I’m here to convince you today that the
streets and public spaces of our cities
are not only central to our thriving
democracy but they’re also potentially
key to world peace on January 21st 2017
five million people around the world
came together to stand up for women’s
rights and democracy these marches took
place on the tundra frozen tundra to the
north – even a cancer ward in Los
Angeles but for the most part they took
place in public spaces and streets from
Fairbanks Alaska to Houston Texas to
Paris France five million people
converging on the city to show their
force of democratic action this
experience was both personal and
intergenerational for me I attended as
you see with my mother my daughter and
my my 10 year old daughter and my sister
it was such an extraordinary moment to
feel connected to humanity at this one
time moment in time but importantly as a
public space designer and landscape
architect which is what I am it was also
a moment of realizing the value of my
profession that the ground beneath my
feet was actually the medium for this
incredible global human network and I
was scanning social media and I was
looking across all of the places that I
work and currently working in like
Congress Avenue in Texas and more Square
and Raleigh these are my projects and
ethica New York just to see how are
these places faring under this
extraordinary crush of people my firm
also that I work for also designed parts
of Pennsylvania Avenue itself so the
very platform we were standing on as a
1980s kind of landscape framework and
then again recently as an urban design
framework now Pennsylvania Avenue had an
extraordinary weekend that weekend in
January one day it hosted hundreds of
thousands of marchers 24 hours earlier
it was the route of the presidential
inaugural parade and 24 hours before
that it was a normal Street that was
carrying cars and
Austrians and bikes think about that for
a second imagine designing a room of
your house where one day you’re gonna
host a hip-hop dance party the next day
have an elegant candlelit dinner and on
the third day park your car that’s what
public space designers think about how
to kind of accommodate this incredible
array of use but public space isn’t just
about protests right it’s from the
beginning of time it’s the place where
people experience community and cities
from the agora in ancient greece to the
village green and new england public
space is our common ground it’s where we
and cities make connections to other
people and this is important because the
world is urbanizing currently 50% of the
world’s population lives in cities in
the u.s. that’s 70% and it’s expected to
grow to 80% by 2050 and so to make
cities livable we need public spaces in
public spaces where people in cities
live their lives it’s where we
experience Commerce and shopping it’s
where we experience celebration and come
together to feel community it’s also
where we collectively mourn and grieve
after traumatic events increasingly in
the 21st century it’s the place where we
experience health and wellness and take
care of ourselves and where we take our
kids and our families to experience joy
and play so that all sounds good right
what’s the problem well at the same time
we’re seeing an increase in the value of
public space and a recognition of that
we’re also seeing it come under attack
so you think about what happened
recently in New York City or what’s
happened in Charlottesville and you see
that terrorists and disruptors are
understanding that connection to
community and so they’re hitting us
where it hurts attacking us at our core
which is our sense of connection and
community and it’s happening as we’ve
seen not just in our country but all
over the world as a public space
designer this is a really interesting
conundrum how do I think about designing
for places for people but also where
they feel safe and welcome and there’s
an extraordinary array a special field
of specialists really who deal with
security landscapes a few examples the
recent recompression of the Sandy Hook
elementary school the rebuilding of that
includes a long processional to the
front door which prevents what may be
what happened last
time but also creates a beautiful
arrival sequence our own work on the
Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool uses
walls and edges to prevent cars from
becoming part of this really important
public space and then there’s all kinds
of clever integration of bollards and
security measures and landscapes like in
wall street where there’s a swivel on
the ground where the bollards actually
moved to allow cars to pass some times
and be block to others and this is these
are great tactics when you know there’s
a specific threat but the problem is
that we’re seeing this proliferate and
become more diffuse so so my concern as
a public space designer is that we might
start designing these spaces for more
increased threats and that might
compromise the very democratic values
that public space promotes we could
start thinking about for instance
fortification of our public spaces that
if we just put up more walls we can
protect ourselves we saw this after 9/11
ironically where the Philadelphia’s
Independence Hall our beacon of freedom
was almost behind bars of temporary
security measures bollards are wonderful
I use them a lot as landscape architect
but they also send a subliminal signal
to people that you’re not really safe
here there’s a threat present and that
really does impact the way people
understand space and certainly you could
elevate this to the national dialogue
about how we address the threat or
perceived threat and what that might
mean for our community we could increase
surveillance right and as a city dweller
I know everywhere I go I’m probably on
camera somewhere whether an iPhone or a
security camera you come to accept it
but when you design a public space
that’s purposely made to be surveilled
