[Applause]
so I’ve worked in a lot of cities mostly
throughout South Florida but of course
grew up here and I’m glad to be back and
the one thing that I have found that is
resonates with all of the cities that
are successful are the people and it’s
the people that make our cities active
it’s the people that actually we enjoy
when we go to a city imagine visiting a
city where there might be some really
beautiful architecture but you don’t see
one person on the street those are the
kinds of things that that make our
communities authentic and those are the
things that we have to make sure that
we’re paying attention to to create the
opportunity for that shared public life
within our communities
think about place branding when you
think about place branding you think
about some of the best marketing
marketing campaigns that are out there
you think about places that talk about
the people the activity in New York the
city that never sleeps when you think
about that don’t you kind of just
envision the people walking up and down
the street think about what they’re
wearing where they’re walking are they
in Times Square
you know that really conjures up that
image of a beautiful successful City I
have always thought about cities as as
human beings as individuals I actually
had a consulting firm for a while it was
called holistic planning group I would
meet people I would hand them my card
they would ask me if I was a
chiropractor I’d explained no of course
not
you know we work in communities we work
in cities but but a community is not
just a one piece or part it’s a part of
many it’s a part of its people
it’s how we designed for the people and
how we actually make sure that they’re
healthy if a city is broken if the
infrastructure is broken if the
sidewalks are broken if there’s flooding
that’s a sick City if we don’t have
stores that are open on the street
that’s a sick city – and what does that
do it keeps the people away our people
are our lifeblood
and we need to look at cities and treat
them as such and we need to be maybe
like the downtown doctors and that’s
always kind of what I’ve imagined myself
we have to diagnose the problem we have
to observe and we have to communicate
with the people and then we have to come
up with a plan of action so urban
planning has come a long way since the
50s and 60s and the suburbanization of
our downtown’s certainly we’re kind of
getting back into that mindset of people
in places we talk about walkability we
talk about sustainability we talk about
urban design in terms of being able to
really you know enjoy the public life
the one problem that I have is that it’s
almost become canned and in a lot of
communities it’s actually kind of
generically applied and you can see that
not just in downtown’s but even in new
developments you see the rebirth of the
lifestyle center out in the suburbs
where we’re trying to recreate that
downtown feeling and while there is you
know activity and there’s the shopping
and there’s the restaurants and there
are all those things that are there
what’s lacking is the authenticity of
the people it’s an attraction and then
they go away what we’re not doing is
we’re not engaging the people in the
design of those places to really make
sure that they’re authentic attractive
and reflect the community and the
success that we want to show so this is
an example of what’s called a public
life survey or sometimes a behavioral
map I actually had to do one of these
when I was in college and it’s what
really intrigued me about the idea about
places for people the class I took was
called the sociology of architecture and
we didn’t do anything other than go and
sit on a corner and observe what people
did on that corner and then make our
observations on what could we do at that
corner to make that environment better
for the people that had to be there
whether it be just putting a trash can
out there or potentially a bench or like
in this instance observing whether
people were standing in a particular
location and kind of gathering to speak
or watching people there’s been a lot of
study on this and one of the number one
things that people like to do in any
public place is just watch other people
so we just have to give people the
opportunity to watch other people and
and to be able to share experiences with
without having to be in some but
place so we can collectively share an
experience while we’re having our own
personal experience in that public place
the other thing that we need to do is
talk to people we have to really
communicate with with the people that
are going to be using these places and I
don’t mean just have a public meeting
and check the box that’s what a lot of
the you know consultants will say well
we had a public meeting well we did this
and we did that
that’s not communication that’s a
one-sided communication maybe you got a
couple of ideas but I can tell you
having done a lot of public place
projects in my life
oftentimes the consultants that will go
in and and do those meetings won’t even
necessarily take your feedback when they
go back to design it because they’re
thinking about their canned ideas of
what it is we’ll put a bench here we’ll
put a we’ll put a trashcan here I don’t
know if any of you have ever been driven
down the street or maybe there’s been a
recent streetscape project and you see a
street bench and it’s up against the
curb looking at the street who wants to
look at the street we want to look at
each other we want to spend that time
experiencing each other
and it’s also a proven fact people would
rather again look at people than look at
flowers so put the benches in the places
