11 key elements in transforming public spaces into vibrant community places

in Environmental Justice

Thanks to Richard Layman for pointing us to PPS, and to Bill Berkowitz for recommending the book.

The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public places that build communities. It has identified 11 key elements in transforming public spaces into vibrant community places, whether they’re parks, plazas, public squares, streets, sidewalks or the myriad other outdoor and indoor spaces that have public uses in common. These elements are:

  1. The Community Is The Expert. The important starting point in developing a concept for any public space is to identify the talents and assets within the community. In any community there are people who can provide an historical perspective, valuable insights into how the area functions, and an understanding of the critical issues and what is meaningful to people.
  2. Create a Place, Not a Design. If your goal is to create a place (which we think it should be), a design will not be enough. To make an under-performing space into a vital “place,” physical elements must be introduced that would make people welcome and comfortable, such as seating and new landscaping. The goal is to create a place that has both a strong sense of community and a comfortable image.
  3. Look for Partners. Whether you want partners at the beginning to plan for the project or you want to brainstorm and develop scenarios with a dozen partners who might participate in the future, they are invaluable in providing support and getting a project off the ground. They can be local institutions, museums, schools and others.
  4. You Can See a Lot Just By Observing. We can all learn a great deal from others’ successes and failures. By looking at how people are using (or not using) public spaces and finding out what they like and don’t like about them, it is possible to assess what makes them work or not work.
  5. Have a Vision. Essential to a vision for any public space is an idea of what kinds of activities might be happening in the space, a view that the space should be comfortable and have a good image, and that it should be an important place where people want to be. It should instill a sense of pride in the people who live and work in the surrounding area.
  6. Start with the Petunias: Experiment…Experiment…Experiment. The complexity of public spaces is such that you cannot expect to do everything right initially. The best spaces experiment with short term improvements that can be tested and refined over many years. Elements such as seating, outdoor cafes, public art, striping of crosswalks and pedestrian havens, community gardens and murals are examples of improvements that can be accomplished in a short time.
  7. Triangulate. “Triangulation is the process by which some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to other strangers as if they knew each other” (Holly Whyte). In a public space, the choice and arrangement of different elements in relation to each other can put the triangulation process in motion (or not).
  8. They Always Say “It Can’t Be Done.” Creating good public spaces is inevitably about encountering obstacles. Starting with small scale community-nurturing improvements can demonstrate the importance of “places” and help to overcome obstacles.
  9. Form Supports Function. The input from the community and potential partners, the understanding of how other spaces function, the experimentation, and overcoming the obstacles and naysayers provides the concept for the space. Although design is important, these other elements tell you what “form” you need to accomplish the future vision for the space.
  10. Money is not the issue. Once you’ve put in the basic infrastructure of the public spaces, the elements that are added that will make it work (e.g., vendors, cafes, flowers and seating) will not be expensive. If the community and other partners are involved in programming and other activities, this can also reduce costs. People will have so much enthusiasm for the project that the cost is viewed much more broadly and consequently as not significant when compared with the benefits.
  11. You Are Never Finished. Being open to the need for change and having the management flexibility to enact that change is what builds great public spaces and great cities and towns.

excerpted from Eleven Principles for Creating Great Community Places

The book puts it a little differently:

  1. The community is the expert. The people living and working in a place are the folks who know what needs to be done and how best to do it.
  2. You are creating a place, not a design. The blueprints for a neighborhood improvement effort are much less critical to its success than other factors, such as a management plan and the involvement of local citizens.
  3. You can’t do it alone. Finding the right partners will bring more resources, innovative ideas, and new sources of energy for your efforts.
  4. They’ll always say “It can’t be done.” When government officials, business people, and even some of your own neighbors say it won’t work, what they really mean is “We’ve never done it like this before.” It’s a sign you’re on the right track.
  5. You can see a lot by just observing. The smartest way to turn a neighborhood around is to first take a close look at what goes on there, watching out for what works and what doesn’t in that particular place.
  6. Develop a vision. For a community vision to make sense and to make a difference, it needs to come from the people who live there, not from consultants or other outside professionals.
  7. Form supports function. If you don’t take into account how people use a particular place in the beginning, you will have to deal with the consequences later.
  8. Make the connections. A great place in a neighborhood offers many things to do, all of which enhance each other and add up to more than the sum of the parts.
  9. Start with petunias. Little things can set the stage for big changes, especially by proving to local skeptics that change is indeed possible.
  10. Money is not the issue. If you have a spirited community working with you, you’ll find creative ways around financial obstacles.
  11. You are never finished. Eighty percent of the success of any good place is due to how well it is managed after the project is done.

Local farmers reclaiming the valley’s rich agricultural history

in Environmental Justice

Excerpted from Growing a Revolution by Stett Holbrook in metroactive

Meghan Cole, manager of the Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale, sees urban farming as part of a larger movement for change. Photograph by Felipe Buitrago

Meghan Cole, manager of the Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale. Photograph by Felipe Buitrago

Like much of Silicon Valley, Full Circle Farm was once an orchard, but the rows of Santa Rosa plum trees were plowed under when the orchard was in full blossom one spring in the early 1960s. The Santa Clara Unified School District bought the land and used it as an informal athletic field.

