Aug. 17, 2020

“Learning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Town and Public Spaces” by Andrew M. Manshel (Rutgers University Press)

Bryant Park was a parade ground and open space circa 1847 in New York City. The gigantic Croton Distributing Reservoir was there, and in 1884 the name was changed to honor abolitionist William Cullen Bryant. In 1899 the New York Public Library and a new park were added, but by the 1970s it was principally known as “a haunt for drug dealers, prostitutes, and homeless people.”

That began to change in the late 1980s. The author got involved in the early 1990s, and they tried something unique. Rather than just throwing a lot of money at the park and hoping it would become nice, the renovation team talked to people who lived in the neighborhood to find out what they wanted from the public space

“Central to the success of Bryant Park was that it was a triumph of small ideas. It was not the product of grand design. Its restoration was about excellent maintenance and programming rather than extensive capital improvements. “It was based on their close observation of how people behaved in the park, once it was reopened, and building on what worked and dropping or re-engineering what didn’t. “

They learned from Bryant Park “that no place has problems so unique that it can’t benefit from learning from the successes of other places.” The process that they created is called, “Placemaking”. It worked great in New York City in Bryant Park, and in a historic and culturally critical section of Jamaica, Queens, a place that was once the de fact of capital of Long Island. Right after WWII it was one of the few places in the region where African-American families could purchase single-family homes. It was filled with high-profile cultural innovators. By the later 20^th century it needed an overhaul, and the author was one of the team that re-imaged it using “placemaking.”

So what are the basic strategies of Placemaking? First, make no “grand plans”. Instead make small changes and take small steps, learning as you go.  Second, you must make people feel safe there. Perception is critical. Third, Placemaking takes patience, which is really a virtue.

“Placemaking practice should become at least as important in smaller cities and towns as it is in big city public spaces and downtowns.” Small cities often have many of the same issues that big cities do: property that goes to seed because the businesses moved out and the owner won’t spring for repairs. The author makes the point that since smaller cities have people who are even more separated by space than larger communities, there becomes a critical need for public spaces where all kinds of people can interact. Rather than staying on social media, enjoy getting to know your actual neighbors!

We’ll spend some very pleasant time with Andy Manshel discussing his new book, “Learning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Town and Public Spaces” from Rutgers University Press. Won’t you join us this Sunday Aug. 23 on WTBF’s ON THE BOOKSHELF?

It essential for northern cities to extend the season for socially distant eating and drinking for as long as possible!

http://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/world/europe/france-heated-terraces-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare

Learning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns, and Public Spaces, is an entertaining and important book for urbanists across America.
— Read on www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2020/07/02/how-manhattan-park-pioneered-main-street-placemaking

16 Planning July 2020 

MAKE SMALL PLANS

Then fix as necessary and have patience. By Harold Henderson

THE RESURRECTION OF New York City’s Bryant Park through programming, high-quality maintenance, and attention to detail is only part of this excellent book. The title could be misleading, as Bryant Park is just the starting point, and far from the only kind of place discussed. The author takes on suburban Main Streets, smaller towns and spaces, and economic development, as well as urban places. The book manages to be both sophisticated and compulsively readable. With any luck it will do its bit to bury beyond retrieval the grandiosity of Daniel Burnham and his heirs.

The author discusses how he came to this point: by “making a $600,000 decision that turned out to be a mistake.” Placemaking, it turns out, is iterative. “You learn as you go. It is essential in effectively improving public space to take risks—but those risks need to be small, manageable ones, risks you can back out of with minimal damage.” The keys are making people feel safe and recognizing that it may take three to five years to revitalize a public space.

It could be dangerous to skim this book. Manshel has seen conventional economic development and finds it “better than nothing, but maybe not that much better. In my experience, over the long term, its impact is generally negligible.” (For one thing, once the government-provided subsidies go away, so do the jobs.) Placemaking, by contrast, does work, because instead of bribing or forcing, it creates places where people and businesses want to be.

The author has equally devastating on-the-ground observations on the fad of contracting out services for all but the very smallest ventures. At the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation in Queens, New York, training and hiring their own security enabled them “to hire members of the community who were far more committed to our mission than security agency employees,” and to pay them better than an outside contractor would.

New York’s Bryant Park was once an outdoor drug market. Now it is a textbook for flourishing public spaces.
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/the-secret-recipe-for-good-urban-parks/

Leslie Thompson of FERMOB talks thoughtfully in Metropolis about the Bryant Park chair and “Learning from Bryant Park.”

Larry Matthews interviews Andy Manshel about “Learning from Bryant Park”

Interview starts about 42 minutes in.

Matthews And Friends April 27

The American Downtown Revitalization Review launches today. Edited by David Milder, it will attempt to publish the best current thinking on economic development and downtown revitalization.

My article, addressing concerns about the link between neighborhood improvement and gentrification can be read here:

Is E.D. Really a Problem?

Talking with Andy Manshel about public space after the pandemic.

More on “Learning from Bryant Park.”

Andy Manshel interviewed about “Learning from Bryant Park.”

The Grok Science Program

The Grok Interview