Tag: Art

Series: Planning for 36 Hours in Miami

November 19, 2019 / odrozd

By Doug Bright

About the series: Welcome to our ongoing travel series. These are all posts written by planning students and professionals about what to do in a given city when looking for Brunch, a Brew, or a good idea on a Budget. To cap it all off, we include a fun planning fact!

About the visit: As the darkness and cold of winter approach, biological urges guide our travel selections southward, to the Sunshine State. Miami Beach offers both sun and sand to sooth your S.A.D. and well-preserved Art Deco architecture to satisfy your structural style sensibilities. The robust influence of Latin America, especially Cuba, creates a culturally diverse and immersive city, with plenty more to offer than the party scene it’s well-known for. Miami is not your typical American city, and that makes it worth visiting.

IMG_8271 (1) — A foul weather day at Lummus Park Beach in South Beach. Photo credit: Doug Bright

Brunch

Embrace the tradition of the colada, a takeaway cup with a few servings of sweet, Cuban-style espresso meant for sharing, enabled by the plastic espresso cups it comes with. Pair it with freshly baked Cuban pastries – the objective best being the pastelito de guayaba y queso (guava and cream cheese turnover) – and enjoy beachside for best results. While this combo can be found at many places, if you’re in South Beach, the Meridian Food Market provides quality versions of both at a great price, less than half a mile from the beach. Snag a giant Florida avocado or some delicious tropical fruit while you’re at it.

If it’s a bit later in the day and you’re ready for something more substantial, try the equally ubiquitous sandwiches: a classic Cuban or its sweeter, softer cousin, the Medianoche (Las Olas in South Beach or Enriqueta’s near Wynwood will both satisfy).

IMG_20171110_101117596_HDR — *Pastelitos and a colada from Meridian Food Market. Photo credit: Doug Bright*

Brew

J Wakefield Brewing’s taproom in Wynwood pumps out fantastic beer and offers respite from both the midday heat and the obsessive Instagramming in one of the biggest street art districts in the country. It strikes a balance between the bougie beauty of Veza Sur Brewing, the curated street art vibe of Concrete Beach Brewing, and the hole-in-the-wall style of Wynwood Brewing. All are worth visiting; the short walks separating them make it very easy to do so. If the mental anguish of girlfriends having their boyfriends take “candid” photos of them in front of street art outweighs the beauty of the art itself, you might enjoy wallowing at Mac’s Club Deuce in South Beach, which provides all the sticky, casual, friendly spirit of a dive with an oddly-shaped bar and an emphasis on neon that remind you that you’re in Miami Beach.

Budget

While Miami offers plenty of chances to alter your future financial wellbeing in the course of one night, plenty of fun can be had for cheap. Between the previously mentioned beaches, Art Deco Historic District of South Beach, and the street art labyrinth of Wynwood Walls, at least a full day can be filled for free. The flora-inclined can enjoy the Miami Beach Botanical Garden for free. A walk on Little Havana’s main drag, Calle Ocho (8th Street), is a great way to experience the neighborhood. Don’t miss Máximo Gómez Park, where permanent tables facilitate outdoor games of dominos; if you’re there just to watch, be respectful.

*Gallery space complements street art in Wynwood. Photo credit: Doug Bright*

Fun Planning Fact

Before the fun facts, it’s important to acknowledge that Miami’s geography means rising sea levels and other climate change impacts will have a huge impact on the city in the coming decades. In terms of financial impact on GDP, one study suggests an impact of $2 billion per year in 2050, the greatest of any US city and sixth highest in the world. Of U.S. cities, Miami has the 2nd greatest number of residents living within the FEMA 100-year floodplain (to NYC), but 12(!) of the top 14 are municipalities in the Miami MSA. Another study suggests the coming impacts have a gentrification effect: higher-elevation regions of Miami appreciate more quickly. While the rich have historically preferred coasts, changes due to climate change might result in displacement non-coastal areas.