where the activity are but have the
conversation – it’s not just one-sided
take that opportunity take those ideas
bring them back to the people spend a
little time in the place and just talk
to people as they’re as they’re out
there doing things one of the things
that I’ve always done whenever I’ve
engaged in a streetscape project or a
public plaza or anything like that the
first people that I engage interestingly
enough are the City Public Works
employees that take care of the place
they’re the experts on the place they’re
there every day they know where people
are leaving their cigarette butts and
there’s no cigarette in there they know
where the trash cans need to be and they
know where people are wanting to gather
I think we heard another speaker talking
earlier about the goat trails in the
parks and you probably see them all the
time that’s the observation of how the
people are using the space because
they’re if they’re going to use the
space they’re going to use it the way
that they want
– and they’re gonna figure out how to
use that and we want people to take
ownership of those spaces so we have to
design them in that way we can test our
ideas we don’t have to go out there and
just do it there’s been a big movement
in terms of what’s called tactical
urbanism and it’s about just doing small
displays or small installations places
just to test an idea I wonder if people
would use this space if we actually
created a space for them to use maybe we
can build a parklet in a parking space
this is actually a really good example
of the city of Toledo being one of the
innovators in tactical urbanism back in
the late 50s or early 60s where they
built pedestrian malls and people came
and people used them and they had sand
boxes for children to play in and parks
and they had an organist and and it was
an active place and it wasn’t permanent
and as a matter of fact people from
across the country and other cities
wanted to emulate what we had here so it
doesn’t have to be permanent but we can
try it and we can test it
there’s actually been some studies done
that if you take a curb lane away or a
parking space and you put public seating
in there you’re gonna increase
pedestrian activity along that street by
75% and you’re gonna actually increase
the sales of the businesses adjacent to
that location by 15% so why wouldn’t we
want to do this there’s other urban
benefits there’s been a lot of study
done on the you know the the health
benefits of urbanizing places of
providing the walkability of doing the
public places that people enjoy we need
to start thinking more about those
opportunities there’s been significant
study done that violent crime is reduced
as well as property crimes are reduced
within walkable neighborhoods as we move
into our future we’re going to have
increased urbanization throughout the
world currently 55 percent of our
population actually lives in urban areas
by 2050 we’re gonna be looking at 75% so
we need to be thinking about these
places now because we’re gonna end up
housing people vertically and the public
space is going to become even that much
more important these are gonna be our
front doors these are gonna be our
living rooms I’ll give you an example of
where people sometimes sometimes people
don’t believe it they say you know our
community we’re so used to our cars we
like to have that right there we’re not
gonna really walk around and maybe we’re
not going to use that public space
because we’re just gonna zoom in and
zoom out well in Copenhagen back in the
late 60s an architect named Jan Gehl
who’s is actually a very well known
urban designer was tasked with building
public plazas and public Piazza similar
to Italy’s public piazzas in Copenhagen
and everybody said I’m not going to work
nobody’s gonna use it it’s cold here you
know why are you doing that he went to
Italy and he really studied those plazas
and he studied the activities that
occurred there so that he could really
understand why they were so important to
that particular culture and how he could
adapt them to his culture in Copenhagen
so he has built multiple public plazas
and piazzas throughout designed them
throughout Copenhagen and what he has
found by studying the activity and he
actually was a student of his own work
he diligently went out and studied those
piazzas and plazas after they were done
to see how they were used and the public
spaces exponentially increased with
activity and people even though
Copenhagen didn’t grow so just by simply
providing those public spaces to the
people that were there in that community
they were able to use them and adapt to
them there’s other benefits certainly we
know now a lot of companies are very
interested in urban activity motorola is
moving their headquarters out of
Schaumburg where they’ve been for 50
years into downtown specifically they
cite the fact that they need to attract
talent but more importantly cities are
known for the innovation and what you’re
finding right now is as there’s an
influx of venture capital into small and
growing businesses
that influx is going into our downtown’s
that’s where the majority that venture
capital is being spent other other other
disciplines are also standing up and
taking notice the health industry is
increasingly more interested in the
effects on the environment in terms of
health mental health there’s a lot of
study that’s been done and it’s also
been proven that people that live in
walkable and active communities have
lower rates of depression lately we’ve
been talking a lot about happiness and
again this is another field that’s
growing there’s there’s been recent
