The Big Write Off

Cities are cauldrons of innovation and creativity, but misperceptions and bad press often relegate the most exciting movements to the shadows.  In week four of the Change the World Novena, we look at the role that architects can play in expressing the dynamic culture of a place to residents and regionalists alike.

It’s easy to be down on your rust-belt hometown.  Once-great cities of the Midwest have been brought to their knees by demographic shifts, the post-industrial economy and brain drain.  Or have they?  Jennifer Coleman, an architect, entrepreneur and lifelong resident of Cleveland, Ohio isn’t about to give up on her hometown just yet.  She has spent her career as a champion for revitalization, working at a grassroots and city leadership level to help Cleveland shine.

Cleveland has been working on urban redevelopment for a number of years, but many of the textbook solutions of the past decades such as sports and retail venues didn’t have a deep or lasting enough effect. Jennifer views the most positive change to happen in the last five years as the transition of the urban core.  “It went from being perceived as a business center to a place to live and a viable neighborhood,” she says.  “Twenty years ago really saw only one area, the Warehouse District as an example of a multi-use neighborhood, the rest of downtown was still business-based and experiencing tenant flight to the suburbs. The potential for a vibrant downtown was visible, but we did not really have a plan to bring it to fruition, other than continue seeking big projects like sports complexes and museums. While the Gateway project/stadiums built in the 1990’s brought more downtown, they did not produce a 24 hour city. Downtown instead became a place to visit for specific events and then go home.  We’re now focusing on livability issues in lieu of building big projects by looking at creating public spaces that enrich the life of downtown visitors, workers and residents.” 

There has also been a shift in urban design attention to the experience of place as a coherent and rich sequence of events with attention to traffic and circulation issues.  The intent is that the streets and open spaces such as Public Square and the Mall not be merely a place to pass through, but destinations that provide a focal point for surrounding development.  “When big projects that are currently being planned can plug into a larger urban infrastructure instead of relying on project based responses- this is a paradigm shift. Alternative transportation (pedestrian, bikes, public transit) and enjoying the trip is also being emphasized.”

Jennifer’s many years on City Boards and Commissions as well as her experience in private practice have given her perspective on redevelopment from both the design, development, and public policy point of view.  Some insights she shares with others who are interested in making a difference in revitalizing their cities:

Play to your strengths Every city has its unique characteristics and by expressing them, the culture of that place is also expressed, further enriching the experience of inhabiting it.  “Our physical and environmental potential and rich culture and history are unique to Cleveland.  Every city has its stories, but our stories are pretty cool. We tend to forget them.”  Jennifer’s City Prowl project is one way she is helping people to understand the history and culture that are part of the places they pass by every day.  “Our walkability and compactness and rich institutional stock are all within arm’s reach of the core.  Cleveland’s urban center includes the amenities of Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. Strong neighborhoods close to the urban core have been redeveloping at a faster pace than the core and their distinctive character is now trickling into the core.  In addition to its walkability, our core has good transit connections, as well as rich historical character.  The city does not need to acquire land to revitalize because we are acting on plans that are in some cases 200 years old.”  However, Jennifer also feels that redevelopment is challenged by another cultural characteristic, “The temptation to sell ourselves short- a collective inferiority complex that holds us back from making big plans- fear of failure.  It’s the entreprenurial spirit that made Cleveland great in its hey day and will make it great again.”   

Form strategic alliances One of the most most successful neighborhood/district/projects Jennifer points to took place at the Cleveland State Universty (CSU) campus on the east side of downtown. The decision of CSU to engage with the downtown fabric in lieu of remaining a self-contained campus as they underwent a major campus expansion has opened up what used to be perceived as a barrier between downtown and midtown.  “Their transformation has created a template for our other urban institutions. Case Western Reserve University, located just east of downtown at University Circle,  is now adopting this mind set for their expansion/renovation projects with other hospitals & schools looking at  updating and integrating their urban campuses.”

Seek and use the insights of the average citizen  “I’d love to see a civic urban core universal concern- a “department of visibility” to make citizens more aware.  It can be very difficult for the average citizen to be aware of what’s going on and the best way to participate in the process,” Jennifer notes.  “The county right now is doing a great job of being more transparent and encouraging interaction.”  On the subject of whether change necessarily needs to be championed from the grass roots, Jennifer felt that interventions can equally be successful from a ‘ground up’ or ‘trickle down’ start. “Cleveland’s biking community is a great example of a grass roots group that has organized and mobilized to making biking safer and accessible to all citizens, from working with City Hall on the Complete Streets ordinance as well as reaching out to the community on various projects and education initiatives. Our mayor has committed to the public square and mall projects and really made them happen.”  Jennifer also believes that cities and civic leaders need to work at channeling the input of interested citizens, “There is a large movement of young people into urban cores because living in the city is a quality of life issue that they believe in.  They bring with them a new concept of city living which includes involvement. Many of the 40+ group are passionate about creating a vibrant core, but weren’t organized and cultivated as leaders as the younger citizens are now. I think the young people's enthusiasm for the city is spreading to their more established, suburban-dwelling older peers."