Ok, now ready for some fun? Stiltsville refers to a collection of buildings built on stilts among the “Safety Valve” sand banks that mark the edge of Biscayne Bay, one mile from land. Dating back at least to the 1930s, the buildings famously offered social clubs specializing in vice. Illegal gambling and alcohol sales at institutions with names like the Bikini Club and the Quarterdeck Club led to a high-powered regular clientele and occasional raids by authorities. At its peak in 1960, Stiltsville included 27 buildings, but hurricanes and regulations since have reduced the remaining structures to seven. The buildings are currently in Biscayne National Park, owned by the National Park Service, but managed by the non-profit Stiltsville Trust since 2003. The park and trust have an agreement to rehab the buildings for educational use in the future.

BN-WC703_1118MI_M_20171113162242 — *One of the Stiltsville houses, Bay Chateau, with Miami in the distance. Photo credit: Wall Street Journal*

Featured Image: The relative peace of dusk in the winter at Lummus Park Beach. Photo Credit: Doug Bright

About the Author: Doug is a first-year master’s candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning, specializing in transportation. He’s a proud Chicagoan, enjoys taking the streets by two wheels, and indulges in improvisational cooking. He likes thinking and talking about education, design, and sustainability. He also likes jokes. Doug received his undergraduate degree in Social Studies from Harvard College.

Seeing the Weird in a Rapidly Changing Austin

February 15, 2018 / odrozd

Seeing the Weird in a Rapidly Changing Austin

This winter break, I crossed another city/state off my bucket list by visiting Austin, Texas.

Known for its unique flair (“Keep Austin Weird” is the city’s marketing slogan), music, barbeque, and other fried foods, the city’s rapid change in population over the last couple of decades has transformed its physical landscape. The US Census estimates that from 2000 to 2016, Austin’s population has increased nearly 45 percent, from 656,562 to 947,890 residents.

With this rapid growth, Austin, quite visibly, is a city that looks to balance its increasing levels of development with its reputation as an outdoorsy and creative urban area. Below are some photos I took while perusing the capital of our nation’s second most populous state:

Barton Hills. Photo by author.

Austin has an extensive network for pedestrians and people riding bicycles. These separated bicycle lanes are in the residential neighborhood of Barton Hills. The Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail feeds into Zilker Metropolitan Park.

Street named after Robert E. Lee. Photo by author.

Texas, as a confederate state during the Civil War, still memorializes Robert E. Lee through naming a street after him. Recently, many have advocated to change the name of this street.

Austin skyline. Photo by author.

Take from the edge of Zilker Memorial Park, the downtown skyline is developing as a result of many businesses and residents move to Austin. Pictured in between is Lady Bird Lake (technically the Colorado River), named after this country’s former first lady. A champion for conservation and the environment, Lady Bird Johnson advocated for planting the trees seen alongside the lake and the 10-mile-long Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail.

“Forever Bicycles.” Photo by author.

Seen while on a bike tour, this Ai Weiwei sculpture, known as “Forever Bicycles”, consists of 1,254 bicycles.

Baylor Street Art Wall. Photo by author.

My bike tour made a stop at the Baylor Street Art Wall on Castle Hill (see the castle at the top?). Originally planned for condos in the 1980s which were never constructed, passersby can spray paint virtually anything they would like on the formerly planned development’s foundation. Holding itself as a creative and cultural icon for Austin, I was told that this wall will soon be demolished to make way for new condos.

Austin’s Downtown Public Library. Photo by author.

Austin just opened its new downtown public library in October 2017. The library has a rooftop garden where people can study and socialize.

LBJ Presidential Library. Photo by author.

On a much drearier day, I visited the LBJ Presidential Library on the campus at the University of Texas at Austin. The building, like many of the buildings at the university, has brutalist architecture.

About the Author: Nate Seeskin is a second-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, where he concentrates in transportation, land use, and environmental planning. Hailing from the midwest originally, Nate can often be found perusing around Carrboro on his bicycle.