research into what’s called happiness
economics and it tries to gauge what
level of economic health do people
really start to become more happy and
happiness economics what it found is
that there is a growth in your happiness
level up until the point that you make
around an average income of $75,000
after that it’s all about the quality of
your life its quality of life it’s your
ability to socialize with other people
it’s your ability to have a work-life
balance interestingly enough they also
found that the longer a commute the
lower your happiness level really is
there’s some other things about teeth
health apparently community set people
have very healthy teeth tend to be
happier communities but more recently
Boulder Colorado was actually ranked as
the number one happiest place in the
United States and one one of the factors
that they they stressed was the fact
that people in Boulder are 17 times more
likely to walk in bike than in any other
place in the United States well part of
that is because they actually have that
infrastructure there and they’re able to
do that so so we shouldn’t limit
ourselves and we when we’re thinking
about these things and say why would we
do that nobody’s going to use it instead
we need to provide these spaces for
these opportunities we can’t as a
community get together if we don’t have
places where we can get together and
share experiences
we have communities from we have ethnic
communities we have agent communities we
have young people we need to design for
the mall we can’t even get over our own
differences if we can’t find places that
we can actually share common ground and
so if we’re not designing these places
for that then then we can’t we can’t get
over those stumbling blocks but more
importantly us the people of this
community we’re unique and we’re
different and we’re what create the
authenticity of our community nothing is
the same from place to place and so we
have to be able to celebrate that and
show that to other people so we can
attract them to us so I’d like to just
leave you with Jane Jacobs she was a
great thinker a wonderful advocate many
of you may have read her book she I
don’t want to say single-handedly but
she mobilized people in New York City to
actually save Greenwich Village from a
future expressway she wasn’t an urban
planner she wasn’t an engineer she was a
writer she was an organizer and she was
an observer an active participant in
street life and what she said is that
you know there’s this ballet on the
street that is unique to every place and
it’s never repetitive and it’s something
that I think we all need to strive for
we all need to take our place and
ensuring that we have that opportunity
great cities attract talent but it’s
talented people that actually take part
in creating those places that stay thank you
so I’ve worked in a lot of cities mostly
throughout South Florida but of course
grew up here and I’m glad to be back and
the one thing that I have found that is
resonates with all of the cities that
are successful are the people and it’s
the people that make our cities active
it’s the people that actually we enjoy
when we go to a city imagine visiting a
city where there might be some really
beautiful architecture but you don’t see
one person on the street those are the
kinds of things that that make our
communities authentic and those are the
things that we have to make sure that
we’re paying attention to to create the
opportunity for that shared public life
within our communities
think about place branding when you
think about place branding you think
about some of the best marketing
marketing campaigns that are out there
you think about places that talk about
the people the activity in New York the
city that never sleeps when you think
about that don’t you kind of just
envision the people walking up and down
the street think about what they’re
wearing where they’re walking are they
in Times Square
you know that really conjures up that
image of a beautiful successful City I
have always thought about cities as as
human beings as individuals I actually
had a consulting firm for a while it was
called holistic planning group I would
meet people I would hand them my card
they would ask me if I was a
chiropractor I’d explained no of course
not
you know we work in communities we work
in cities but but a community is not
just a one piece or part it’s a part of
many it’s a part of its people
it’s how we designed for the people and
how we actually make sure that they’re
healthy if a city is broken if the
infrastructure is broken if the
sidewalks are broken if there’s flooding
that’s a sick City if we don’t have
stores that are open on the street
that’s a sick city – and what does that
do it keeps the people away our people
are our lifeblood
and we need to look at cities and treat
them as such and we need to be maybe
like the downtown doctors and that’s
always kind of what I’ve imagined myself
we have to diagnose the problem we have
to observe and we have to communicate
with the people and then we have to come
up with a plan of action so urban
planning has come a long way since the
50s and 60s and the suburbanization of
our downtown’s certainly we’re kind of
getting back into that mindset of people
in places we talk about walkability we
talk about sustainability we talk about
urban design in terms of being able to
really you know enjoy the public life
the one problem that I have is that it’s
almost become canned and in a lot of
communities it’s actually kind of
generically applied and you can see that
not just in downtown’s but even in new
developments you see the rebirth of the
lifestyle center out in the suburbs
