable to other localities needs to be questioned. Strategies that worked in the successful revitalization of a 9.6 acre park located between Grand Central Terminal and Times Square, in an area surrounded by office towers, hotels, and tourist attractions, may not be applicable to residential or mixed-use neighborhoods or even most business districts.

Manshel’s book, much like Dan Doctoroff’s 2017 book Greater than Ever: New York’s Big Comeback, is an engaging study and has a propulsive energy that encourages readers to embrace its author’s strongly asserted point of view. But it is best read with some skepticism and in conversation with other authors and voices. 

Katie Uva is a PhD candidate in history at the CUNY Graduate Center, where her dissertation examines the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs and their impact on New York City. She is an Adjunct Lecturer at Baruch College, an editor at The Gotham Center for New York City History, and worked for several years at The Museum of the City of New York.

Development in downtown Jamaica, Queens has exploded. There are dozens of projects under construction, and a few, new completed projects. Having received my second dose of vaccine and being mostly recovered from having dislocated and fractured my right elbow in January while walking the obstreperous Sir Toby Belch, Australian Cattle Dob, I hit the road (the Grand Central Parkway) and took a driving tour of the Downtown. The amount of activity going on is simply amazing – unlike anything I might have anticipated.

            One of the things I learned in working in Bryant Park is that success is difficult to manage and control – what Jim Collins calls “the Flywheel Effect,” the increasing acceleration of a virtuous cycle. This phenomenon is evident in Jamacia. There are hotels being developed in a scattered range of sites – including in the middle of otherwise residential blocks. Subsidized housing developments that attempt to maximize the amount of developable space on their lots are huge. Designs generally tend to the lowest common denominators. 

            The most important and interesting question is “Has the neighborhood improved?” This can be interpreted in a number of ways. Is the quality of life for pre-existing residents better? Have new housing opportunities improved the quality of life for those new residents? Is the impact on all city residents and visitors generally better? In the middle of all this change, a definitive answer is impossible. But to my eye, the immediate answer is that the changes to Jamaica have been more of the same. Street conditions are worse. The perception of a pleasant experience in public spaces is worse. This may improve as construction is completed and more people move into the Downtown. But right now, in March 2021, the streets and sidewalks appear to be chaotic. Most of the retail facades are in worse shape than they were five years ago. Pedestrians are walking to swiftly to get where they are going – there isn’t my lingering in public spaces. Admittedly, my visit was on a grey, drizzly Palm Sunday. But my experience of Jamaica over fifteen years, I think gives me a broad enough basis of comparison under a range of conditions to draw reasonable conclusions. 

First the good news:

• Retail storefronts appear to have a low vacancy rate. While the retail mix hasn’t changed that much, new similar retailers have filled in where previous tenants have left. Both of the restaurant major failures have been replaced with new brands. 
• ParkHill City, developed by The Chetrit Group, at the former site of Mary Immaculate Hospital on King Park is a triumph (http://hillwest.com/project/89th-avenue/). Kudos to all concerned. And we, at Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, were afraid of the hospital being converted to a homeless shelter when the property was sold in bankruptcy by the State Dormitory Authority around 2010. The project is market rate and received no government subsidy (in fact the real property taxes on the site when it was no longer exempt as result of hospital ownership were punishing as a result of its long being off the tax rolls). The adaptive reuse of the original hospital structure on the east side of the site is brilliant and beautiful. The landscaping around the project is all imaginative, includes seating and is being well-maintained. 
• Target has just opened a store in United American Land’s project at 160^th Street and Jamacia Avenue, joining Burlington Coat Factory, H&M and Chipotle, in what was formerly a derelict property owned by the Stark Estate. 
• UAL has also done a beautiful job restoring the façade of the formerly abandoned historic Jamaica Savings Bank building. Signs in the windows say that a Jolly Bee is slated for tenancy in the storefront (unfortunately, UAL needs to pay a bit more attention to the other facades in its assemblage, which don’t look as well tended). 
• Thousands of desperately needed new affordable units are being created across the downtown in more than a half dozen major projects. More appear to be in the pipeline. 

And the rest:

• Because we were looking to induce commercial development around the station area, the sites there were over-zoned. The project at Archer and Sutphin overwhelms the site. It is massive and intimidating. The 94^th Avenue corridor, east of Sutphin, is a narrow canyon between two oversized developments. The site on the southeast corner of 94^th and Sutphin remains vacant. The site was cleared using City funds in the mid 00’s. Most likely it has not been developed because the owner is seeking the maximum return from its hundreds of thousands of buildable square feet – and a project of that scale is neither desirable nor economic. 
• The design of the major projects is oppressive. The project at Sutphin and Archer looks like a gigantic prison, in part because of the ratio of glazing to brick and in part because of the materials used. The project on 168^th Street between Jamaica and Archer Avenues looks like something from a Leni Riefenstahl film from German in the 30’s – huge, square, relentless. That site was owned by the City (it was a decrepit police garage) and was deaccessioned by the Economic Development Corporation. One would like to think a more humane, urbanistic design would have been implemented. But such was not to be. 
• Hotels are being developed higgly piggly on smallish sites all over the downtown, many in places that require a walk from transportation. Two hotels are at Liberty Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard, an automobile-oriented location, a desolate ten minute walk from the transit center with no nearby amenities. 
• The largest hotel development, on Archer Avenue between 165^th Street and Sutphin, which has been in development for fifteen years and still has not been completed, is undistinguished in design and relates poorly to the street.
• The hotel site at 94^th Street and Sutphin shows no sign of activity. This very expensively assembled, and troubled site was transferred to a developer in 2015.
• None of the new downtown projects are urbanistic at the street level. They don’t have contiguous ground floor retail and are generally dead to the street. There isn’t any sense of “neighborhood” associated with any of the residential projects, other than at Park Hill City.
• Placemaking activity appears to have stopped and the results appear to me to be obvious. The horticultural program appears to be dormant (which is worse than not having one). There were cars parked routinely on all of the 165^thStreet Mall. Scores of private vehicles of police officers were illegally parked around the 103^rd police precinct. The Q44 Select Bus Service infrastructure appears to be abandoned. 
• The optimistically named and ill-conceived “Shops at Station Plaza,” in the LIRR Sutphin Boulevard underpass seems neglected. It has one storefront that has never been rented. The Dunkin Doughnuts store had a badly broken window. The elaborate multi-colored lighting schemes appears not to be maintained. 