Set yourself up for success When I asked Jennifer what she thought needed to happen to produce the most transformational change, she championed further development of public spaces, but with an interesting caveat, “We need to teach people how to interact with the city.  Clevelanders are not used to grand public spaces.  It’s important to make sure that we have adequate programming with them and that it is easy for people to book the space for events.  We also need to promote better wayfinding and ease of getting around the city with more easily accessible creature comforts.”

As Jennifer illustrates, architects can play a leadership role in development through their willingness to participate in civic organizations and serve as appointed members of boards and commissions.  They can also be vigilant stewards of cultural treasures and be advocates for preservation and restoration.  One of Jennifer’s favorite Cleveland stories is the saving of the grand theaters in Playhouse Square in the 1970s. “They were literally setting up the wrecking ball to raze them for a parking lot, but concerned citizens intervened. Our theater district is one of the city’s, and nation’s treasures and the saving of them and their subsequent restoration, which continues to the present, was a main catalyst to out downtown renaissance.”

Architect and entrepreneur Jennifer Coleman has over 24 years experience in the field of architecture. Her company, Jennifer Coleman Creative LLC, is dedicated to improving life in the city through smart design. She is also the founder and CEO of CityProwl, a company producing urban walking-tours that can be downloaded from the internet to digital media players for self-led tours. An avid civic volunteer, she serves on the boards of LAND Studio, the Cleveland International Film Festival, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Downtown Cleveland Alliance. She is Chair of both the Cleveland Landmarks Commission and Downtown/Flats District Design Review Committee and was appointed to the Mayor’s Group Plan Commission in 2010. Ms. Coleman holds a bachelor of architecture degree from Cornell University. She is a 2002 American Marshall Memorial Fellow and was featured in both the 1998 Crain’s Cleveland Business 40 under 40 class and Kaleidoscope Magazine’s 40/40 Club of 2002. She was Inside Business Magazine’s 2003 Business Volunteer of the Year. Jennifer lives with her husband, architect August Fluker and son, Cole, in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood.

NIMBY and the Unintended Consequence

Is it fear of change, or actual aversion that causes us to rally against new ideas? Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) is the bane of most planners as well as anyone who’s had to go through a public hearing process.  Concerned neighbors worry about the impact that a proposed project, change of use or zoning might have on their property and they speak up loud and clear at public hearings, becoming influencers of opinion and striking fear into the hearts of approval boards.  Rightly or wrongly, they bully their concerns into prohibitive restrictions or even outright banishment of a proposed change.  It’s easy to be judgy as architects and planners who understand (or think we do) that the pros outweigh the cons and know (or think we do) that all those feared unintended consequences are no more likely than a child’s fear of monsters under the bed.  We become almost pedantic in the face of these obstacles to change.

However, NIMBY is a double-edged sword.  It’s not only the narrow-minded, bigoted, or greedy who take issue.  Sometimes, those people in the trenches can run through scenarios we never envisioned that could in fact lead to disaster.  The designers and social workers behind Pruitt-Igoe thought that they were counteracting blight and providing a better social alternative to housing for the poor.  Their revolutionary design concept didn’t take long to implode, figuratively and then literally, when the project was demolished just 17 years after construction was completed. 

What’s good for the goose...
At it’s heart, NIMBY-ism is rooted in support for a concept in general, but an aversion to taking the risk of having this experiment played out as a specific where it could affect us.  How many times have you designed a project from on high, imposing what you believe is best on its users? How many times have you been part of a panel or commission who tried to mold policy around practices you deemed to be the right answer? Good intentions aren’t good enough when we are talking about things that influence real lives. We can only do that by really understanding the needs of our users, by seeing though their eyes and being willing to experience what we are asking them to live with.  The best projects do that - they are not so focused on playing to the lowest common denominator or influencing behavior that they stop being spaces that people want to inhabit.

The grand utopian vision is wearing blinders
I think that it is critical that we not feel pressure to have all the answers.  We are taught to be utopians, the examples of masters LeCorbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Baron Haussmann held up for their bold, irreverent approaches that got people to live in a modern (read appropriate) way. An arrogance is cultivated within us that just because we do our research and have conviction, we can improve the life of the average slob.  No wonder that average slob is so damn suspicious of our ideas, hatched behind their backs and forced down their throats like a good dose of castor oil.  No wonder they say “NO WAY is that happening in my neighborhood!”