where we’re trying to recreate that
downtown feeling and while there is you
know activity and there’s the shopping
and there’s the restaurants and there
are all those things that are there
what’s lacking is the authenticity of
the people it’s an attraction and then
they go away what we’re not doing is
we’re not engaging the people in the
design of those places to really make
sure that they’re authentic attractive
and reflect the community and the
success that we want to show so this is
an example of what’s called a public
life survey or sometimes a behavioral
map I actually had to do one of these
when I was in college and it’s what
really intrigued me about the idea about
places for people the class I took was
called the sociology of architecture and
we didn’t do anything other than go and
sit on a corner and observe what people
did on that corner and then make our
observations on what could we do at that
corner to make that environment better
for the people that had to be there
whether it be just putting a trash can
out there or potentially a bench or like
in this instance observing whether
people were standing in a particular
location and kind of gathering to speak
or watching people there’s been a lot of
study on this and one of the number one
things that people like to do in any
public place is just watch other people
so we just have to give people the
opportunity to watch other people and
and to be able to share experiences with
without having to be in some but
place so we can collectively share an
experience while we’re having our own
personal experience in that public place
the other thing that we need to do is
talk to people we have to really
communicate with with the people that
are going to be using these places and I
don’t mean just have a public meeting
and check the box that’s what a lot of
the you know consultants will say well
we had a public meeting well we did this
and we did that
that’s not communication that’s a
one-sided communication maybe you got a
couple of ideas but I can tell you
having done a lot of public place
projects in my life
oftentimes the consultants that will go
in and and do those meetings won’t even
necessarily take your feedback when they
go back to design it because they’re
thinking about their canned ideas of
what it is we’ll put a bench here we’ll
put a we’ll put a trashcan here I don’t
know if any of you have ever been driven
down the street or maybe there’s been a
recent streetscape project and you see a
street bench and it’s up against the
curb looking at the street who wants to
look at the street we want to look at
each other we want to spend that time
experiencing each other
and it’s also a proven fact people would
rather again look at people than look at
flowers so put the benches in the places
where the activity are but have the
conversation – it’s not just one-sided
take that opportunity take those ideas
bring them back to the people spend a
little time in the place and just talk
to people as they’re as they’re out
there doing things one of the things
that I’ve always done whenever I’ve
engaged in a streetscape project or a
public plaza or anything like that the
first people that I engage interestingly
enough are the City Public Works
employees that take care of the place
they’re the experts on the place they’re
there every day they know where people
are leaving their cigarette butts and
there’s no cigarette in there they know
where the trash cans need to be and they
know where people are wanting to gather
I think we heard another speaker talking
earlier about the goat trails in the
parks and you probably see them all the
time that’s the observation of how the
people are using the space because
they’re if they’re going to use the
space they’re going to use it the way
that they want
– and they’re gonna figure out how to
use that and we want people to take
ownership of those spaces so we have to
design them in that way we can test our
ideas we don’t have to go out there and
just do it there’s been a big movement
in terms of what’s called tactical
urbanism and it’s about just doing small
displays or small installations places
just to test an idea I wonder if people
would use this space if we actually
created a space for them to use maybe we
can build a parklet in a parking space
this is actually a really good example
of the city of Toledo being one of the
innovators in tactical urbanism back in
the late 50s or early 60s where they
built pedestrian malls and people came
and people used them and they had sand
boxes for children to play in and parks
and they had an organist and and it was
an active place and it wasn’t permanent
and as a matter of fact people from
across the country and other cities
wanted to emulate what we had here so it
doesn’t have to be permanent but we can
try it and we can test it
there’s actually been some studies done
that if you take a curb lane away or a
parking space and you put public seating
in there you’re gonna increase
pedestrian activity along that street by
75% and you’re gonna actually increase
the sales of the businesses adjacent to
that location by 15% so why wouldn’t we
want to do this there’s other urban
benefits there’s been a lot of study
done on the you know the the health
benefits of urbanizing places of
providing the walkability of doing the
public places that people enjoy we need
to start thinking more about those
opportunities there’s been significant
study done that violent crime is reduced
as well as property crimes are reduced
within walkable neighborhoods as we move
into our future we’re going to have
increased urbanization throughout the
