I just got back from the BCLA 2008 Conference. The keynote was Fred Kent from the Project for Public Spaces. He works on urban renewal by improving public spaces so that they become community centres where people like to be. He has a lot of very interesting and enlightening ideas on why parts of cities and towns are problem areas, and more interesting how to fix them.
Being a web designer and systems analyst - I take in everything by asking myself, "how does this apply to what I do on the web". I got very excited as I realised that what he was saying was making perfect sense for virtual communities as well as physical ones.
For example - a quote from his website, "Design alone does not make places succeed." I have to heartily agree. 'Design' alone does not make a website succeed either. Ever seen an extremely artistic website? I think most of them are beautiful in some artsy way but they really aren't functional.
Another thought from Fred - "Parks succeed when people come first" Comparatively, I would say "websites succeed when people come first."
Here's a paragraph from their site about how they apply their philosophy to public parks. Just insert the word "website" instead of park, and we are good to go...
"We start by truly understanding how people will use a place and what activities will draw them there. Design cannot be the starting point for creating a great place. Within any successful park [website], there should be several dynamic destinations that attract different kinds of people. These destinations should offer many things to do, such as socializing, eating, reading, playing a game, interacting with art, and so on. Creating a great public space requires helping communities articulate a vision for these activities and destinations. From this Placemaking process, PPS creates a concept plan--a program for uses, activities, and destinations--which may lead to a more detailed design phase."
From his keynote address, he talked about the problem with many city planners and designs. I'll summarize by three of his statements and some photos to illustrate.
- "People attract people."
- "When we build for cars we attract more cars."
- "When we build for people we attract more people."
He then compared a couple of famous libraries and talked about what happens when form overcomes function. Or in other words, what happens when you let an architect plan the darn thing. Below are Seattle Public Library with its exterior completely unable to relate to the buildings and space around it. Compare it to New York's public library located in Bryant Park. The folks at PPS helped redesign the entry way into Bryant Park and gave direction into how to make the park itself safer and inviting to the public so that it would be used. Which library do you want to hang out at?
Another example of architectural "wow factor" that is completely uninviting is Guggenheim Bilbao - a design monstrosity which is missing one very noticeable thing....
...people. Is a design great if it doesn't work for the people? Apparently nobody actually likes to visit this place and the people who do are commonly mugged because its a deserted and unsafe area.
These spaces are more inviting. People sit and stay awhile. Communities can form.
Now lets think about websites in the same manner... If I was building for traffic or cars (aka hits) I'd build a super thoroughfare highway that would let me go from place A to place B as quickly as possible. I think we could agree that the best web super highway looks like this...
And if I was building for the purpose of an online community I think we would find a good site would look something like this...
Of course there are other very popular websites which aren't exactly beautiful (maybe even ugly) but they still have strong communities. How does that work? Well again Kent noted something about that in relation to physical spaces which applies equally well to the web. What he said was basically that the ugliness of a building isn't really as noticeable if it is surrounded by people. This made me think about MySpace - a social website with an extremely vibrant community but much of it is dog-gone ugly. Of the same accord I'd throw in slashdot.org - a not very sexy website but absolutely full of vital life and community.
Food for thought then... How do we build for online communities? How about virtual public spaces such as library or civic websites? How can we invite people to come in and stay awhile instead of just grabbing and going? How can we build communities instead of just offering services? I think that Fred was right... we need to focus on people and build for people. People attract people.
Fred talked as well about one other very interesting point. He talked about the unwanteds, the homeless and/or problem public. The ones which make public spaces unwelcoming to the rest of us. He said the way to deal with those people was to make the space so inviting to the rest of the public that you won't notice the odd homeless type person. Also by peoplizing and populating dead spaces, you drive off the seedier types who tend to like dark and sparsely populated places. Bring the people back and the seedier types will go away of their own accord because the place won't offer them enough privacy and obscurity for them to break laws and go unpublished. This is how you reclaim the streets. Or in our case public spaces.
And with that, I leave you some Right said Fred...
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