PRIORITIZING PUBLIC SPACES IN CONWAY With the Markham Square project. BY JAMES WALDEN
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ublic spaces are important. No cheesy made-for-TV movie is complete without a dramatic kiss between the protagonist and their love interest at a community festival in the town square. The fact that these kinds of public spaces are so ubiquitous to be a movie trope is telling. Often taken for granted, a hard-to-fill void opens when these places don’t exist in a town. It’s a frequent joke within the Conway Planning Department that our town father, Asa P. Robinson, was a much better railroad engineer than city planner, and his legacy is a mixed bag. Streets like Oak that should have grand widths don’t. Others like Locust
32 | BLOCK, STREET & BUILDING VOLUME 8 | 2022
Rendering of Markham Square Entry
