Excluding Some Excludes All
By Veronica Foster, Community Development Director
7 min read About a dozen public benches were removed from Korean Veterans Boulevard quietly over the course of a few months. Concrete balls of varying heights replaced them on which no one would feel comfortable sitting, providing a perfect example of hostile architecture. The community responded with their own solution to the loss of public seating. Read on to understand the state of public seating in Downtown Nashville, public space evaluation methods, and the importance of continued advocacy.
Noticeably vacant concrete balls replacing conversation benches on Korean Veterans Blvd
As a Downtown worker, I see people move through the city at many different paces, from the slow pace of a visiting tourist to the quick stride of someone on their way to a meeting. I’ve walked the sidewalks in all weathers and all times of day, so I see people just waking up from nooks in doorways and intoxicated tourists perched on curbs with their heads in their hands. The people who are willing to sit or lay on the ground often don’t have any other choice. Regardless of willingness, everyone needs to sit; yet there are few places to do so. The map below shows those limited seating options Downtown including the places where public benches on Korean Veterans Boulevard were removed as reported by the Nashville Scene. Now, Nashville’s Downtown mostly consists of benches and chairs that are in plazas that are privately-owned or in destination parks.
Please add to the map above with any known public and private seating Downtown!
Seating is a basic human need
Civic Design Center Public Life Study of Church Street Park (2006) shows people sitting during the lunch hour, 12:00 pm-1:00 pm
At the Design Center, we are big fans of public life observation studies. It is the practice of watching a space for an extended time and making notes on how people are using that space. For instance, we would note how many people walk to the crosswalk before crossing compared to how many people brave dangerous roads to cross in the middle of a block instead. These observations demonstrate where streets have been poorly designed for pedestrians. When you take an urban planning class or read the classic texts by Jane Jacobs and William Whyte among others, it becomes clear that urban life is about basic human needs. We seek shade when it is hot. We want to walk in places that are active because we want to feel safe. We want to sit when we are tired. We want to spend time in places where we feel comfortable.
Planners and designers have the responsibility from the start of something to imagine and create public spaces that are rooted in data and design principles that improve quality of life. However, design is iterative so it is important to test the value of our public amenities with tools like public life observation studies over time. With this data, we can back up reasons for making design changes rather than referencing that “some people” didn’t like something. Some voices are louder than others, and in order to truly democratize public space, city leaders have to either listen equally or watch intently.
If someone were to do a public life observation study before removing the benches on Korean Veterans Blvd, I suspect the data would have made it clear that removing the benches would be a mistake. Every time I have walked, biked, or driven near those benches, they were occupied. Use shows value, so even by just observing, we can imagine that the people using those benches probably spent time there because they felt safe, comfortable, and or they simply wanted to beat the heat. All people, including Downtown workers, elderly folks visiting the city, parents with strollers, and people without homes no longer have that resource on Korean Veterans Blvd. Why exactly would our city remove functional urban furniture and replace it with uncomfortable concrete balls?
People enjoying the benches were too visible…
Three years ago, it became a felony to camp in public space—a law that actively targeted homeless Nashvillians without any supportive measures to help house this community. Fast forward to this past May, an investigative report by WSMV demonstrated the active policing of the Downtown homeless population by off-duty state troopers contracted by the Nashville Downtown Partnership. Homeless Nashvillians have been quietly removed from the public eye far more often than drunk and disorderly tourists; a whistleblower security member shared that they were asked to ignore the tourists that may have been causing the same disruptions for which the homeless folks were arrested.
Outside the entertainment district on some of the only shaded benches in Downtown, homeless people have been utilizing the benches on Korean Veterans Blvd for years. While the Civic Design Center believes it is beautiful that people have been enjoying public space, NDOT removed the benches in the name of “beautification.” This is a sorry excuse for a targeted exclusionary action, and ultimately a poor urban design decision. Some may refer to Korean Veterans Blvd as a cut-through, and if you are a Nashvillian with a car—especially one who lives in East Nashville with limited access to get into Downtown—it might feel that way. However, the street actually has vibrant pedestrian activity during the day—coming from on-street hotels and Music City Center—probably due to the fact that the wide sidewalks, large grassy medians, street trees, and benches have made it feel comfortable to walk. The existence of homeless people on these benches didn’t interrupt that pedestrian activity. From my personal perspective, the presence of people on that street has always made me feel more comfortable walking there.
If this were a court case, I would say there is no just cause to indict these benches to NDOT jail.
