Public Places as Meeting Spaces
Artwork: designslinger]
Watching the thousands of people massing in Grant Park Tuesday night got me thinking
about public meeting places. And I asked myself, why don't we have any great public squares in this country? Think Red Square in Moscow or Tiananmen Square in Beijing, spaces carved out of city centers expressly for public gatherings. Grant Park is big enough to hold a million people - but it is a park, not a specifically planned and plotted paved area in which large groups of people can congregate. Times Square is a place where people can come together, but it isn't a dedicated open area geared to pedestrian use, it is primarily the crossroads of two major thoroughfares; Broadway and 7th Avenue. People are trapped on tiny islands of safety amidst a sea of automobile traffic. Sure, half-a-million people may crowd into that stretch of asphalt each New Years Eve, but only because cars are banned from the street on that particular night.
via flickr; The Square and the National Gallery, Marcio Cabral de Moura via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
The type of public spaces I'm referring to seem to exist primarily outside the United States.
Trafalgar Square in London is one example of a dynamic public space given over to the people for use as a respite from the hustle and bustle of the city, or as a place for the masses to congregate for a special event. The Square was part of the Royal Mews for 300 years before John Nash laid out a plan in 1812 for the area to be developed as an open space for the public. Part and parcel of Nash's improvement plan for London, he saw the potential for the open area to serve as a cultural meeting place for the city. In 1832 construction started on the National Gallery and in 1838 a cohesive plan was presented for the development of the area surrounding the square. By 1843 Nelson's Column was standing prominently in the center, and fountains, grand staircases and more statuary were eventually added to the landscape. In a substantial reworking of Trafalgar completed in 2003, the street that fronted the National Gallery was completely closed and the streets bordering the Square were reduced in size in an effort to provide even more pedestrian space. The architectural streetscape which provides the visual enclosure of the area includes some of London's great buildings. In addition to the National Gallery there is the 1726 St. Martin-in-the-Fields church building, and a great view of Parliament's Big Ben clock tower down Whitehall.
radiowood2000 via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
The most romantic square of all, is St. Marks in Venice. It is the quintessential public
gathering place. Not a car in sight, with stunning architecture defining the perimeter, this is the definition of a city square. Piazza San Marco exists because of St. Mark's Basilica. What started out as an intimate gathering place at the front of the 9th century church, grew into the square we see today in 1177, which is surrounded by buildings that have housed various governmental institutions over the centuries. The Campanile is the tall bell tower in front of the Basilica and the area where the main part of the square makes a turn to the "little square," or Piazzetta - the gateway to the Grand Canal. The piazza has a remarkably intricate pattern design laid out in the paving blocks which were installed in the 18th century. Then there are the pigeons. As famous as the arches of the colonnade, the bird's have been an integral part of the lure and lore of the piazza. Whether you found them charming or disgusting, they may soon be completely gone from the square. A municipal ordinance went into effect May 1st banning the feeding of the birds and prohibits vendors from selling bird seed. With 20 million tourists flooding the city each year the sheer volume of seed, and the amount of waste created, was overwhelming and damaging to the historic buildings. Like a plague of locusts, the growth in the pigeon population meant a substantial rise in the production of pigeon droppings which poses a hazard not only to the architecture, but human health. There may be no more seed, so people are simply using crushed potato chips to lure the birds back into the area. The police are gently discouraging feeding of any kind.
Many U.S. cities based their urban planning on European traditions, but for some reason
the notion of a central public square didn't catch on. Which wasn't a bad thing, we have some wonderful city parks, but it would have been nice to have a version of Trafalgar Square tucked into one of this country's great cities. Instead we have a movie set replica of St. Marks in a Las Vegas hotel. Oh well.
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