Editor: Katy Lang

Science Fiction and Planning

March 10, 2017 / odrozd

As planners, we often engage in visioning processes with communities to identify and elaborate on the kinds of communities we want to plan. Our vision plans build an image of what could be in order to inform the agenda, strategies and policies we then develop and implement as planners. Vision planning can be an imaginative space to respond to the needs and desires of a community’s stakeholders and to consider alternative ways of negotiating and organizing our communities within existing constraints.

Science fiction also offers an opportunity to envision a different world. Science fiction creates images of worlds free from poverty, capitalism and war and/or consumed by futuristic technologies, tragedies and disease. Science fiction, unlike planning, is free to imagine beyond reality and constraints from our social structures and norms. This opportunity has become the foundation for an emerging movement of social justice science fiction writers who are free to dream new realities.

The inspiration for many of these social justice science fiction writers comes from author Octavia Butler, a black science-fiction writer whose protagonists were young women of color, primarily black women. One of the most exciting works from this new movement is Octavia’s Brood, an anthology of radical science fiction by activist writers.

Toshi Reagon. Photo by Bernie DeChant.

While planners and science fiction writers have so much in common in the work they do, I’ve never really heard of any overlapping work between the two…until now! This semester, musician and activist Toshi Reagon begins a multi-week, multi-year DisTIL (Discovery Through Iterative Learning) residency through Carolina Performing Arts. This innovative arts fellowship intends to cultivate productive intellectual and creative relationships between artists and academics, which for Toshi will be primarily with the Department of City and Regional Planning. Toshi has created a new opera based on Octavia Butler’s post-apocalyptic novel Parable of the Sower. The opera blends science fiction with African-American spiritualism, and through her DisTIL residency, will further blend in ideas and concepts from city and regional planning. Toshi’s DisTIL residency is also meant to bring planning faculty and students into her world to engage in imaginative and creative thinking about the future of human civilization.

Toshi will return to the UNC Chapel Hill campus for the second time during the week of March 27th to engage in conversations with planning faculty members around systems modeling, housing policy, hazard mitigation and disaster recovery, environmental justice, and negotiation theory. Hopefully, her presence will encourage planners to vision beyond the confines of reality for a just a moment, to tip toe into the world of science fiction and to dream a new world.

About the Author: Hilary Pollan is a first year DCRP student specializing in Economic Development and pursuing a dual degree MPH in Health Behavior. She is interested in workforce development, participatory planning, and building healthy communities, and she strives to be a planner for social justice. She is thrilled to be the Graduate Assistant for Toshi Reagon’s DisTIL Fellowship through Carolina Performing Arts.

References:

Flanders, Laura. “Why Science Fiction Is A Fabulous Tool In The Fight For Social Justice”. The Nation. N.p., 2017. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

“UNC-Chapel Hill Receives $1M Grant From The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation For Innovative Arts Program – The University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill”. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. N.p., 2016. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

Now Available Online – Just Creativity: Planning for Inclusive Prosperity

March 1, 2017 / odrozd

Volume 41 of the Carolina Planning Journal is now available for free on the Carolina Planning Journal webpage. Just scroll to the bottom and click on the link!

“Planning for creativity must focus not only on maximizing revenues or attracting capital, it must also address the way that the arts contribute to more equitable, livable, and inclusive cities for all.”

An Ode to Planners without Bicycles

January 31, 2017 / odrozd

A Poem by a Bikeless Planning Student

First day of classes
For Planning masters students
No space on bike rack!

Typical planners
Riding bicycle to class
Is it required?

Cyclists everywhere!
Zooming along in their lanes
Cycling heaven

The transpo students
Love their bicycles a lot
They even build them

Studying is hard
But can do work on the bus
Transit advantage

Though I love walking
Do I buy bike to fit in?
The pressure is on

Then one day in class
I meet a kindred spirit
A planner, no bike!

“Did you bike to class?”
Because planners often do
“No?? I’m just like you!”