It’s clear that after decades of stagnation, major investment in housing and hotels has finally arrived in Jamaica. With more people living in and visiting downtown, perhaps demand for wider range of retail offerings, including restaurants and bars, and improved conditions in public space will follow. 

PHOTOS FROM MY TOUR FOLLOW:

New content from The ADRR
— Read on mailchi.mp/f36bb3ac22d0/new-content-from-the-adrr

http://www.city-journal.org/urban-design-and-post-pandemic-city-living

Urban Design and Post-Pandemic City Living | City JournalLearning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns and Public Spaces, by Andrew M. Manshel (Rutgers University Press, 293 pp. $29.95) Designing Disorder: Experiments and Disruptions in the City, by Pablo Sendra and Richard Sennett (Verso, 154 pp, $24.95) For 20 years now, Bryant Park has been …www.city-journal.org

Learning from Bryant Park, a book by Andrew Manshel

A new book recalls the glory of Bryant Park before the Covid-19 shutdown: the movable chairs, the green grass, magazine racks and ping pong tables, shady paths and, most of all, the large numbers of people enjoying Bryant Park.

Bryant Park as an urban space is a miracle, but not an accidental miracle, as Andrew Manshel recounts in his readable and entertaining book, Learning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Town, and Public Places (Rutgers U. Press 2020). Manshel’s book starts with the plan by the Public Library to use Bryant Park for underground storage, and the subsequent realization that Bryant Park itself was the primary project. The names of those who played a role is long and Manshel lets everyone take a bow: Andrew Heiskell, chair of Time Inc. and the Public Library; William Deitel, President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; William H. (Holly) Whyte, the genius at observing how people behave in public spaces; Gordon Davis, the City Parks Commissioner; Dan Biederman, who led the restoration efforts; and many others who brought their innovative ideas to Bryant Park. Manshel’s book is a friendly read because of the generous credit he gives to the many people who contributed to Bryant Park.

Placemaking is the name for the restoration process, and Manshel’s book is a catalog of strategies. The big idea was to create the perception of safety. The techniques included well-organized commercial and social activities, performers, visible friendly staff, prompt removal of graffiti, regular emptying of trash baskets, clean restrooms, movable chairs, a lush green lawn, and other familiar elements.

Manshel, who was counsel and associate director at Bryant Park for ten years, has advice. Success requires patience. Do maintenance and more maintenance. Choose small experimental projects; they will save money. Be prepared to change course; even the best ideas can crash. Manshel offers cautions like the story of the costly, specially designed, square sidewalk planters that looked great when new, but six months later were chipped and dingy. Better were less expensive round plastic planters that didn’t chip or get dingy.

Manshel took his ideas to Jamaica, Queens, where the lessons were equally revealing on placemaking. His retelling of these efforts will broaden the enjoyment of everyone who loves urban life and is curious about the City’s special places.

Ross Sandler

Outdoor dining programs have provided relief for local restaurants and retailers, while offering an oasis of social life for residents. The winter months will challenge that momentum, but creative, flexible approaches can save the day again.
— Read on www.planetizen.com/features/111149-winter-coming-capitalize-it

CUF report providing ideas and insights from NYC business leaders and architecture and design experts to help small biz make it through the winter cold
— Read on nycfuture.org/research/surviving-the-winter-nyc-small-business

http://community.downtown.org/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=46da179c-bda9-4ce7-9876-23563025174f&Home=%2fcommunities%2faddanewentry

POPS, meaning indoor or outdoor spaces that private real estate developers have promised to provide and maintain as public amenities in return for the right to build bigger buildings.

Exactly. We’ll get to a few of them on 42nd Street. Let’s head east to Bryant Park, a privately run city-owned public park, which I think it’s fair to say, back in the ’70s and ’80s, most people were scared to death to go into because it was a drug haven and dangerous.

Made worse by design features like being raised on a plinth and screened by hedges.

In the early ’80s, Andrew Heiskell, chair of the New York Public Library, next door, with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and others, created the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation — now just the Bryant Park Corporation — as a not-for-profit organization under the leadership of Dan Biederman, and they brought in William Hollingsworth Whyte.

Holly Whyte, the sociologist and urbanist. He suggested getting rid of the obstructing hedges, widening the stairs from Sixth Avenue, installing movable chairs, a Christmas market and skating rink in winter. Andrew Manshel, who worked on the park and has written a book about it, calls it “a triumph of small ideas.”

Jane Jacobs gets all the play, but Holly Whyte deserves to be celebrated more than he has been. All this happened in the late ’80s and ’90s, around the same time as the appearance of a legally created vehicle called the Business Improvement District, or BID, which Biederman had pioneered up the street at Grand Central Terminal. The Bryant Park Corporation took on some of the characteristics of a BID, meaning a private, not-for-profit that managed the park.

Larry Rifkin interviews me about “Learning from Bryant Park.”

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