Internationally renowned expert in Placemaking speaks at MPC’s Placemaking Workshops.
This article was written by Meg
MacIver, a University of Chicago undergraduate and freelance writer for MPC.
“How can we do more
with less?”
It’s a question we would all do well to
ask in this uncertain economy – and one that stands at the center of Gil
Penalosa’s acclaimed approach to making active public spaces in cities around
the world.
An internationally
recognized expert in Placemaking, Guillermo “Gil” Penalosa came toChicago this October for the
Placemaking
Workshops hosted by MPC and Project for Public Spaces. The workshops were
part of MPC and PPS's efforts to launch a citywide campaign to create more great
public spaces in Chicago by using Placemaking
techniques.
Penalosa came to share his Placemaking
expertise and describe his experiences in building active public spaces. As the former commissioner of parks and
recreation in Bogotà, Columbia, he opened nearly 60 miles of car-free
city roads every Sunday for Ciclovia, a weekly festival that draws almost 1.5
million people to run, skate, walk, and bike the city streets.
“When I was commissioner in Bogotà,”
Penalosa said, “I asked the mayor; ‘How else are you going to get 1,500,000
people out and active in our city?
Are you going to have them all play soccer? With 22 players per field you are going
to have to build a lot of stadiums!’”
Activities like Ciclovia use city roads
and parking lots that otherwise would be quiet and empty. They do not require money and resources
to build costly new structures. Penalosa encourages cities like Chicago to think
about how to bring existing spaces to life using program and activities; in
other words, to think about how to do more with less.
Chicago already has begun to put some of these
changes in action, and is introducing creative new ways to bring its streets and
places to life. The Active
Transportation Alliance started “Sunday Parkways,” which closes off a continuous
north-south stretch of various city streets from Fullerton to 24th Street through
Garfield Park, North Lawndale
and Little Village to automobile traffic on selected dates from 9:00 a.m. to
1:00 p.m. Like Ciclovia, which
started with just eight miles, activity stations along the way provide
participants with opportunities to dance, play and exercise throughout the
morning.
Gil said activities like Ciclovia and
Sunday Parkways improve life in a city in many different ways. He uses the acronym E.A.R.T.H. to
outline their benefits:
Environment
Activity/Economic
Recreation
Transportation
Health
By providing easy ways for residents to
incorporate movement and exercise into their routines, activities such as
Ciclovia and Sunday Parkways also have an enormous potential to improve public
health, according to Penalosa.
“In many states, more than one in three
people are obese,” explained Penalosa, “not just overweight, but obese.” Healthier lifestyle choices can help
combat obesity and related illnesses such as heart disease, which not only
threaten quality of life, but life itself. For activities such as walking and
cycling to have the greatest health benefits, they “must be a normal part of
everyday life,” said Penalosa. “To think of them in terms of recreation does not
work because with recreation there are always excuses: ‘I’m too tired, I’ll do
it tomorrow, I don’t have time.’
But if it’s normal, activity is simply part of life.”
“There is no [quality] health system in
the world that’s only curative. It
has to be preventative.”
Placemaking initiatives that encourage activity and movement in a city’s
public space can become an integral part of a larger health care
system.
To accomplish this, cities “must have a
sense of urgency,” said Penalosa, and start now by putting small Placemaking
measures in place to improve spaces in every neighborhood and encourage frequent
physical activity. “As a community,
you cannot say that a playground is part of your 10-year plan for your
children,” Penalosa explained. “In 10 years, that kid is going to need a skate
park. You can’t wait!”
Though Penalosa is one of Placemaking’s
greatest champions, he acknowledged, “change is hard.” It’s common to run up against initial
resistance to Placemaking, especially when communities encounter uncommon ideas
that may seem to threaten the status quo.
“Every time someone tries to make a
pedestrian street, everyone fights it. In the U.S. the excuse is, ‘Oh, Europe was just built that way. It’s better suited for it.’ But, in
fact, implementing pedestrian streets only came about in the last 30 or 40
years. This is relatively recent.
In Copenhagen, they complained at first. They said, ‘Pedestrian streets are not
our culture. It’s for the Italians; they love their streets. It’s too cold here.’ And now, of
course, the most successful retail in all of Denmark
is along the pedestrian streets!”
Of course Placemaking techniques are not
limited to revitalizing a city’s commercial quarters. They are meant to improve all parts of
the city and to make every neighborhood more beautiful, more enjoyable, and more
alive. In fact, Penalosa believes
because Placemaking techniques can do so much with so little, their greatest
potential for transformation may be in a city’s lowest-income
areas.
“When I was commissioner in Bogotà,
people would ask me why, when there are so many other problems like poverty,
crime and education, the local government would choose to focus its energies and
scarce resources on revitalizing public spaces,” said Penalosa. “I would always
tell them that public spaces, in low-income areas especially, and when the poor
are feeling desperate, have to be beautiful and vibrant because they are the
only refuge for the poor when they are not working. The poor never have the options to
escape, like the rich do, to their country clubs and big estates: they always
stay in the city. We have to make
great places for them to enjoy.”
Placemaking for active public spaces has
a huge potential for improving emotional and physical well being. For Penalosa,
Placemaking is about “[helping] communities develop vibrant cities and healthy
communities. When we have great
places, we are going to have happier, healthier residents.”
For more information on Placemaking Chicago, please visit
www.placemakingchicago.com , or contact Karin Sommer at
(312) 863-6044 or ksommer@metroplanning.org.