Our alliance is
Planners Without Bicycles
Few and far between

But planners unite
In transit, walking, and yes,
Cycling — in being green.

Featured Image: Bicycle locked up to bike rack. Photo Credit: Creative Commons.

About the Author: Katy is a Masters student in the Department of City & Regional Planning specializing in transportation and land use. She spent seven years in the Washington, DC area and as a result, she has a love-love relationship with DC’s Metrorail and all things urban. She is passionate about pedestrian safety and the pedestrian’s right to the city and the street. Prior to coming to UNC, Katy worked in change management. She likes long runs on Carrboro’s short bike trails and eating popcorn.

How This Year’s Best TV Show Matters to Southern Urbanists

January 27, 2017 / odrozd

A young man walks down a suburban street, and enters a storage facility. He opens his unit, lays down on the bed inside. He stares down at two $100 bills. He earned them by managing his cousin, an Atlanta rapper.

This closing scene of FX’s Atlanta is emblematic of many of protagonist Earn’s struggles: hustling to earn an income, being homeless, being a provider to his daughter. This scene and many others in the show, which recently won a Golden Globe Award for “Best TV Series Comedy or Musical”, portray the urban issues Atlantans face, namely poverty and auto dependence, while celebrating its hallmark rap scene.

The Atlanta skyline. Photo: Brendan Lim

The backbone of the series is its score, chock full of tracks by Atlanta rappers. Donald Glover, who created the series and stars as Earn, is a hip hop artist himself.

spotify:user:playstation_music:playlist:4AcLvdg8uwWnN5nii2gIri

And hip hop is the centerpiece of the series, compelling Earn to seek out his cousin, up and coming rapper Paper Boi. In an Angles blog, Adeyemi Olatunde wrote about the intersection of urban issues and rap music:

Rap, real rap, is a gateway into the lives of some members of our society that is often glamorized by the industry as a one-dimensional space which is crime ridden, drug filled land of immorality.

And the world Glover shows us isn’t glamourous. Paper Boi is party to multiple violent altercations and sells marijuana because rapping doesn’t pay. He lives in multifamily housing, and cannot shake the stereotype of a violent thug. In multiple situations, Paper Boi is denied an opportunity to redefine himself on his own terms.

In another episode, Paper Boi is a member of a panel discussion about transgender issues on a public access network. This exchange in particular speaks to the expectations that society sets for young black men, and how oppression is or isn’t experienced in solidarity.

The host asks him, “Isn’t the lack of a father the reason you hate trans people?” The host has assumed he is from a fatherless home (his reaction is captured in this gif).

“It’s hard for me to care about this when no one cares about me as a black human man,” responds Paper Boi.

Atlanta creator Donald Glover plays Earn, Paper Boi’s cousin and manager. The character is a suburban Atlantan living paycheck to paycheck. Photo: NASA

Glover is intentional to mix identity and setting with Atlanta. After winning the Golden Globe, he told journalists that “I only cared about what people in Atlanta thought. You can’t name a show Detroit and then have Detroit people hate it. I was only caring if my parents thought it was cool, if I could go to a Chick-Fil-A and see that people knew the new Donald Glover show.”

Atlanta is a metropolitan area of many suburbs. One of Earn’s greatest struggles is transportation, having to take the bus or rely on his daughter’s mother or Paper Boi for rides. Grist’s Ben Adler wrote that Atlanta, “is about working-class African-Americans in the Southern suburbs, and it highlights one of the country’s biggest, least-appreciated problems: living without a car in the midst of sprawl.”

Earn’s living situation is reflective of a significant trend in the South, the suburbanization of poverty. The stress Earn faces from having no steady place to call home is palpable in his relationships with other characters, and speaks to the experience of poverty. The portrayal of mobility challenges in Atlanta is also striking. For suburban dwellers, there is a trade off between costs and distance from midtown Atlanta. But transportation costs are higher, and transit is less frequent, evidenced by Earn’s dependence on friends and an infrequent and inconvenient bus system. The series investigates the social impacts of sprawl, but this growth trend has significant carbon footprint consequences, too. And while innovative projects such as the Atlanta BeltLine seek to incorporate a more compact and sustainable urban form in Atlanta, they also raise concerns about affordability and gentrification.

