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PPS
brings its "place-making" message
to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
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January 8, 2001: PPS president Fred
Kent and vice-president Kathy Madden spent New
Years Eve and the following week giving 15 presentations
in Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Jerusalem.
Hosted by the Society for the Protection of
Nature in Israel (SPNI), a community-minded
environmental nonprofit, the pair met with a
wide range of influential citizen groups, professional
organizations, government agencies and other
nonprofits. Their workshops covered local
issues surrounding light rail, public markets,
waterfronts, streets, civic plazas and parks.
PPS is exploring continued involvement through
a partnership with SPNI. The following
article includes highlights of the workshops:
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Published
in Israel as a Newspaper together with
the International Herald Tribune
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Monday, January 8, 2001
Man as the measure of
all things urban
Fred Kent, an authority on revitalizing
city spaces, visited Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and
was shocked by what he saw. Israeli streets need
to be designed for people, he says.
By Orna Coussin
"Forcing people to go underground in order
to cross from one street to the next is humiliating,"
says Fred Kent, an expert on revitalizing urban
spaces. Visiting Tel Aviv last week, he was appalled
by the appearance of main thoroughfares such as
Allenby and King George streets. Pedestrians who
want to cross from, for instance, Sheinken Street
to the Carmel market are forced to descend to
filthy, neglected subterranean tunnels. Most choose
to bypass the indignity of such underground passage,
and instead make the trek through a long, roundabout
route to reach their destination. Such circuitous
pedestrian journeys are caused by needless separations
between bustling urban spaces.
"It's pathetic and doesn't need to happen
here, and you can change it," Kent declared,
speaking to dozens of environmental activists
who attended one of the lectures he gave during
his visit to Israel. "These spaces have vast
potential, but they're squandered because a road
is designed for cars, and not for people."
Kent, who came to Israel to review symptoms of
urban blight at the request of Tel Aviv region
environmentalists, is a pioneer in a global effort
aimed at reviving urban streets and public spaces
for the benefit of city residents. Inspired by
work on urban decay and revitalization done by
William Whyte and Jane Jacobs (author of "Death
and Life of Great American Cities"), Kent
founded the organization Project for Public Spaces,
Inc. (PPS) a quarter-century ago, and serves as
its president today.
Kent's work tools are common sense, and also slide
photographs. Using common sense, he observes urban
centers and studies what people do in them, and
what they have trouble doing in them; he watches
them try to overcome problems moving around and
relaxing, taking notes about what works for them,
and what doesn't. His analysis is geared toward
identifying just what turns a mere urban space
into a genuine "place."
Inviting city spaces, Kent explains, enhance pedestrians'
link to their surroundings, facilitate access
to other urban areas, and teem with activity.
Using slides, he shows his audience examples of
urban streets, plazas and sites from around the
globe which have succeeded or failed according
to the criteria he uses in assessments. Two successful
examples of urban revival taken from Kent's own
stomping grounds, New York City, are Greenwich
Village's thriving Bleeker Street, which combines
commercial and residential sites, and Union Square
(between 14th and 18th streets, and Broadway and
Park avenues), a site which was brought back to
life by virtue of a simple solution (setting-up
a farmer's market). These are places that tourists
like to visit, and where local city residents
feel at home.
Architecture, Kent claims, is not responsible
for the success of urban centers. The opposite,
he contends, is too often true. "Architecture
and ego are what destroy the city," he explains.
"They create cities that lack pedestrians."
To prove his point, he shows a picture of a large
bank in Houston, Texas, a large, impressive facility
designed by the architect Phillip Johnson. The
photo shows a deserted sidewalk leading to the
bank; and a lone soul standing before the building's
tall facade is barely distinguishable. Kent adds
that the bank's managers bemoan the lack of customers
- apart from architecture students. They complain
that nobody enters the building, he says. "Similarly,
in Tel Aviv, where there are many attractive streets
built in accord with human needs, huge buildings
are being constructed, buildings whose presence
on the sidewalk appears removed, alienated, and
distant."
