Livability Message Is Think Small

Luring me recently to this genteel remnant of a colonial town was the promise of a design conference that would concentrate on the practical details of making cities more livable.

I was assured that this was not going to be another self-congratulating or self-serving affair in which professionals and academics elbow each other for some publicity to use to garner a grant, an appointment or a new job.

As I have written recently, one gets wary of the successive waves of “star-studded” conferences, symposiums, studies and competitions supposedly dedicated to improving the quality of urban life but that ends up just improving the lives of the organizers and a few participants.

The organizers of the Charleston conference, Henry and Suzanne Lennard, insisted theirs was going to be different. “Our conferences were never intended as disciplinary or professional conferences; rather as occasions to bring together persons with similar (people- and user-oriented) values,” declared Henry in an effusive invitation.

Though the Lennards’ suspect-sounding, nonprofit Center For Urban Well-Being is located in not very urban or wanting Southampton, N.Y., their modest self-publications under the banner of Gondolier Press that I have read brim over with a commendable concern for a more livable city through the imaginative design and use of public spaces.

This includes enlivening and celebrating streets, squares, marketplaces and housing developments, while, generally, discouraging vehicular traffic and encouraging pedestrianism; all very much on a human scale and in a distinctly prejudicial Western European mode. Pamphlets by the Lennards include “Livable Cities” and “Public Life in Urban Places.”

And though nothing the Lennards and their varied contributors say in the publications is new or radical, it does not in any way detract from the importance of the message and the need for repetition; that the prime purpose of cities is to serve and enrich the people who live there.

With this in mind, and prompted more by hope than experience, I attended the conference, as did about 300 other persons representing a broad cross section of concerns. It turned out to be a generally relaxed, 3-day discourse on what makes a city livable, a sort of mom-and-pop affair with the Lennards acting as the affable parents.

There were, among others, the venerable William Whyte, author of “The Social Life of Small Urban Places,” lecturing on streets and plazas; festival market packager Jane Thompson talking about intuitive design and the potential of waterfronts; English-based architect John Turner urging more community involvement in the development of needed affordable housing; Danish planner Jan Gehl likening the city to a party everyone should attend and enjoy, and urbanist Ronald Lee Flemming of the Townscape Institute of Cambridge, Mass., explaining the uses of public art.

Unfortunately, there also were some academics stiffly reading stilted studies, a few urban hustlers flaunting bloated resumes and bloated projects, the usual suspects spouting generalities and not enough opportunity for open discussions and debates. It would have been marvelous if what architecture Prof. Patrick Quinn of Rensselaer Institute and eminent sociologist Nathan Glazer of Harvard University said privately over dinner and drinks about some presentations could have been heard publicly. The Lennards need more spice for their stew.

If there was a particular message that came out of the conference it was that the battle for quality in a city is won, or lost, not in the big, thick reports crammed with fanciful designs but in the small scale. Again and again those associated with real triumphs, such as friendly, functioning streetscapes, parks, plazas and housing projects, said the key to their success was the micro-planning.

“It was the little things that made the place come alive, the placement of a bollard to block traffic, a bench here and there facing activity, the planting of some trees,” explained Gehl, author of the instructive “Life Between Buildings,” analyzing the success of a particular streetscape.

Among those who emphasized the importance of detailing was Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley. “The focus in planning, be it for traffic, a new building or a park, must be the human element,” he said. “If you ruin the quality of life of residents for, say, a new road, you end up in time ruining everything. We must concentrate more on the details and maybe a little less on the big picture, and get the people who are directly affected involved.”

This also was a point made by Rod Hackney, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects and a principal adviser to Prince Charles, England’s prime architecture critic. Hackney came to Charleston after attending a much heralded conference his organization had co-sponsored with the American Institute of Architects in Pittsburgh, Pa., entitled “Remaking Cities,” which, among other things, was supposed to examine new uses for the region’s depressed towns and the abandoned steel mills.

While the conference there did attract considerable attention, due in part to the presence of the prince, Hackney said in an interview that he was disappointed. “I fear that the valuable asset of His Royal Highness’s expressed concern (for the problems presented by the steel mills) is going to be wasted.”

Hackney noted with a hint of sarcasm that the best the conference could come up with after a highly publicized study of the problem by a joint British and American team of experts seemed to be a recommendation that the local government council sponsor an international design competition for a garden festival there. He indicated he thought the competition was an excuse not to take any immediate action.

The adviser to the prince added that of the substantial funds, estimated at $1.5 million, spent on the Pittsburgh conference, some should have been diverted to paying for an architect or two “to pick up the pieces of some of the ideas” that were discussed. “We didn’t even leave them (the communities) with a phone number to call,” Hackney added.

“I really did not get the sense that there was a commitment among the American organizers to a program in which the communities might help themselves on a small, human scale where it counts, as we have been trying to do in England,” Hackney said. “I hope I am wrong, of course, and that the professionals there will be able to deliver. We shall, in time, see.”

No doubt what is done, or not done, will be discussed at some future conference.