Atlanta’s carbon footprint is more than 10 times greater than Barcelona’s, despite similar population sizes. Source: World Resources Institute

Atlanta is a social commentary on urban form and experience, as is rap music. It is an expression of community, a celebration of culture, and a critique of larger social forces. As a white person, this was the first time I have ever watched a show that portrayed white characters only as flat. Watching this show helped me step into a world I thought I knew quite well (the urban south), but in fact largely misunderstood. Planners can learn quite a bit from interpreting data or reading reports, but they won’t understand life in Atlanta until they watch this series.

Brian Vaughn is an Editorial Board member and undergraduate content editor for CPJ. His favorite Atlanta rapper is André 3000 of Outkast.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Seeing Race in the City’s Structure

June 21, 2016 / odrozd

We typically do not use literature for city planning texts, but Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) deserves careful consideration. Ellison weaves a narrative through New York City’s urban spatial structure to map how race is physically built into the city’s neighborhood composition, street networks, and utilities. Using the binary of invisible versus visible, Ellison defines invisibility as the African-American experience of being isolated explicitly and implicitly to pre-determined neighborhoods, economic opportunities, and basic utility services. Utilities, particularly electricity and lighting, shape the Invisible Man’s being within the city. I highlight Ellison’s argument alongside “Monopolated Light & Power,” a paper sculpture I built to visualize the interplay of visible versus invisible; being versus non-being; and access to city life versus segregation.

Monopolated Light & Power by Danny Arnold

“Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility. This is why I fight my battle with Monopolated Light & Power. The deeper reason, I mean: It allows me to feel my vital aliveness. I also fight them for taking so much of my money before I learned to protect myself. In my hole in the basement there are exactly 1,369 lights. I’ve wired the entire ceiling, every inch of it. And not with fluorescent bulbs, but with the older, more-expensive-to-operate kind, the filament type. An act of sabotage, you know.”[1]

After a long series of hopes and opportunities being stripped forcibly away, the Invisible Man finds himself forced into a hidden Harlem basement. Here, he exercises complete control his space. Above ground, the city structure refuses his visibility, the recognition of his own being.

Below ground, the Invisible Man hacks into the electrical grid owned by Monopolated Light & Power, siphons power for his 1,369 light bulbs, and enjoys his visibility alone. It is an extraordinary number of inefficient bulbs that will eventually line every surface of his basement.

The Invisible Man presents a city structured by race, or the provision of space and utilities to some people, but not to others. Visibility versus invisibility. It stands in for segregation, redlining, and the denial of access to everyday life’s typical opportunities like electricity and lighting.

Planners might assert, “surely we’ve gotten better!” But herein lies the Invisible Man’s strength. Perhaps some neighborhoods have improved, but not others. The real point remains that life, the ability to be, what Ellison calls visibility, is at stake for the “others”. The state of emergency in Flint, Michigan, continues because of its water supply. Decision-makers converted the city’s water to the Flint River in 2014, which was “an industrial dump site and absorb[ed] contaminants from road runoff.”[2] Water of varying colors, rashes and other pains for children, and rapidly elevated blood pressure in adults ensued. In Ellison’s framework, utilities, like water, are for some cities, but not others.

[1] Ralph Ellison (1952). Invisible Man. New York: Vintage International.

[2] Laura Bliss (February 4, 2016). “How Democracy Died in Flint.” CityLab. Found at http://www.citylab.com/politics/2016/02/flint-water-crisis-democracy-failure/459825/.

Danny Arnold graduated from DCRP in 2016 and works as a transportation planner in Raleigh. Along with transportation, his interests include integrating art and planning and participating in spaces in which visual art, literature, and planning practice can inform each other. His paper sculptures explore various imaginations of urban spatial structure, memory, and environmental sustainability through using discarded materials.