Privately-Owned “Public” Spaces Feel more Private than Public
You might be thinking, there are so many other places to sit Downtown, and if so, I ask you to consider a few things: 1) who manages the seating, 2) what type of seating is it, and 3) does it invite people to experience the basic needs they should be afforded in outdoor spaces? While there are many privately-owned plazas with their own benches, chairs, and ledges, I hardly see people spending any time in them. This is often by design. These plazas are typically not a refuge for shade and the seating options often have design choices that are not comfortable or welcoming. I’ve denoted a handful of private “ledges” that you might perch on for a very short break, but as someone who is often trying to find a place outside to eat lunch, none of these have fit that bill.
Privately-owned public space on Church St
Hours of operation or patron-specific rules make privately-owned “public” spaces even more confusing; once you have been asked to leave one of these spaces by hired security, you are probably not going to attempt to sit in that space again regardless of their given reason. Were you being targeted because of a perception of your own assumed identity? I can share multiple anecdotes of people I know being asked to leave these spaces for no good reason at all, but it doesn’t do much good arguing with someone in a uniform, especially if they are armed or might threaten to call law enforcement.
Metro Planning has recently released new and expanded guidelines for their Bonus Height Program as a part of the Downtown Code, which is the process where developers become eligible for additional building height in exchange for providing a public benefit as outlined in the Code. This new program includes privately-owned public spaces as one of those public benefit options. Hopefully, with guidelines outlined below in the Bonus Height Program document, the public will have more clarity about the use of the spaces that are created as a part of this program.
The Downtown Plan recommended that Downtown have unique types of open space available to meet the needs of citizens. The [Downtown Code] provides standards for the creation of these open spaces: greens, squares, plazas, courts and pocket parks/ playgrounds. The open spaces will serve as important “great spaces” to help create the vital and functioning neighborhoods envisioned by the Downtown Plan.
As a vital and welcoming element of the DTC’s public realm, [Privately-Owned Public Spaces] shall: 1. Be accessible and enjoyable for all users regardless of ability, by complying with applicable code standards for access for persons with disabilities. 2. Provide clear signage at each street frontage that describes the space as publicly accessible and outlines the terms of use for the space. 3. Be generally accessible during daylight hours, with minimal closures, throughout the year.
Privately-owned public spaces are great additions to the public realm when made accessible. However, due to their distinction as “privately-owned,” they cannot be a replacement for high quality publicly-owned public spaces, from the scale of small benches to large parks and greenways.
Doing it for the good of the city that we love
I sometimes feel like a broken record when I bring up the Design Center’s origin story or our efforts saving Church Street Park, but it is important to remember that we have been successful in shifting a tide that feels out of control. Our founders successfully advocated for Korean Veterans Boulevard to be a high quality urban street rather than a 7-lane highway in the late 1990s. It was the first wave of New Urbanism that changed Downtown Nashville’s trajectory for the better, and it resulted because of honest criticism, involved design charrettes, and renewed cross-sector partnerships. Taking away the benches on the Boulevard just around a decade after the street was fully completed feels like a step backwards. There are over 15,000 more people living in Downtown than there were when we first advocated for a better Korean Veterans Boulevard, so we should be adding more seating, not taking it away.
Pop-up bench showing community’s reaction to benches being removed [Pictured on 8.20]
Nashvillians have responded to the removal of the benches with creativity and compassion. Robin Lovett-Owen, a community member and pastor who is on the Vision Zero Advisory Committee, decided to take it upon herself to build her own wooden benches and place them around the city in under-resourced bus stops. After hearing the news about the benches being removed on Korean Veterans Blvd, Robin immediately took one she had built previously and installed it in the same place where NDOT just removed their own benches. Unfortunately, these wooden benches were removed at the request of NDOT leadership 48 hours later. This is very common for a government reaction, and I’ll direct you to read this Strong Towns blog, What Happens When Residents Act and Cities Shut It Down, that was just posted a month ago. The blog highlights the fact that this response to guerilla urbanism should be responded to with curiosity.
In a state of the world where it can feel like private institutions have outsized influence over our built environment, community members must continue to speak up and demonstrate what we want. We hope that city leaders recognize community reactions to the bench removal for what they are—neighbors extending care for their neighbors and our city. When things happen that don’t seem to align with stated values—like NDOT’s modality hierarchy serving pedestrians first—it leads community members to question why. City departments work best when they have the trust of the community, so this is a great opportunity for leaders to reevaluate.
My thoughts are on what our co-founder, Ann Roberts, said about the advocacy efforts around Korean Veterans Boulevard 30 years ago, “None of us were doing it for credit. We were doing it for the good of the city that we loved.” This quote brings tears to my eyes at the end of our origin story video as I am sure it would for fellow advocates. So, keep up the good work—watch The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980), collect your own data, and keep asking for design solutions that serve rather than exclude.