When we hear the word 'City', we tend to imagine buildings that try to touch the sky, bustling traffic,bridges,parks and several other solid and tangible objects. Depending on the person this visualization differs. For a four year old, his/her house with their friends' house next to them and their school would make a city. For an Architecture student skyscrapers connected with bridges and flying cars might count when visualizing a city.
In contrast to the majority, Amanda Burden, principal at Bloomberg Associates/ City Planner/Animal behaviorist claims she thinks of 'people' when she thinks of a city. For the past few days our studio has been reading about the interventions that could be made for making a community/neighborhood/district/ city healthy. Most of these interventions are related towards making public infrastructure efficient for people to use.
In her ted talk ' How public spaces make cities work ', Burden discusses about ' What makes a public space work?', 'What attracts people to successful public spaces?' and ' what is it about unsuccessful places that keeps people away?'. By studying Paley Park in midtown Manhattan Burden believes that such successful public spaces 'did not happen by accident' but was created with dedication and attention to detail. She observed that the reasons were the movable chairs that allowed people to pick a spot they like and people in the park attracting other people thereby creating a space that gave the sense of safety. She claims that this park offered the 'comfort and greenery' that the New Yorkers wanted.
She picks on the fact the plazas have been designed with the 'stylish spartan look that we often associate with modern Architecture' for several generations. It was interesting to see that Burden was not only talking about opportunities but also failures.
While expressing her experience with her project Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan, she makes it clear how a tiny detail could enhance/ruin an individual's experience in a public place. Battling through to do the right thing in this project, she became the Planning Commissioner for the New York City, 20 years later.
When presented with the challenge of New York growing out of its edges, Burden faced it by rezoning the city to accommodate the new developments along the city's transit lines that will allow the new population to settle without the need for a car. This allowed a 90% of all new development to be within a 10 minute walk to the subway. Her mission in all this rezoning was finally realized once she made public places in the most questionable spaces of these rezoned areas and this allowed New Yorkers to see a different image of the city by giving a public waterfront for lower Manhattan.
'How do you turn a park that people want to be in?' She asks designers to feel that individual experiences to create such places.
The High Line park, an elevated railroad that ran through three neighborhoods is a best example of how a public park should work. Not as a mall, but as a park. She best describes how commercial interest would always battle with the common good.
Like Burden, I also believe that Successful public spaces could be created based on individual experience and could potentially be converted into places that have power. I support her claim 'Open spaces in cities are Opportunities not only for the commercial investment but also for the common good of the city'. Working in the Lawndale Neighborhood in Chicago, I hope we can identify the reasons behind why some of the available public spaces are underused and what the community needs as a public space based on her theories of how a public space could work.
' Public space can change how you live in a city, how you feel in a city, whether you chose one city over another and one of the reasons whether you stay in the city. Public places are like a fabulous party, people stay because they are having a great time.'- Amanda Burden
Reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7fRIGphgtk&index=5&t=161s&list=WL
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