it can lock humanity it can lack comfort
it can lack connection similarly with
police presence sometimes it’s really
positive and needed but it can hit a
tipping point where it starts to become
concerning or intimidating and then
lastly probably my biggest fear is what
if people start retreating what if they
stop going and participating in public
life in public space out of fear and
retreat deeper into their screens and
iPhones this is a funny cartoon but it
really speaks to this notion of the echo
chamber we hear about a lot this idea
that people are isolating themselves and
like
communities and we’ve seen again and
again that isolation actually does breed
kind of terrorism and violence and those
tendencies where connection can help us
overcome it in Boston after
Charlottesville we saw crowds of people
protests and a counter protest purposely
separated to keep violent skirmishes
from happening and that was wonderful
that nobody was hurt but it made me
nervous about our ability to have
constructive public discourse and if we
start separating people consistently how
do we ever find common ground again the
role of landscape so I’m suggesting
today that we can design not for threat
but instead for promise that we can
think about public spaces that actually
embrace a sense of connectivity and
community and bring us together around
collaboration and public discourse that
instead of designing for fortification
we should be designing for exchange
purposefully creating places where
people have to come together and
confront other I’ve been working in
Syracuse University where we’ve been
working on a open space framework for
that campus looking at how to renovate
and think about their open spaces as one
idea there was a street that was closed
for many years to cars and students used
it but it’s still very much read like a
street in the landscape and the idea was
to convert it actually into a public
space where people could gather now you
might look at this and think well that’s
a really pretty project kind of nice to
have a beautification project and not
see it necessarily as core to the
campuses educational mission which
members of that community did they said
why are we spending money on this this
is a place of education not a resort
right the project moved ahead and opened
last year just some images of this under
construction but what you see even days
after the project open is that people
were coming together in this landscape
people are connecting and new ways where
they were just passing through that
Street before now they’re coming
together and talking openly and sitting
together and really heartwarming to me
as a designer
within days of it opening this place
that was protested became a place of
protest they had this huge black lives
matter dye in and so I asked you is this
kind of conversation core to an
educational mission is confronting these
of issues in our society a
beautification project or is it really
central to the way do we think about our
society and culture I think we can
connect people instead of retreating
I’ve been working on a project called a
lawn on D in Boston it’s a really
interesting kind of social experiment
next to the Convention Center there we
thought let’s do a temporary landscape
and see what kinds of uses we can put
here that will bring people together
very inexpensively constructed of
asphalt and law and with a tents but
what we really invested time and energy
and was finding ways to create
furnishings and temporary art
installations that would provoke people
and provide comfortable spaces so that
people are kind of forced to interact
with each other in new ways and what
we’ve seen is a public discourse
happening in this public space we see
people in this case by a fire pit having
a long extended conversation that they
might not otherwise have we see people
collaborating in new ways in public
space here building snow forts in stem
and this was our Snowmageddon some
winter if you remember that we see
people coming here just to experience
joy and fun and probably bumping into
people that they might not normally
otherwise bump into and then lastly I
think that we can build for community
right we can purposely design to build
bring people together and to build
community I’ve been working for the past
decade on the Chicago River Walk and
similar to Syracuse this was a
underutilized gray space that nobody
spent time in that sort of sent a sad
message and over many years of work
we’ve converted this into a people space
again one a physical connection but
community connection bringing people
into contact with each other and also
the river and we purposely designed this
so that people had to experience each
other the seating enables people to sit
in different ways they can bump into
people they might not otherwise bump
into it’s just an extraordinary people
place where you might meet someone you
just couldn’t have imagined talking to
whether in groups or introverts kind of
having small conversation this is really
key to the way we think about how we
want to live in public and again public
spaces and and and when we see this on
the Riverwalk it attracts people of
every race of
every age of every generation and it
really is that common ground that things
people together it’s the sense of
connection to each other and to a sense
of place but I think release can serve
as kind of an antidote to isolation and
violence so I don’t know if I convinced
you today but I hope you walk away from
this understanding that public space is
more than beautification right
publication is core to the way we think
about democratic society it’s also a cry
really for us as a divided society to
build places that bring us joy and
meaning and connection and I think again
it’s about designing instead of thinking
about designing for the threat of what
could happen design for the promise of
healing and peace thank you
[Applause]
you