When the school district later considered selling the undeveloped parcel, it was valued at $60 million. That’s a huge sum of money for a cash-strapped district, but thanks to grassroots community support and former school board member Teresa O’Neill, who championed the idea of a community farm early on, the district saw another use for the land and decided not to sell out to developers.

“To me that’s the most amazing part of the story,” says Liz Snyder, interim executive director of Sustainable Community Gardens, the nonprofit group that runs the farm. “In Silicon Valley, where land was being gobbled by development, that was a minor miracle.”

The school district now leases the land to Sustainable Community Gardens. The organization also runs the 1-acre Charles Street Garden, which it leases from the city of Sunnyvale. The first tree planted at Full Circle Farm was a plum tree in honor of O’Neill and the orchard that once stood there. The farm has become many things to many people. Students get their hands dirty as they learn about the source of their food and what makes it grow. Last year, 1,200 students spent time on the farm.

With the planned construction of an on-site kitchen, Snyder, an earnest, soft-spoken woman, hopes to incorporate food grown on the farm into the school district’s food-service program. That would allow them to unplug, at least in part, from the national school-lunch program’s notoriously inferior menu of frozen heat-and-serve meals. She wants to replace 50 percent of what the school cafeterias now serve with produce from the farm.

The farm also provides fresh produce to the community at its thrice-weekly farm stand and community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. Local restaurants buy some of the produce. In addition, the farm attracts a wide range of volunteers who simply want to learn to grow vegetables and literally reap what they sow. The farm and its half-acre garden where schools and local residents can experiment and plant on a smaller scale has proved so popular that there are often more volunteers than work.

“Instead of going out to fast food, I can I cook with my own food that I learn to grow here,” says Kristal Caidoy, 20, a De Anza College student and volunteer.

Snyder studied the relationship between community food systems, exposure to food-marketing messages and childhood nutrition at Oxford University. For her, the farm and the support it has received are part of a national shift in the way we think about food: “I think we’re absolutely at a tipping point where urban agriculture is going to be more commonplace. … I think it’s a change in awareness at the community level and [a desire] to know where your food comes from.”

(more…)

Jersey retirement community turns kitchen waste into fuel

in Environmental Justice

Bill Sperry didn’t mind all the joking around when he told neighbors at his Morris County retirement community he was helping to convert used frying oil into fuel for the community’s shuttle buses.

“There was a lot of teasing going on about whether it would smell like french fries,” he said with a laugh.

As a retired engineer who worked for 35 years on major projects such as the development of Mylar and Dacron at Dupont, the 77-year-old Sperry makes an unlikely eco-activist. And the place he calls home – the Cedar Crest retirement community in Pequannock – might seem an unlikely place for an environmental laboratory.

But Sperry and the management of Cedar Crest haven’t let that stop them. The 130-acre retirement community has embarked on an ambitious effort to cut down on the pollution it generates – and save on fuel bills – by converting used soybean oil into a fuel known as biodiesel.

Sperry, a resident since 2003 who is licensed as a chemical engineer and serves on a national licensing board committee, helped write the safety and operating instructions and helped select the machinery used to process the fuel.

The converted cooking oil does not smell like french fries, Sperry insisted. In fact, he added, “it’s a better lubricant than diesel fuel. It cleans the engine out better.”

The idea came as a challenge from Cedar Crest’s parent company, Erickson Retirement Communities, and it’s been a hit with residents, said Cathy Guttman, the community’s executive director.

“Our residents in general are very concerned and very interested in how they can reduce their carbon footprint, not only for themselves but more importantly for their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren,” she said. “They’re very proud that we’re making a difference.”

Getting the project off the ground cost $18,000, said Rich Ferguson, project manager. But since the retirement community is saving $1,200 a month on fuel and on carting away used cooking oil, the project should eventually pay for itself, he said.

Already, Cedar Crest has fielded calls not only from other retirement communities that share their parent company, but also from local businesses that were intrigued when they learned about the biodiesel conversion plant and are now considering similar projects, Ferguson said.

That’s exactly what Sperry hoped might happen.

“This little bit we’re doing here isn’t going to change anything,” he said, “but if more people do the same thing, it should help in conserving resources.”

Read the full article Jersey retirement community turns kitchen waste into fuel | Science updates | NewJerseyNewsroom.com — Your State. Your News. By Maura McDermott

“Built Environmental Justice” is the joke of the day…

in Environmental Justice

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Ask Richard Layman of Citizens Planning Coalition, Washington DC, who recently sent us an inspiring e-mail (we hope you don’t mind us sharing this on our site):

Community building isn’t just about organizing, it’s about vision and having some sense of what are the components of “livability,” what makes a great neighborhood and a great city.  In other words, it’s hard to organize and build community when you don’t know what you want.  (Hence my joke since 2002 that I work on “built environmental justice.”)  This comes down to urban design, the quality of civic assets (parks, libraries, schools, recreation centers, etc.) that serve citizens, transportation, housing, viable commercial districts, etc.

