By JON HARTMAN
During my Master’s Degree program there was a lot of concepts of urban planning and design, economic development, and redevelopment that my fellow students and I were exposed to. One planning and redevelopment tool that I really found interesting was the concept of placemaking. This may be a newer concept from some readers, but it employs time-tested techniques that have unknowingly been used for centuries to develop cities in Europe and America before the 1930s.
So what is it that makes a great place? A place you WANT to be in or go to? Well, the space or destination must be fun and active, unique, safe, clean, attractive, walkable, convenient, welcoming, interactive, and friendly. When you think about your favorite places to visit, are these adjectives you would use to describe that place? We must think about places here in Elizabethton that both citizens and outside visitors would use these words to describe. And if we don’t have any, we must work to create such a place.
So how do we go about creating a place or more places? First of all, we must begin designing our spaces (including our streets) to a people or pedestrian scale. Street lights high above the street provide little light for pedestrians, but a lower, people scaled light provides lighting for both pedestrians and vehicles. Another way is by developing as many uses for one space as possible. Parks are a great example! A big open yard can be considered a park, but aside from playing football, soccer, or tag, there is very few uses that can be accommodated there. Add a playground set, a few picnic benches, some trees, and a basketball hoop and now you’ve more than doubled the number of uses that that park can accommodate. Kiwanis Park is an excellent example of creating a good space. The bottom line, the more there is to do, the more attractive a place will be.
One technique that I like to use to help make this concept more tangible is the Power of Ten rule. This rule or technique can be applied to almost any city, county, region, or specific place. It goes like this, within Elizabethton we should have at least 10 areas or places that are destinations — places citizens or visitors want to visit. Within each of those destinations there should be 10 specific places that people want to visit, and within each of those 10 places there should be 10 things to do, see, or interact with. Taking the example of downtown as a destination, what are 10 places that people go downtown for? Assuming Covered Bridge Park is one of the places, what are 10 things you can do, see, or interact with at Covered Bridge Park?
Placemaking is a concept that is tried and true. It was worked over and over again in city after city to help create more and better places. The best part about placemaking is that it is relatively inexpensive and doesn’t involve expensive consultants, but rather the people who use the space. There is no overnight miracle to help save and create Elizabethton’s places, but remember the tortoise won the race and small changes add up to making Elizabethton a better place. Let’s talk about it!
(Jon Hartman is Director of Planning & Economic Development for the City of Elizabethton. He can be contacted at jhartman@cityofelizabethton.org or by phone at (423) 542-1503.)