According to Kent's model, successful public spaces
have four components: accessibility (the site
is easily reached, and it's easy to move from
it to other sites by foot, bicycle or public transportation);
comfort and positive appearance (people linger
at a site because it looks clean, safe, and comfortable,
and because the surrounding buildings seem inviting
and non-intimidating); a diversity of activities
and uses (people gather at a site which offers
a range of services and activities - benches to
sit on, recreation space, exhibits of various
sorts, water fountains, etc.); and last, sociability
(a successful urban "place" is one where
people meet to talk, walk around, and develop
friendships).
Making a brief visit to Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda
market, Kent observed the lack of the first, most
important, component: accessibility and connection
to other urban spaces. "The market itself
is wonderful," he says. "You can really
feel how emotions soar there. But it's so disappointing
to stand on the street where the buses come [Jaffa
Road] and not know that there's a market around
you. This is a site which should be the heart
of the urban scene, but there's no connection
between it and the city. The market's separation
from the city is painful. You enter the market
via a parking lot. That's really insulting."
As a corrective to Mahane Yehuda's seclusion,
Kent imagines Jaffa Road providing a simple, accessible
entrance to the market. A public transport depot
would be located directly across the market; Agrippas
Street, he proposes, could provide access for
walkers and bicyclists. Speaking with people who
work in or utilize the Mahane Yehuda market, Kent
learned that many customers are taking their business
elsewhere, going to large supermarkets. Should
the problem of access to the market remain unsolved,
he predicts, Jerusalem could lose one of its most
crucial spaces.
Kent also visited urban centers in Tel Aviv. Even
as a guest who was just passing through, he had
no trouble identifying trouble spots in the city.
He was amazed to see cars parked on sidewalks
- he stopped to photograph a woman who was forced
to push a baby carriage on the street because
the sidewalk was clogged. Generally, he encountered
a glaring waste of public spaces.
Tel Aviv's listless Habima Square, Kent says,
could be revived. He proposes scrapping the parking
lot and creating a public square that would facilitate
recreational activities and also street theater
and concerts performed as a logical outgrowth
of events on the Habima stage. Activities in such
a revitalized square would enhance its links to
the two main thoroughfares, Rothschild and Chen,
which lead to it. As for the parking lot, Kent
believes that it could be shoved underground.
Revenue accrued by taxes paid by the parking lot's
owners to the Tel Aviv municipality could be invested
in the maintenance and administration of the outlying
public square. "Experience shows that such
arrangements work," Kent says. He adds a
word of caution. "Joint administration [between
the public and private sectors] represents 80
percent of a place's success. You have to make
sure that there's a body set-up to review constantly
what works, what needs to be changed, what can
be updated. Otherwise, such a site can go downhill."
Focusing on Tel Aviv's dead zone, its harbor,
Kent suggests that public spaces should be zoned
and planned as a first stage. Only after such
planning is completed would it be prudent to discuss
specific types of buildings and commercial activities.
He urges city planners to set high standards,
and resist any temptation to be satisfied with
mediocrity: "Harbor areas in cities which
attract tourists from all over the globe ought
to be the model. Your harbor can also be stunning,
an attractive symbol of the city as a whole. Take
a look at harbors around the world, and think
about what makes them work."
Kent thinks that a splendid facility, akin (for
instance) to the Sydney Opera House, can be built
at the site. "But opera," he warns,
"doesn't suffice to bring people to Sydney's
harbor. There's a promenade which leads to this
facility, with activities strewn along it... They
are the what give life to the place. Beyond the
promenade, Sydney isn't more impressive than Tel
Aviv."
As it stands today, visitors at Tel Aviv's harbor
lack access to the sea, and the various store
outlets attract cars to the area rather than pedestrians.
So far, architectural proposals drawn to revitalize
the harbor have been flawed by neglect of pedestrian
needs, by the failure to perceive the harbor as
a venue designed first and foremost for human
activity. On the whole, the harbor is thought
of as a prime site for accruing profit in real
estate deals, for parking, and for erecting shopping
mall facilities. "If you don't change these
patterns and perceptions," Kent warns, "Tel
Aviv won't bustle with life; it won't be a place
worth visiting, and that would be a shame, a real
missed opportunity for generations to come."
