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Above: Aerial view of midtown Manhattan and Bryant Park, 2011. Source: Google Maps.
Other Sites & Civics How do TCL’s design processes and the project objectives and outcomes observed for North Terrace and Victoria Square compare with other examples in Australia and internationally? Two projects have been reviewed, Federation Square in Melbourne and Bryant Park in New York. These have been chosen because they are frequently cited as exemplars of urban civic design both in their physical form and aesthetics and their success as highly used civic and community spaces.36
Bryant Park, New York Located in a busy precinct in midtown Manhattan, surrounded by offices and educational institutions, Bryant Park is a rare portion of green open space (1.85 ha) in an otherwise densely developed district of New York City. The park is adjacent to the main branch of the New York Municipal Library and surrounded by busy streets on its other three edges.
36 Both projects have been the recipients of numerous state and national design awards and published extensively internationally.
The pre-1990’s condition of Bryant Park is described in J. William Thomson, The Rebirth of New York City’s Bryant Park (Space Maker Press, 1997) 18–23; Mark Francis, Urban Open Space (Island Press, 2003) 47-50 and William H. Whyte, City – Rediscovering the Centre (Anchor Books, 1988), 159–160. 37
William H. Whyte, City – Rediscovering the Centre, Anchor Books, 1988, 159
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39 Maarten, Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp, In Search of New Public Domain, 116–117.
William H. Whyte, City – Rediscovering the Centre, Anchor Books, 1988, 160.
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First established as a park in 1847, it was redesigned in 1934 in a classical style with a large central lawn, fountain, plaza and avenues of trees with paving beneath on each side. At this time it was also raised 1.2 metres above the surrounding footpaths and enclosed with an iron fence and dense planting. The design provided few entry points and through the positioning of internal balustrades, planting and fixed seats prevented informal crossing of the park.37 The intention of the 1934 design was to create a ‘refuge from the city, free from the hustle and bustle of pedestrians’.38 This objective and the physical changes described above proved too successful, resulting in a space which was underutilised and over time colonised predominantly by a narrow band of users. These people discouraged others until by the 1970s the park was a major haunt of drug dealers whose presence created the perception that the park was an unsafe environment for most of the population. Hajer and Reijndorp stress both the need for a sense of safety in order for people to fully participate in the public domain,39 and the positive potential of parochial enclaves as the starting point for public domain experiences. Bryant Park prior to its second renovation in 1991 was an enclave where the physical environment did not support a sense of safety which would allow the proximity between groups necessary for appreciation of otherness and a subsequent meaningful exchange to take place. It seems that in Bryant Park on a fine day you were either a ‘legitimate’ user on the central lawn where there was safety in numbers, or you were an ‘undesirable’ lurking in the shadows of the adjacent avenues of trees’.40