Discovery Green nears completion
KTRK-13's Deborah Wrigley notes that opening day for Houston's new Discovery Green is April 13:
For more than a year it's been taking shape across from the George R. Brown Convention Center. Land has been transformed into a lure to get more people back to a downtown that's been hard to populate on weekends and at night. It's called Discovery Green, but nearly everyone we asked had no idea what it is.
Prepare to hear a lot about Discovery Green as it prepares to bring a new look to the downtown area. It's no sprawling Central Park, but it includes some of its features, from open spaces to a concert stage. Besides the entertainment, there's the chance for outdoor recreation.
Susanne Theis, Director of Programming for Discovery Green, explained, "We wanted this to be a place where people came together that is more of an active park."
A couple of weeks ago, the Chron's Lisa Gray wrote a nice column exploring the dynamics of a successful park:
"Urban parks are hard to get right," admits Guy Hagstette, president of the nonprofit Discovery Green Conservancy. "It's not just 'If you build it, they will come.'"
Hagstette understands that lesson deeply. In 1986, he and two other young architects won the national competition to design Sesquicentennial Park, which now curls along the banks of Buffalo Bayou next to the Wortham Center. The park is beautiful and well-maintained but eerie: Hardly anyone but the occasional homeless person goes there.
Market Square Park, ringed by restaurants and close to office buildings, suffers the same problem. Jones Plaza comes alive when there's a band on its stage; but when there's no music, which is most of the time, the park feels weird, like a theater without a show.
For help, Hagstette turned to Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit urban planning and design group founded to carry out the ideas of William H. Whyte, one of the sharpest observers of urban life. While working with the New York City Planning Commission in 1969, Whyte wondered which of the city's new public spaces were working well and why. To find out, he began watching the places and talking to people, even using time-lapse photos to observe "schmoozing patterns, the rituals of street encounters." His conclusions about public spaces were the kind that seem to crystallize something you already knew:
• "What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people."
• "So-called 'undesirables' are not the problem. It is the measures taken to combat them that are the problem. ... The best way to handle the problem of undesirables is to make the place attractive to everybody else."
• "If you want to seed a place with activity, put out food."
Project for Public Spaces argues that to be successful, a big urban park like Discovery Green needs to pack in activities that will attract lots of different kinds of people, because those people will attract other people. A park with people in it is an interesting place to be.
I am looking forward to checking out the park when it opens, but park and city officials had better take the problem of "undesirables" seriously. Downtown and midtown public spaces have been quite the magnet for the homeless, with police doing an occasional crackdown. Park officials don't want to be forced to rename the park.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/22/08 07:43 AM | Houston Life | Print | Comments (5)
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