Seven Creative Placemaking Resources

April 6, 2016 / odrozd

It’s that time of year again: the Carolina Planning Journal is being copyedited and proofread and then copyedited and proofread again. And it is looking very beautiful. So: we’ve compiled a list of seven creative placemaking resources in order to get all of you excited about this upcoming volume, “Just Creativity: Perspectives on Inclusive Placemaking.”

ArtPlace’s Blog Series called “The Huddle”

ArtPlace is a funder for creative placemaking projects all across the United States. This blog series spotlights “conversations” between projects and organizations funded by ArtPlace, in which they “talk through topics, get advice, and perhaps even gossip a little.” It’s a great source for local governments or people interested in creative placemaking. This series was launched in January 2016 and has already published a great piece on the funding landscape.

January 2016 Volume of the Architectural Review: Culture

This volume of the Architectural Review is introduced with a challenge: “When it comes to cultural vibrancy, it is not simply a case of build it, and they will come. There is nothing more likely to put off a collective of artists than the sanitized insertion of a new-build cultural campus or the top-down creation of an artists’ village…A better investment would be the careful identification and preservation of urban subculture where it currently exists. Supporting these communities with cultural buildings, and providing long-term controlled cheap rent and subsidized start-up and studio space to keep the community together, is critical.”

Volume 10 of the San Francisco Federal Reserve’s Community Development Investment Review

This volume of the Community Development Investment Review has pieces written by creative placemaking heavyweights like Ann Markusen, Darren Walker and Xavier de Souza Briggs of the Ford Foundation, Rip Rapson of the Kresge Foundation, and Jamie Bennett of ArtPlace. Two particularly helpful articles: one on financing creative places from Deutsche Bank and another on evaluation indicators from the Urban Institute.

ArtForce Website

North Carolina-based ArtForce is a great resources for communities in the state that would like to create, build, and retain their creative economies.

3. Gehl Architects

The firm that helped turn Copenhagen into a bike-ped haven. These folks have developed the Public Space/Public Life survey model and have transformed many underused public spaces into famous icons of public street-life vitality. Gehl Architects piloted “Broadway Boulevard” in New York City in which for one day all major squares along Broadway were closed to automobile traffic and temporary furniture was moved in.

2. Projects for Public Spaces

PPS is a New York City-based firm known for pioneering public placemaking. It offers weekend long trainings on topics like how to create a successful and thriving public market and placemaking implementation and management.

The Carolina Planning Journal

The upcoming volume of the Carolina Planning Journal, of course! We can’t wait to share an interview with Ann Markusen, articles from the Rural Studio, the Steel Yard in Providence, Opportunity Threads here in North Carolina, and more. Preview the table of contents below!

Art as An Economic Mobilizer in the Carolinas

February 3, 2016 / odrozd

Arts and culture have become widely accepted instruments for economic development and revitalization. Coming into public consciousness perhaps most recognizably in the work of Richard Florida and his theories of building, or rebuilding, a city around the creative class. Nebulous as they are, arts and culture are the protean intangibles in many urban planning projects, sought after to attract well-educated, mobile citizens.

Interior of Shelby’s Earl Scruggs Center, formerly the Cleveland County Courthouse. Photo Credit: Adam Levin

One form of arts and culture-based economic development which has found favor is the repurposing or development of previously unused physical space or dilapidated real estate for use as a creative and revenue-generating facility. Big cities have unsurprisingly led the charge in these endeavors, using their relatively deep pockets and large planning departments to implement creative revitalization projects in long-disadvantaged neighborhoods. The goals of these projects will be familiar to economic development practitioners and revitalization gurus; they include increased tourism, new square footage of mixed-use development and new independent businesses.