world currently 55 percent of our
population actually lives in urban areas
by 2050 we’re gonna be looking at 75% so
we need to be thinking about these
places now because we’re gonna end up
housing people vertically and the public
space is going to become even that much
more important these are gonna be our
front doors these are gonna be our
living rooms I’ll give you an example of
where people sometimes sometimes people
don’t believe it they say you know our
community we’re so used to our cars we
like to have that right there we’re not
gonna really walk around and maybe we’re
not going to use that public space
because we’re just gonna zoom in and
zoom out well in Copenhagen back in the
late 60s an architect named Jan Gehl
who’s is actually a very well known
urban designer was tasked with building
public plazas and public Piazza similar
to Italy’s public piazzas in Copenhagen
and everybody said I’m not going to work
nobody’s gonna use it it’s cold here you
know why are you doing that he went to
Italy and he really studied those plazas
and he studied the activities that
occurred there so that he could really
understand why they were so important to
that particular culture and how he could
adapt them to his culture in Copenhagen
so he has built multiple public plazas
and piazzas throughout designed them
throughout Copenhagen and what he has
found by studying the activity and he
actually was a student of his own work
he diligently went out and studied those
piazzas and plazas after they were done
to see how they were used and the public
spaces exponentially increased with
activity and people even though
Copenhagen didn’t grow so just by simply
providing those public spaces to the
people that were there in that community
they were able to use them and adapt to
them there’s other benefits certainly we
know now a lot of companies are very
interested in urban activity motorola is
moving their headquarters out of
Schaumburg where they’ve been for 50
years into downtown specifically they
cite the fact that they need to attract
talent but more importantly cities are
known for the innovation and what you’re
finding right now is as there’s an
influx of venture capital into small and
growing businesses
that influx is going into our downtown’s
that’s where the majority that venture
capital is being spent other other other
disciplines are also standing up and
taking notice the health industry is
increasingly more interested in the
effects on the environment in terms of
health mental health there’s a lot of
study that’s been done and it’s also
been proven that people that live in
walkable and active communities have
lower rates of depression lately we’ve
been talking a lot about happiness and
again this is another field that’s
growing there’s there’s been recent
research into what’s called happiness
economics and it tries to gauge what
level of economic health do people
really start to become more happy and
happiness economics what it found is
that there is a growth in your happiness
level up until the point that you make
around an average income of $75,000
after that it’s all about the quality of
your life its quality of life it’s your
ability to socialize with other people
it’s your ability to have a work-life
balance interestingly enough they also
found that the longer a commute the
lower your happiness level really is
there’s some other things about teeth
health apparently community set people
have very healthy teeth tend to be
happier communities but more recently
Boulder Colorado was actually ranked as
the number one happiest place in the
United States and one one of the factors
that they they stressed was the fact
that people in Boulder are 17 times more
likely to walk in bike than in any other
place in the United States well part of
that is because they actually have that
infrastructure there and they’re able to
do that so so we shouldn’t limit
ourselves and we when we’re thinking
about these things and say why would we
do that nobody’s going to use it instead
we need to provide these spaces for
these opportunities we can’t as a
community get together if we don’t have
places where we can get together and
share experiences
we have communities from we have ethnic
communities we have agent communities we
have young people we need to design for
the mall we can’t even get over our own
differences if we can’t find places that
we can actually share common ground and
so if we’re not designing these places
for that then then we can’t we can’t get
over those stumbling blocks but more
importantly us the people of this
community we’re unique and we’re
different and we’re what create the
authenticity of our community nothing is
the same from place to place and so we
have to be able to celebrate that and
show that to other people so we can
attract them to us so I’d like to just
leave you with Jane Jacobs she was a
great thinker a wonderful advocate many
of you may have read her book she I
don’t want to say single-handedly but
she mobilized people in New York City to
actually save Greenwich Village from a
future expressway she wasn’t an urban
planner she wasn’t an engineer she was a
writer she was an organizer and she was
an observer an active participant in
street life and what she said is that
you know there’s this ballet on the
street that is unique to every place and
it’s never repetitive and it’s something
that I think we all need to strive for
we all need to take our place and
ensuring that we have that opportunity
great cities attract talent but it’s
talented people that actually take part
in creating those places that stay thank you
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