You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to create places that aren’t bad—and that should be the first and foremost goal for a city.
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Some misguided attempts to enhance the local park in Brainerd, MN, has actually made it a worse place to be.
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We live in cities starved for good public space. There are so few spots in North America where you can sit comfortably for free. And when we do try to create sittable public space, we often fail spectacularly.
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Houses of worship are in a perfect position to provide public seating for the community, but so many of them fail at it. Here are some tips for improving seating options at churches.
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This summer, Gracen Johnson documented the absurd incidence of benches and other seating arrangements built where no one would ever want to use them, then she created a solution.
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Last week, Sarah Goodyear from CityLab interviewed me about the project. Her first question was this: When you did your chairbombing, were you worried at all about the police confronting you? The landowner? My answer: In this case, not really. AND THEN! Here was the scene this week at the market...
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Last week, I pointed out some silly public space investments. This week, I'm working on some better ones. Here's a sneak preview of things to come.
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The idea of asking developers to contribute to public space is excellent (perhaps essential). By the looks of it, this has resulted in millions upon millions of dollars invested in places to sit or frolic. Too bad it keeps ending up in places where no one would actually want to linger... Imagine if we took all that wasted investment and directed it toward building more spaces that make people happy.
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