streets and public spaces of our cities
are not only central to our thriving
democracy but they’re also potentially
key to world peace on January 21st 2017
five million people around the world
came together to stand up for women’s
rights and democracy these marches took
place on the tundra frozen tundra to the
north – even a cancer ward in Los
Angeles but for the most part they took
place in public spaces and streets from
Fairbanks Alaska to Houston Texas to
Paris France five million people
converging on the city to show their
force of democratic action this
experience was both personal and
intergenerational for me I attended as
you see with my mother my daughter and
my my 10 year old daughter and my sister
it was such an extraordinary moment to
feel connected to humanity at this one
time moment in time but importantly as a
public space designer and landscape
architect which is what I am it was also
a moment of realizing the value of my
profession that the ground beneath my
feet was actually the medium for this
incredible global human network and I
was scanning social media and I was
looking across all of the places that I
work and currently working in like
Congress Avenue in Texas and more Square
and Raleigh these are my projects and
ethica New York just to see how are
these places faring under this
extraordinary crush of people my firm
also that I work for also designed parts
of Pennsylvania Avenue itself so the
very platform we were standing on as a
1980s kind of landscape framework and
then again recently as an urban design
framework now Pennsylvania Avenue had an
extraordinary weekend that weekend in
January one day it hosted hundreds of
thousands of marchers 24 hours earlier
it was the route of the presidential
inaugural parade and 24 hours before
that it was a normal Street that was
carrying cars and
Austrians and bikes think about that for
a second imagine designing a room of
your house where one day you’re gonna
host a hip-hop dance party the next day
have an elegant candlelit dinner and on
the third day park your car that’s what
public space designers think about how
to kind of accommodate this incredible
array of use but public space isn’t just
about protests right it’s from the
beginning of time it’s the place where
people experience community and cities
from the agora in ancient greece to the
village green and new england public
space is our common ground it’s where we
and cities make connections to other
people and this is important because the
world is urbanizing currently 50% of the
world’s population lives in cities in
the u.s. that’s 70% and it’s expected to
grow to 80% by 2050 and so to make
cities livable we need public spaces in
public spaces where people in cities
live their lives it’s where we
experience Commerce and shopping it’s
where we experience celebration and come
together to feel community it’s also
where we collectively mourn and grieve
after traumatic events increasingly in
the 21st century it’s the place where we
experience health and wellness and take
care of ourselves and where we take our
kids and our families to experience joy
and play so that all sounds good right
what’s the problem well at the same time
we’re seeing an increase in the value of
public space and a recognition of that
we’re also seeing it come under attack
so you think about what happened
recently in New York City or what’s
happened in Charlottesville and you see
that terrorists and disruptors are
understanding that connection to
community and so they’re hitting us
where it hurts attacking us at our core
which is our sense of connection and
community and it’s happening as we’ve
seen not just in our country but all
over the world as a public space
designer this is a really interesting
conundrum how do I think about designing
for places for people but also where
they feel safe and welcome and there’s
an extraordinary array a special field
of specialists really who deal with
security landscapes a few examples the
recent recompression of the Sandy Hook
elementary school the rebuilding of that
includes a long processional to the
front door which prevents what may be
what happened last
time but also creates a beautiful
arrival sequence our own work on the
Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool uses
walls and edges to prevent cars from
becoming part of this really important
public space and then there’s all kinds
of clever integration of bollards and
security measures and landscapes like in
wall street where there’s a swivel on
the ground where the bollards actually
moved to allow cars to pass some times
and be block to others and this is these
are great tactics when you know there’s
a specific threat but the problem is
that we’re seeing this proliferate and
become more diffuse so so my concern as
a public space designer is that we might
start designing these spaces for more
increased threats and that might
compromise the very democratic values
that public space promotes we could
start thinking about for instance
fortification of our public spaces that
if we just put up more walls we can
protect ourselves we saw this after 9/11
ironically where the Philadelphia’s
Independence Hall our beacon of freedom
was almost behind bars of temporary
security measures bollards are wonderful
I use them a lot as landscape architect
but they also send a subliminal signal
to people that you’re not really safe
here there’s a threat present and that
really does impact the way people
understand space and certainly you could
elevate this to the national dialogue
about how we address the threat or
perceived threat and what that might
mean for our community we could increase
surveillance right and as a city dweller
I know everywhere I go I’m probably on
camera somewhere whether an iPhone or a
security camera you come to accept it
but when you design a public space
that’s purposely made to be surveilled
it can lock humanity it can lack comfort