The New Urbanists are on to something, whether you like them or not.  They started asking, “how do people really want to live in their cities and neighborhoods, and how can we facilitate that?”  There’s a reason that high modernism never took off and most housing developments are based on traditional references.  Oh yes, there’s an unintended consequence for the lack of design and vision, defensive planning and zoning statutes, and pandering to nostalgia that plagues most cities.  But those consequences were born out of the design and planning world’s inability to listen, understand and give vision to lives that people really want to lead.

Wellness: The Series

I'm very excited to announce that I am an author for Urban Times, an "optimistic, forward thinking online magazine," as they call it.  I call it a worldwide forum for very forward thinking articles and love that they share my interest in changing the world.  Today was published the first in what will be a monthly series I am writing for them on wellness in the built environment.  Please visit Urban Times and view the article.  Below is the full text to "Building Well-ness":

      Do you believe that the physical environment affects quality of life?  Many studies across various industries confirm that the way someone feels in a space can affect their performance. Consider research that indicates the following; the level of stress, and therefore pain, you experience in a hospital setting can be reduced through changes to your physical surroundings alone; your productivity and likeliness to make mistakes or injure yourself can be a direct result of the lighting quality and acoustics of your workspace; behavioral issues such as anger (which leads to bullying and abuse) or ADHD can be modulated by environment. I am an architect, but I don’t think that you have to be a design professional to take a proactive approach to shaping the built environment. This is my first article in a series on wellness and the built environment that will share strategies to help you see your world a little differently and be a catalyst for positive environmental change.

Many of us accept the world around us as a given.  While we may be able to cite spaces or places that we do or don’t like, we can seldom pinpoint just why we feel that way.  This makes us reactionary citizens and putty in the hands of developers who define our design values for us, then construct projects that evoke those images.  Couple this with well-intentioned zoning codes that are all about prescribing what can’t be done, and you basically ensure a new building has little or no distinctive character and lots of walls to shield its activity from its surroundings.  We are all guilty of not caring about what gets built until somebody proposes building something (or tearing something down) that offends us.  Then we organize en masse writing letters, making phone calls and storming public meetings demanding to be heard.  What if we looked at our spaces and places through a different lens?  What if we viewed all design as an investment in our community and in our own well-being?

All design needs to consider three elements: client needs (schedule, financial and functional), user requirements, and wellness.  Sustainability is just the tip of the wellness iceberg. Wellness is a multi-dimensional attribute that encompasses our physical, mental and social state of being.  It affects what it feels like to inhabit a room, a building, a neighborhood. Forgetting all of the edicts and manifestos out there on design, which are neither accessible or particularly meaningful to most people, I propose the following criteria to test whether an environment supports well being:

Is it Restorative?

Restorative design helps us to replenish ourselves.  Does a space encourage its inhabitants to make life enhancing choices, like walking or climbing stairs, or spending time in natural environments? Be an advocate for walking paths, gardens, appropriate lighting and acoustics.  Author and expert on the link between design, humans and nature  Stephen Kellert identified some specific ingredients essential to a restorative space:

1. Prospect- a vista or view
2. Refuge- the safe place from which to take in the view
3. Water-actual water or design elements that provide glimmer, movement or symbolic images representing water
4. Biodiversity- a rich palette of natural materials supplied through both interactive spaces (gardens, planters) and views.
5. Sensory Variability- response to the changing times of day and seasons
6. Biomimicry-natural materials, natural forms and structures
7. Sense of playfulness-things that delight, surprise and amuse
8. Enticement-complexity that encourages exploration

Is it Supportive?

Supportive design addresses the way the people that use a space need to operate.  Supportive environments do not provide barriers to completing tasks or activities.  How many times have you observed users engaged in work-arounds for design elements?  A good design understands multiple points of view and is meaningful for everyone from a child to teenagers and senior citizens. By thinking about what different demographic groups need from a space, and providing it the space, can actually make people better, in terms of their performance, health and state of mind.

Is it Enriching?

Environments that inspire us in some way leave a lasting impression. Yet, we so often settle for the mediocre.  Did you ever walk into a space and feel sorry for the people who had to live or work in it?  Did you ever enter an office building and get a headache from the bad lighting and dreary environment? Did a space ever make you feel uneasy or unsafe?  These visceral reactions are real responses to design or lack of it in a space. Just as design is the cause, it can be the antidote. We all have to start demanding better, from our city planners, developers, building owners, and ourselves. Whether through your donations, tax dollars, patronage or consumer activity, you fund the environment around you and you deserve to inhabit spaces that truly enrich your life.

Whether you are reviewing your own surroundings, working as part of a user team on an upcoming project, or proactively approaching your city with a plan for improvement or court a developer, I hope you will consider wellness as part of the way that you evaluate the space.  While certainly there are meta scale impacts on our wellness caused by global issues such as pollution, or chemical ingredients, an even greater impact on our well-being happens a lot closer to home, in our homes, and offices, and schools, neighborhoods, streets and public places.

How is your environment shaping you?