The Overhead Wire Daily | Obvious Solutions Versus Actual Ones

I want to go back to a few items we posted yesterday to think a little bit more about public space and solutions to wanted versus unwanted activities and uses.

In an op-ed for the Urbanist in Seattle, Samuel Wolff argues that Seattle’s newly approved ‘banishment zones’, which are the city’s interpretation of the Grant’s Pass Supreme Court ruling on homelessness, go against good principles of public space. What should be welcoming spaces for all become walled off for certain members of society.

A solution then instead of banishment could be formal and informal guardianship of space. The idea is that if a space is activated and more people use it, they become informal guardians of the space.

Across the world in Barcelona, it’s not homelessness or drug use that officials are worried about along La Rambla, but over-tourism in the form of rowdy bachelor and bachelorette parties and the proliferation of what some see as tacky souvenir shops and restaurants.

Activists believe the blame should be placed on short term rentals reducing the diversity of people using the area and that more residents and local businesses should be brought into the neighborhood to act as guardians of the space. The winners of the competition to redesign the street even went so far as to say that certain businesses should get their own sort of social housing treatment.

At the moment Barcelona chooses only to attempt a fix through street design. The sidewalks will be widened to five meters (16 ft) and vehicle lanes reduced for internal trips and buses while three new public squares will be created with new street furniture and 375 trees added. Cultural institutions will be beefed up along La Rambla as well. It’s part of the solution, but maybe more should be done.

Both Seattle and Barcelona situations make me think we often try to fix problems with the tools available, not the complimentary ones we should be picking up at the hardware store. In some instances the barrier is politics, but in others I think it might be a lack of a holistic understanding of what healthy urbanism and commerce looks like. The obvious solution may not be the actual one or the only one.

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