it can lack connection similarly with
police presence sometimes it’s really
positive and needed but it can hit a
tipping point where it starts to become
concerning or intimidating and then
lastly probably my biggest fear is what
if people start retreating what if they
stop going and participating in public
life in public space out of fear and
retreat deeper into their screens and
iPhones this is a funny cartoon but it
really speaks to this notion of the echo
chamber we hear about a lot this idea
that people are isolating themselves and
like
communities and we’ve seen again and
again that isolation actually does breed
kind of terrorism and violence and those
tendencies where connection can help us
overcome it in Boston after
Charlottesville we saw crowds of people
protests and a counter protest purposely
separated to keep violent skirmishes
from happening and that was wonderful
that nobody was hurt but it made me
nervous about our ability to have
constructive public discourse and if we
start separating people consistently how
do we ever find common ground again the
role of landscape so I’m suggesting
today that we can design not for threat
but instead for promise that we can
think about public spaces that actually
embrace a sense of connectivity and
community and bring us together around
collaboration and public discourse that
instead of designing for fortification
we should be designing for exchange
purposefully creating places where
people have to come together and
confront other I’ve been working in
Syracuse University where we’ve been
working on a open space framework for
that campus looking at how to renovate
and think about their open spaces as one
idea there was a street that was closed
for many years to cars and students used
it but it’s still very much read like a
street in the landscape and the idea was
to convert it actually into a public
space where people could gather now you
might look at this and think well that’s
a really pretty project kind of nice to
have a beautification project and not
see it necessarily as core to the
campuses educational mission which
members of that community did they said
why are we spending money on this this
is a place of education not a resort
right the project moved ahead and opened
last year just some images of this under
construction but what you see even days
after the project open is that people
were coming together in this landscape
people are connecting and new ways where
they were just passing through that
Street before now they’re coming
together and talking openly and sitting
together and really heartwarming to me
as a designer
within days of it opening this place
that was protested became a place of
protest they had this huge black lives
matter dye in and so I asked you is this
kind of conversation core to an
educational mission is confronting these
of issues in our society a
beautification project or is it really
central to the way do we think about our
society and culture I think we can
connect people instead of retreating
I’ve been working on a project called a
lawn on D in Boston it’s a really
interesting kind of social experiment
next to the Convention Center there we
thought let’s do a temporary landscape
and see what kinds of uses we can put
here that will bring people together
very inexpensively constructed of
asphalt and law and with a tents but
what we really invested time and energy
and was finding ways to create
furnishings and temporary art
installations that would provoke people
and provide comfortable spaces so that
people are kind of forced to interact
with each other in new ways and what
we’ve seen is a public discourse
happening in this public space we see
people in this case by a fire pit having
a long extended conversation that they
might not otherwise have we see people
collaborating in new ways in public
space here building snow forts in stem
and this was our Snowmageddon some
winter if you remember that we see
people coming here just to experience
joy and fun and probably bumping into
people that they might not normally
otherwise bump into and then lastly I
think that we can build for community
right we can purposely design to build
bring people together and to build
community I’ve been working for the past
decade on the Chicago River Walk and
similar to Syracuse this was a
underutilized gray space that nobody
spent time in that sort of sent a sad
message and over many years of work
we’ve converted this into a people space
again one a physical connection but
community connection bringing people
into contact with each other and also
the river and we purposely designed this
so that people had to experience each
other the seating enables people to sit
in different ways they can bump into
people they might not otherwise bump
into it’s just an extraordinary people
place where you might meet someone you
just couldn’t have imagined talking to
whether in groups or introverts kind of
having small conversation this is really
key to the way we think about how we
want to live in public and again public
spaces and and and when we see this on
the Riverwalk it attracts people of
every race of
every age of every generation and it
really is that common ground that things
people together it’s the sense of
connection to each other and to a sense
of place but I think release can serve
as kind of an antidote to isolation and
violence so I don’t know if I convinced
you today but I hope you walk away from
this understanding that public space is
more than beautification right
publication is core to the way we think
about democratic society it’s also a cry
really for us as a divided society to
build places that bring us joy and
meaning and connection and I think again
it’s about designing instead of thinking
about designing for the threat of what
could happen design for the promise of
healing and peace thank you
[Applause]
you
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