A successful model of managing automobiles in
an urban area is provided by Portland, Oregon,
Kent says. One large city square there was brought
back to life because contractors and entrepreneurs
had the courage to invest ample sums in a train
system, which shuttles people to and from the
site; they didn't allocate money to build a parking
lot. Such planning innovation and boldness can
revitalize areas Tel Aviv areas such as the harbor.
"Your harbor can be one of the finest in
the world," Kent says. "The only thing
which you need is a little imagination."
Man is the measure by which the city should be
built: this principle is paramount in Kent's thinking.
When he observes pedestrians, he doesn't view
them as objects subordinate to the construction
of huge city streets and skyscrapers. Nor does
he see them as consumers rendered subservient
by the construction of large shopping malls and
commercial centers. Instead, he sees them as people,
free citizens in a democratic society in whose
name a city is built. The city's spaces, its streets
and squares, belong to them.
"Traffic engineers hate streets that teem
with people," Kent explains. "They want
traffic to flow. But when you think about people
rather than about consumers or drivers or tourists,
there's nothing better than a street bustling
with pedestrians. You can slow-down and reduce
automobile traffic at the entrance of a city,
widen sidewalks and add benches." Consumer
activities and tourism should be the byproducts
of how city life is perceived and planned for
- the city, in other words, is to be built for
people, not commerce or tourism.
Using Kent's guidelines as the measuring stick,
the deficiency of prime Israeli sites such as
Jaffa becomes apparent. Jaffa's old areas were
planned as artificial tourist enclaves, and they
have remained deserted. Likewise, Tel Aviv's Rabin
Square is an empty urban desert - in this, and
other, cases, it isn't difficult to imagine projects
that would revive the site. The annual book fair
held at Rabin Square could become a weekly event;
shady areas, with benches, could be created; the
ground could be re-surfaced to accommodate roller-blade
users. With such innovations, Rabin Square could
become a popular meeting place for young and older
people alike; the entire city area would gain
from such a revitalization project.
Some signs of life have been shown recently by
Dizengoff Square. The Tel Aviv Municipality has
tried to revive the square by sponsoring an artists'
market. Some stores on the stretch running between
Frishman Street and the square, which had been
closed, have re-opened. But if Dizengoff Square
provides a glimpse of the kind of urban revival
that Kent champions, many Tel Aviv streets are
fraught with signs of foreboding isolation. For
example, the off-putting way in which tall buildings
on Rothschild Street and Kiryat Atidim have been
built - cut-off from the city, secluded from pedestrains
- typifies trends that cause damage to public
spheres.
These trends are surveyed in the article "The
Changing Public Space of Globalizing Cities,"
written by Harvard University researchers Greg
Smith and Katrin Bindner. Increasingly, state
and local authorities in countries around the
world are putting responsibility for the management
and economic well-being of public spaces in private
hands; huge private corporations are increasingly
gaining control of major urban buildings and spaces.
The companies try to attract a particular social
stratum and type of consumer to these facilities
and sites; corporate outlooks and activities detract
from the diversity of urban sites, and cultivate
a dull, homogenous ambiance in public spaces.
The article's authors deride processes leading
to the establishment of stores such as the Gap,
the Banana Republic and Starbucks in innumerable
public venues; such tedious duplication of public
spaces curbs the full utilization of a city's
potential, they argue.
Similarly, Kent views diversity as the key to
a city's success. Heaps of money, he says, aren't
needed to preserve urban authenticity and diversity
- sometimes it's enough simply to widen a sidewalk,
or install a bench at the right spot near a park.
As an example, he cites the revival of a street
corner in New Haven, Connecticut, close to Yale
University. Here, and elsewhere, just a few benches
or sidewalk improvements were needed to encourage
owners of coffee shops to put tables and seats
outside, and to bring a book shop back to life.
"A wide range of people sometimes suddenly
find reasons to come to a site," he reflects,
optimistically. |