Exterior of Shelby’s Earl Scruggs Center, formerly the Cleveland County Courthouse. Photo Credit: Adam Levin

But while large metropolises may be at the forefront of these projects, they are not the only cities investing in arts and culture. Smaller cities have also shown interest in arts and culture-based revitalization projects. Implementation, though, can be difficult for these cities. Their unique challenges include spurring innovative economic development with limited budgets and staff and working with practitioners and citizens who may chafe at unproven ideas.

Shelby’s Don Gibson Theatre. Photo Credit: Adam Levin

Three cities in the Carolinas are up to the challenge. Shelby and Wilson, both in North Carolina, and Newberry, South Carolina, are in various stages of arts and culture-based economic development initiatives. All former textile or tobacco towns, each city prospered until around the mid-20th century, subsequently falling on harder times as manufacturing declined in the South. In the 1990s Newberry turned to its historic, long-dormant downtown opera house to attract tourists. Shelby created two downtown attractions, the Don Gibson Theatre (opened 2009) and the Earl Scruggs Center (opened January 2014), commemorating seminal musicians with roots in the town. Wilson is in the process of opening the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park on a two-acre downtown lot, where it will display structures created by Simpson, the iconoclastic artist who lived in Wilson nearly his entire life before passing away in 2013.

Vollis Simpson whirligig at the Preservation Center in Wilson, NC. Photo Credit: Adam Levin

The results are encouraging. The Newberry Opera House attracts around 100,000 theatregoers annually. Shelby experienced growth in downtown business starts since its projects began, while Wilson has recently seen the first mixed-use development in its downtown’s history. Harder to quantify, officials in each town report an ineffable momentum not felt for decades.

Interior of the Preservation Center. Photo Credit: Adam Levin

How do we overcome the unique challenges of small town creative economic development? First, each project was authentic to the town and resonated with residents. Rather than an imported, impersonal project, there were clear connections to town history in each case. Second, each project had a prominent local private citizen as a driving force. The social capital they brought was critical in countering skepticism to these nontraditional economic development strategies.

Warren St. in Downtown Shelby. Photo Credit: Adam Levin

About the Author: Adam Levin is a 2015 master’s graduate of the University of North Carolina’s Department of City and Regional Planning, where he concentrated in economic development and contributed to the 2014 and 2015 volumes of the Carolina Planning Journal. He currently lives and works in the Washington, DC region.

Featured Image: Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park in Wilson as of January 2015. Photo Credit: Adam Levin

Placemaking, Underground: BART to Revitalize all 44 Stations

January 12, 2016 / odrozd

This article is adapted from a piece originally published by Rachel Wexler and Rachel Dinno Taylor in San Francisco Planning and Urban Research’s [SPUR] journal The Urbanist, on May 11 2015.

Stockholm’s metro system, or Tunnelbana, is widely known as the world’s longest art gallery. Since the 1950s, the system has been contracting with artists to work with their architects and engineers to transform 90 of its stations into fully immersive experiences. Photo Credit: Author’s Own.

Transit hubs are often massive, and massively underutilized, public spaces. Take for example the Bay Area Rapid Transit [BART] and San Francisco Muni Metro systems. Nearly 500,000 riders traipse the drab halls of these transit stations, heads down and nose plugged. It’s a hairy network of grime encrusted tile corridors reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic county hospital. If you’re lucky, the sweet strains of an impromptu violin sonata may shake you from your destination-driven perseverance and it’s as though an angel had descended into the purgatory of afternoon rush hour. But otherwise, aside from waiting for your train, not much else is going to make you stop.

San Francisco’s Montgomery St. Station. Photo Credit: Author’s Own.

However, for the first time in its 40 years of existence, BART is planning a comprehensive overhaul of its 44 stations. And, due to the advocacy of the non-profit organization SubArt, they’re considering an aesthetic overhaul to improve the quality of riders’ experiences. Now, with the Triangle light rail system is in its planning stages, is the time for the system’s transportation planners to consider the importance of art, design, and placemaking in the transit planning process. Let’s look at this case study to see why.

