The Public Spaces Listserve is an open forum for people of all backgrounds to discuss the pressing (and sometimes not-so-pressing) issues concerning public spaces. Below are some highlights from recent discussions.

On DIVERSITY

As a result of a highly intellectual/specialized/fragmented society we have a vague and confused understanding of how to create what we need... A vague and confused perception of our current power dynamics.

It is difficult to find out what we need to create because more often we are detached from our environment, trying to find a way to make a living. And forgetting logic and common sense.

Know your people... Get out and talk, have a party, invite them into your house. Experience it... and then create together!

We have a few people with high intellectual, economic and social abilities… They decide what needs to be created, and yet lack what it means to be impacted by the new creation. It is not possible that an architecture firm, a planner, a contractor, and environmentalist-an office alone-can come up with a design that will be addressing a community as a whole.

For now, we can try as much as possible to inform communities. But until we give ourselves the opportunity to be open... to share knowledge back and forth -- that means acknowledging that we people in offices with PhD's need first to learn not only with our intellects, to share our "privileges" and let go of control in order to get real and gain a holistic understanding that will enable us to have a connection with our people, our land, and what we put on it.

Know your people... Get out and talk, have a party, invite them into your house. Experience it... and then create together!

- Judith Gonz-E1lez Plascencia. Architect, Planner, Organizer, Mexican, Woman, Young

On THE TROUBLE WITH DESIGNER AND COMMUNITY CONSULTATION

Even the good designers seem to think narrowly and write as though they were giving court evidence. Your average person has to slog through some really didactic and legalistic writing. They don't try to inspire or make you wonder or question. They're rarely poetic. Instead you have to read between the lines and ask yourself what they would be saying if they were speaking plainly.

If we allow negative, tedious people to force didactic, legalistic compromises on us, what kind of dysfunctional cities are we going to end up with?

When they draw they most often give you a bird's eye view as if they thought you were a starling or somehow otherwise possessed the power of flight. The project I've been involved with for the last year has a great designer but he suffers from many of these things. Someone gave us some photos of the site in question, which were taken from a camera mounted on a kite. They were astounding and so much more exciting than the bird's eye drawing. Why don't designers mount cameras on kites? They seem to love this vantage point so much.

The community consultation is troublesome so they try to avoid it. Get it over and done with. The noisy, negative people, while in a minority, can get catered to because they're so unpleasant. Rather than a project that evolves around the positive visions in the community or city, the loudest nastiest people limit the public consultation by making it so tedious. Who really wants to listen to the same irrational statements again and again and again? Then the politicians get worried about being re-elected.

If we allow negative, tedious people to force didactic, legalistic compromises on us, what kind of dysfunctional cities are we going to end up with? How can we foster positive, imaginative community consultation processes that cannot become bogged down by the fears of a vocal few? Where is the "art" in community consultation? Or better yet, instead of plonking some public art down after the porridge has cooled why not get artists involved right from the beginning and treat them as though they were crucial and not just a frill?

- Gene Threndyle

On THINKING IN OTHERS WAYS THAN OUR OWN

Remember the Rudyard Kipling poem about the six blind men and the elephant? "Each of them was somewhat right -- and all of them were wrong." It is only through open dialogue and cooperative communication with those who have other pieces to the puzzle -- and, yes, this means practicing humility and openness to ideas generated by the lay public rather than taking the attitude that we have all the answers because we've done things like this before -- that we stand the best chance of getting things more than somewhat right (or at least not all wrong).

- Sandi Duchesne

On PLAYGROUNDS

Traditional playgrounds have swings, slides and climbing structures and generally can only be used one way by children. The best playgrounds, though, are open-ended and provoke the imagination of the children. A climbing structure in the general shape of a boat, for example is so much more evocative than a set of swings. With a boat structure the imagination is provoked so that the boat becomes a pirate ship and the ground becomes water. But a set of swings gets used the same way each time and so has a limited interest to children.

Creating curriculum and environments for children means involving them in the creative process.

I would like to see children involved in the design of playgrounds. If children were asked for their ideas and even created sketches of possible structures, then playgrounds would all look different. I was a teacher for seven years and learned that creating curriculum and environments for children means involving them in the creative process.

The best playground I ever took children to was a small wooded area. There children created houses out of sticks, and their imaginations invented stories of living out in the woods and going to school etc. The reason this playground was so good was that the environment was completely open ended. This wood was quite near a playground with all of the standard equipment. What a difference in the quality of their play in these two places.

- Andy McGowan