Public Square

Cleveland, OH

The roads that carve up this downtown square make it nearly impossible to reach by foot, squandering its prime location.

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Why It Doesn't Work

Cleveland's Public Square is surrounded by wide roads with fast moving traffic. Streets also divide the square into four quadrants, and few people want to dodge the cars and trucks in order to visit. So, there's little going on there. The Square's mediocrity is all the more frustrating in light of its promising location: Cleveland's main street, Euclid Avenue, connects Public Square to Playhouse Square, the city's theater district, and the Square fronts Terminal Tower, a beautiful old mixed-used, transit-centered development. Public Square's saving grace may be the potential to use these nearby assets to reconnect itself to the attractive downtown.

Opportunities
The first priority should be to make Public Square more accommodating to pedestrians by narrowing intersections, reducing the number of vehicle lanes, and slowing down traffic. These steps are prerequisite to creating better connections between the Square and key places along its edges, such as Terminal Tower. These improved connections set the stage for increased coordination between neighboring property owners and the reintroduction of lively ground floor uses in all the buildings that face the Square. The finishing touch would be to program activities and create attractions and amenities to support this programming within each of the Square's four quadrants.

The City of Cleveland, led by Mayor Jane Campbell, has already held a visioning session with stakeholders in the area to develop ideas for improving Public Square. We hope to see these ideas implemented soon.

User Comments:

11/19/04 Christopher Bongorno said:: I agree with much of this assessment of Cleveland's Public Square, but I have positive comments as well. Many people believe that the problem with Public Square lies in the fact that it is really four separate squares. While I believe that this "quadrant" format is, in large part, a weakness, I also feel that this unnatural separation suggests that there may be more opportunity for separation of activities and a chance for people to find a little more variety at Cleveland's heart. For example, a farmers market could be held on one quadrant, while skateboarders could continue to ride the ridges of an empty fountain on another and tourists can walk with their eyes pointed skyward at the tops of Ohio's three tallest buildings in a third.

One key indicator that combining the four quadrants and eliminating the roads that separate them could improve the livelihood of the square is the success of the annual 4th of July Cleveland Symphony Orchestra performance on the square. Each year, the streets are closed and tens of thousands of Clevelanders pack the square to be filled with the booming sounds of the Symphony ricocheting off the buildings surrounding them and the fireworks exploding overhead. People want to flock to this space and Cleveland can do a better job of giving them a reason to.

Regardless of the weaknesses that Cleveland's Public Square suffers from, it remains the heart of the city and one of its most inspiring and exciting places to visit, hurry through (on foot, taxi, skateboard, etc.), or sit for a while.
05/09/05 Nick Grossman said:: FYI, a discussion around Public Square (including comments on this Hall of Shame Listing) on the website "Urban Ohio":
http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2541.0
09/19/05 Jack Taylor said:: You must realize that the reason for four seperate squares is to allow 4 individual trolley lines to use the same area without requiring an absurd nuber of loops on one square. The square had a Euclid ave set, a superior and St clair set. A w 25th. Lorain and a Madison set. Finally it had a set for the southern lines to the west side Detroit and Clifton set.