Yes, the BART budget is limited: BART must build new stations, perform routine maintenance, and purchase new rolling stock. However, studies investigating the impact of art in transit have proven that it is not just a pretty “nice-to-have” addition. In fact, it can be a powerful tool that can have a massive effect not only on rider behavior, safety, and public perception, but it can also increase economic activity and investment in the areas surrounding stations. Furthermore, these benefits can come about through limited fiscal investment on the part of the transit authority when public-private partnerships are taken into consideration.

BART and Muni Metro stations serve over 90 times more people than the San Francisco area’s most frequently visited museums. The city’s underground transit corridors represent a tremendous opportunity to enhance riders’ experience, engage a broader spectrum of the public in the arts, and reflect the innovative and artistic cultural capital of the Bay Area.

At Candidplatz Station, Munich, the walls are covered in colored panels using the full color spectrum. The design riffs on the theme of motion — trains carry riders through the color wheel as they move through the station. Author’s photo.

The United States federal government encourages transit systems nationwide to make use of the cost-effective benefits of art in transit and even allocates up to 5% of federal funds to be used for the integration of art. The Federal Transit Administration states that, “the visual quality of the nation’s mass transit systems has a profound impact on transit patrons and the community at large. Good design and art can improve the appearance and safety of a facility, give vibrancy to its public spaces, and make patrons feel welcome.”

The fiscal efficiency and positive impact of art and design in transit has been documented globally:

Studies have shown that riders are willing to walk farther and pay more to use a station enhanced by art and design.
They are also willing to wait longer for trains due to the improved environment.
Art and design in transit have a multitude of other benefits, from increasing the overall use of public transportation to reducing crime and vandalism in stations, creating a safer environment for riders.
Studies have also found that large-scale art and design in the underground increases female ridership, helps with wayfinding, and creates pride of place.

Georg-Brauchle-Ring Station of the Munich U-Bahn

Furthermore, engaging local artists and community members in the planning and execution process can increase cross-cultural respect, community cohesion and pride, and encourage local investment. Other American cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, and Chicago are already investing in significant underground art interventions and many more international cities, including Buenos Aires, Naples, and Taiwan, are reaping the benefits of comprehensive, immersive art and design programs in their public transit systems. BART’s imminent redesign offers the opportunity to demonstrate the global leadership and innovation of the city’s region.

In Naples, Italy, the positive impact of full-scale art is well documented. Studies show that riders are willing to walk farther, pay more, and wait longer for a train in a station enhanced by art and design.

Art and design opportunities reach well beyond traditional mosaics and murals. Cities have revitalized their stations with permanent design installations and created temporary exhibits that include light, music, and performance art by local and visiting artists. Shouldn’t the Bay Area, a region known throughout the world for its innovative culture and thriving art community, have dynamic underground metro stations that reflect the vibrancy above ground? In order to achieve a comprehensive and fully integrated revision, collaboration between designers, artists, and the public needs to occur during the planning process. In order to truly revitalize BART, the scope must reach beyond functionality and showcase the diversity of Bay Area culture through design and art that reinforces the importance of place.

At Westfriedhof Station, Munich, massive overhead lamps emit warm red and yellow hues while the walls are lit by diffuse purple. These seemingly massive changes in fact required minimal investment because they were achieved through a cost effective planning approach: city leaders and transit planners included artists and designers as well as engineers from the outset of the design process. Photo Credit: Author’s Own.

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About the Author: Rachel Wexler is the co-editor of the Carolina Planning Journal and pursuing her master’s degree in City and Regional Planning. Her bachelor’s is in english from UC Berkeley; prior to beginning her master’s she worked as an editor, cook, and musician. Her academic work focuses on economic development, neighborhood revitalization, and placemaking. Her non-academic work focuses on playing in general and playing cello in particular. She also thinks frequently about Oakland, California and Berlin, Germany, both of which she calls home. These are also the urban spaces that brought her to this charming small town to study planning.