Placemaking initiative is a departure for Southwest
Travis Park, San Antonio. Courtesy of the Project for Public Spaces
Note: This article appears in the current print issue of Better Cities & Towns.
Cities enjoy this advantage over automobile-centric suburbs: When the “public realm” is geared to people, not cars, placemaking is possible. Yet city governments are not very good at managing public spaces to maximize their advantages, according to Ethan Kent, senior vice president of the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) in Manhattan.
PPS is working with Southwest Airlines on a multiyear partnership to fund public space visioning, improvements, programming, and management in cities that Southwest serves. Three pilot projects over the last year were initiated in Detroit, San Antonio, and Providence.
At first glance, PPS and Southwest seem like an odd couple. PPS, a nonprofit with nearly 40 years of experience in a total of 3,000 communities, has never before had a corporate partnership. Few would have predicted the first such sponsorship would be an airline — airlines are not known to support placemaking or urbanism. Airlines fly globally and are based on airports — often the most “placeless” districts in any region.
But Southwest is not a conventional airline. The company was looking for a cause related to sustainability, that the company believed was about to go mainstream. Placemaking seemed to fit. They called the project Heart of the Community.
“They connect destinations,” Kent explains. “Also, it fits with their corporate culture. They are about individual expression, eccentricity, and connection. We like to bring those qualities out in public spaces as well. They democratized air travel. We are trying to democratize public spaces and the process of placemaking.”
Southwest’s origin story relates to Travis Square, a downtown public space in San Antonio. At a hotel on the square, co-founders Herb Kelleher and Rollin King reportedly sketched the idea of Southwest Airlines on a cocktail napkin. Travis Square is one of the three initial public spaces that PPS and Southwest worked to improve.
The 2.6 acre park occupies a key location between the Alamo and the city’s famous Riverwalk. The park has tremendous history, but it had fallen on hard times. Based on feedback received during a series of public workshops, new physical amenities were added including games, umbrellas, and movable tables and chairs. New programs were organized such as fitness classes, historic tours, live music, free movies and game tournaments.
Campus Martius
After a fire in 1805, a new plan for Detroit was centered on a public space called the Campus Martius. This remained the city’s most important public space for a hundred years, until it was commandeered for cars by 20th Century road widenings.
By the early 2000s, when the city’s population was dropping like a rock, Detroit had little but excess pavement. PPS worked with the city, foundations, and citizens to reclaim the space 10 years ago. Since that time, more than a billion dollars has been invested in the area. Compuware and Quicken Loans have moved their headquarters to the square. “The rest of Detroit is still a big challenge, but downtown has a lot of momentum. We needed to build on that momentum,” Kent says.
Campus Martius beach. Courtesy of the Project for Public Spaces
The plan involved activating the space using what PPS calls a “lighter, cheaper, quicker” approach. A seasonal beach was installed by Southwest in response to public input.
“That idea was inspired by what is going on in Paris,” Kent says. “They close the highway along the Seine and bring out the beach chairs for a month in the summer for those who can’t afford the Riviera. In Detroit, it is a similar idea — the people who can’t afford to go to the lakes of northern Michigan now have a beach right there in the center of Detroit.”
Detroit doesn’t have money, and this can be an advantage, he says.
“This allowed for a grassroots culture, and a culture of resourcefulness. Some of the best public spaces in the world are created in spite of funding, with lower cost amenities and programming. It’s amazing what people in Detroit have helped make happen.”
Activating a space with children
In Providence, the major public park, Kennedy Plaza, had likewise hit hard times. Near the bus depot, the plaza was known for loitering and drug dealing, Kent says.
“Our approach is not always to push it out, but to bring in other, positive activities, and not let any one use dominate,” Kent says. “So the idea was to bring children downtown and showcase them.” Southwest funded something called an “Imagination Center.” This is essentially a kiosk to store play equipment, games, books, beanbag chairs, and other fun apparatus that is brought out when the weather is nice. Programming such as readings, sing-alongs, and performances activate the center, and the children are given popsicles in the summer.
Kennedy Plaza in Providence. Courtesy of the Project for Public Spaces
“Our job is to bring together the different sectors and build the management capacity for public spaces,” Kent explains. The initial three projects were all major public spaces downtown, but Southwest and PPS will branch out to other settings. “We’re looking at projects in lower income neighborhoods that are lacking in activity and places to gather,” Kent says.
Ultimately, the goal is to explore ways to help cities become better at managing the public realm.
“Currently the management of the public realm in cities is very ‘siloed’ with public works departments, parks departments — the planning department doesn’t have much to do with placemaking,” he says. “We see a recentering of city governments around public space management.”
PPS and Southwest are working on where to bring Heart of the Community next. That decision has not been announced, but it will be in one or more of the 90 cities served by Southwest.
Robert Steuteville is executive director of Better! Cities & Towns.
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