At Our Blocks, we are humble in our efforts to provide the best known resources available and are very grateful for the insight that Richard has brought our attention to. Please take a look at the list below for valuable links/books that Richard highly recommends (I included a short caption for each link). Enjoy:

1. Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (a greatly influential book on the subject of urban planning in the 20th century)

2. Cities: Back from the Edge by Roberta Gratz and Mintz (a book about downtown revitalization)

3. The Living City by Frank Wright (an innovative book of Wright’s Architecture career focused upon the nine basic building types found in the living city)

4. Cities in Full by Steve Belmont (a book that offers possible remedies to revitalize urban areas)

5. City: Rediscovering the Center by William Whyte (currently out of print; book provides an engaging look at the variety of human interactions which make downtown vibrant)

6. Deepening Democracy by Wright and Fung (book that brings together cases of what the authors call ‘empowered participatory governance’, in which popular political participation becomes a vehicle for equity and efficiency)

7. Project for Public Spaces (a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public places that build communities; PPS also offers training courses available online). PPS offers a workbook, How to Turn a Place Around, which is a must have for every urban designer and landscape architect.

8. Neighborhood Planning (web site that provides neighborhood planning resources)

9. Urban Places and Spaces (Richard’s blog that offers over 2,000 links on various subjects concerned with urban revitalization)

Personally, I think PPS is a wonderful organization and I am looking forward to read, “How to Turn a Place Around.” Thanks again, Richard, for a dose of your great knowledge!

Majora Carter’s tale of urban renewal

in Environmental Justice

Majora Carter is a visionary voice in city planning who views urban renewal through an environmental lens. With her inspired ideas and fierce persistence, Carter managed to bring the South Bronx its first open-waterfront park in 60 years, Hunts Point Riverside Park. Excerpts:

Why is this story important?  Because from a planning perspective, economic degradation  begets environmental degradation, which begets social degradation. The disinvestment that began in the 1960s  set the stage for all the environmental injustices that were to come.  Antiquated zoning and land-use regulations are still used to this day to continue putting polluting facilities in my neighborhood. Are these factors taken into consideration when land-use policy is decided?  What costs are associated with these decisions? And who pays?  Who profits? Does anything justify what the local community goes through? This was “planning” — in quotes — that did not have our best interests in mind.

As we nurture the natural environment, its abundance will give us back even more. We run a project called the Bronx Ecological Stewardship Training,  which provides job training in the fields of ecological restorations,  so that folks from our community have the skills to compete for these well-paying jobs.  Little by little, we’re seeding the area with green collar jobs — then the people that have both a financial and personal stake in their environment.

We also built the city’s — New York City’s first green and cool roof demonstration project on top of our offices. Cool roofs are highly reflective surfaces that don’t absorb solar heat and pass it on to the building or atmosphere. Green roofs are soil and living plants. Both can be used instead of petroleum-based roofing materials that absorb heat, contribute to urban “heat island” effect and degrade under the sun, which we in turn breathe.

I do not expect individuals, corporations or government to make the world a better place because it is right or moral. I know it’s the bottom line, or one’s perception of it, that motivates people in the end. I’m interested in what I like to call the “triple bottom line” that sustainable development can produce. Developments that have the potential to create positive returns for all concerned: the developers, government and the community where these projects go up.

A parade of government subsidies is going to proposed big-box and stadium developments in the South Bronx, but there is scant coordination between city agencies on how to deal with the cumulative effects of increased traffic, pollution, solid waste and the impacts on open space.

Now let’s get this straight. I am not anti-development. Ours is a city, not a wilderness preserve. And I’ve embraced my inner capitalist. And you probably all have, and if you haven’t, you need to. So I don’t have a problem with developers making money. There’s enough precedent out there to show that a sustainable, community-friendly development can still make a fortune. Fellow TEDsters Bill McDonough and Amory Lovins — both heroes of mine by the way — have shown that you can actually do that.

I do have a problem with developments that hyper-exploit politically vulnerable communities for profit. That it continues is a shame upon us all, because we are all responsible for the future that we create. But one of the things I do to remind myself of greater possibilities is to learn from visionaries in other cities. This is my version of globalization.

When I spoke to Mr. Gore the other day after breakfast, I asked him how environmental justice activists were going to be included in his new marketing strategy.  His response was a grant program.  I don’t think he understood that I wasn’t asking for funding.  I was making him an offer.

What troubled me was that this top-down approach is still around. Now, don’t get me wrong, we need money. But grassroots groups are needed at the table during the decision-making process. Of the 90 percent of the energy that Mr. Gore reminded us that we waste every day, don’t add wasting our energy, intelligence and hard-earned experience to that count.

By working together, we can become one of those small, rapidly growing groups of individuals who actually have the audacity and courage to believe that we actually can change the world.