The Need for High-Quality Public Spaces

By -

 

The importance of robust public spaces cannot be overstated. 

I've always believed that the quest for social connection was, first and foremost, something that had to come about through a sort of internal spiritual awakening. That is, a collective understanding that we can not go it alone as purely self-maximizing individuals; we need each other. While I still believe that to be true, I do think that, in the past, I've downplayed the vital role of external environment and the affects it can have on us as social creatures. 

People-friendly spaces, as opposed to sterile spaces devoid of engaging amenities, can facilitate social connection and much-needed weak-tie relationships. 

It's pretty intuitive, actually: if people are not physically around each other, their prospects for social connection are not very good. 

Public places in and of themselves, however, are not enough to combat our current plague of social atomization. 

As Shawn McCaney writes for Governing, people need more "high-quality public places where Americans can connect." The operative word here being, high-quality. 

A high-quality public space must have eclectic amenities, robust programming, places to sit and converse, and walkable paths. Perhaps most importantly, these spaces must be maintained. Many of the parks and baseball places I used to frequent with my father when I was a child, for instance, are now unkempt and encumbered by weeds. This is an example of a low-quality public space. 

Other communities, however, have re-purposed dormant and abandoned infrastructure, turning them into vibrant and fecund social spaces. 

McCaney uses the example of Philadelphia's new Rail Park, an erstwhile railroad viaduct that had been left unused and functionless since 1984.  Now, thanks to community efforts and innovative design, it is a place to connect and unwind. 

Philadelphia's Rail Park

Though the park is only in phase-one of its rollout, it is already offering exciting events, including a "Three Mile Vision Tour," which aims to explore the "past, present, and future of the Rail Park, highlighting the potential for this project to connect thousands of Philadelphia residents and visitors to green space and each other." 

You can find a 9-minute YouTube walk-through of the Rail Park, with it's unique swinging benches, here. 

We need more spaces like this that are conducive to connection. It will require inventiveness, a willingness to re-purpose unused infrastructure, and active community-backing. Cities across the country, fortunately, are proving that civic life can be restored. 

Comments

  1. OrwellianSonSeptember 23, 2024 at 2:16 PM

    The Chelsea High Line is another example of an imaginative urban landscape: old, abandoned, elevated railroad tracks, now converted to a few miles of rustic, relaxing, communal, spaces.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Examining Social Connectedness Abroad

By -
Image
  Non-Western countries are known to be more collectivistic and group-oriented, especially when compared to Western countries like Great Britain and America.  Lawrence Mead, my former professor and thesis supervisor at NYU, articulated this cultural difference in his 2019 book, Burdens of Freedom: Cultural Difference and American Power: ...Western culture is individualist, while non-Western cultures tend to be conformist. Westerners take action largely to fulfill personal goals and values, if necessary, changing the world to do so. In this sense, they live their lives from the inside out. In the non-West, by contrast, most people take their cues largely from without - from their immediate associates, higher authority, or tradition. They adjust to their environment much more than they seek to change it. They live their lives largely from the outside in.  Professor Mead is easily the most valiant and intellectually honest professor that I ever had the honor of taking. He received an enor
Read more

It's Embarrassing To Admit This...

By -
Image
  It's embarrassing to admit this, but... I really only started reading about two years ago. Before that, reading was the most mundane, yawn-inducing task I could think of. It wasn't fun or energizing; it was dull and torturous.  When I was in high school, I wasn't particularly scholarly, to put it mildly. While I did well, I didn't excel. Most, though not all, of what I read was required for my various classes. Though, now that I think about it, there were various poetry books and short stories I enjoyed. Lawrence Ferlinghetti's,  A Coney Island of the Mind;  Philip Schultz's,  Failure;  and Nikolai Gogol's,  Diary of a Madman  come to mind. I also enjoyed the dystopian works of Paul Auster.  Barring these few, but notable, exceptions, I did not read. This, in turn, effected my diction, and still does to a degree. I recall one particularly embarrassing moment in a mathematics class I took freshman year. On the first day of class - which is, of course, a pri
Read more

Comments Open to All

By -
Frank Filocomo So as to encourage dialectic, I have enabled commenting privileges to all, including those without Blogger or Google accounts.  So please, feel free to opine on my posts. I do not claim to have all the answers. I, like you, am just another inquisitive mind.  Ideally, comments will be thoughtful and substantive. That way, we can engage in a productive back and forth.  That said, I have always considered myself to be a free speech absolutist; censoring opposing views, or even speech I find to be utterly rebarbative, has never been my thing.  Trolls, too, will be welcome. I may later regret this... But the point of this blog, you see, is to encourage community. And community requires interaction. Therefore, it would be counterproductive for me to prohibit speech of any kind, or to put up barriers that require people to create an account in order to comment.  Now, being that this is the internet, I use the word "community" somewhat loosely. Some may call an online
Read more