One mistake cities can make when attempting to craft resilient places is devising development plans that exceed the scale of what is realistically achievable within the confines of a city’s growth potential.
Cities can implement economic studies to evaluate a neighborhood’s potential for new development, but even a good study may not consider the full range of possibilities for the future evolution of a neighborhood.
For coastal communities, the challenge of crafting great neighborhoods is further compounded by the need for structural mitigation. New developments along the coast do not only need to account for economic uncertainty, they must also be prepared to deal with natural uncertainty in the form of coastal storms and flooding. Even when city planners have a solid understanding of the underlying growth dynamics within a place, it is seldom the case that growth can easily be channeled into productive placemaking ventures.
In short, while city planners can easily define a great community, it is a much harder undertaking to apply time-tested, community planning principles to forging livable communities.
In order to better plan for future development conditions, it is important that planners envision the city not as a static entity, but as a fluid organism that develops a full range of unique adaptations to accommodate new people and businesses. One unique adaptation that cities have employed is the use of the temporary structures or facilities to incubate new businesses and city enterprises. Farmers markets, pop-up shops and food trucks are all examples of temporary urban strategies that can provide valuable insight into the ongoing evolution of a city.
One resource developed by the consulting firm Urban Design Associates that may help planners better understand the power of such strategies is the document “Everyday Squares.” Developed in 2012, the document chronicles several small urban design projects within the city of Pittsburgh that creatively repurpose existing urban spaces.
Case study: Farmers @ Firehouse Market
Each case study chronicles the general layout of the space, its relation to the street and the amount of square footage it occupies within the urban fabric. One project featured in the document is the Farmers @ Firehouse Market. The market site, which is a parking lot on the weekdays, is transformed into a vibrant public gathering space with the aid of a few tents and displays. The market is home to as many as 20 vendors on a single day and what it lacks in built infrastructure it more than makes up for in social capital.
Because the event is temporary, the market gets to utilize the space rent free, which has freed up additional funds to allow the market to hire a project manager. This investment in social and cultural capital over physical capital has made the Firehouse Market into Pittsburgh’s most popular farmers market and a testament to the institutional capacity that can be built with temporary infrastructure.
The simple placemaking tools elaborated on in “Everyday Squares” are not simply confined to one city though; there are many unique instances of temporary urban design strategies being deployed to aid in a community’s emergence.
Case study: Seaside, Florida
For coastal communities, one of the greatest places to see temporary design at work is the New Urbanist community of Seaside, Florida. In its early years, Seaside employed many seasonal events and uses to drum up interest in the experimental community. A Saturday market helped bring some modicum of retail to the new development, as there weren’t enough residents yet to support brick and mortar retail.
Eventually this market morphed into the Per-spi-cas-ity market. The simple tables and awnings of the Saturday market events gave rise to modest one-room pavilions and tents. These structures were highly mobile though and could be deployed in different areas of the community as the town matured.
Today, the market occupies much of the same space it did in its early years, though it has now settled into more of a secondary role among Seaside’s primary retail uses. In this instance, we can see how temporary development can set the foundation for permanent development. The success of the Saturday market events gave rise to the semi-permanent Per-spi-cas-ity, which itself was a transitional phase between seasonal retail ventures and a fully matured retail environment.
Even though the community is fully built out today, temporary structures, such as airstream trailers, still grace the town center and continue to serve as small business incubators for retail startups.
Temporary placemaking is a far cry from being cheap or ephemeral, in fact it is essential to understanding the capacity for change a community possesses. Examples such as Seaside’s Per-spi-cas-ity market and Pittsburgh’s Farmers @ Firehouse Market are worthy of copying because they allow communities to gauge the success of new economic ventures while also lowering barriers to entry in the marketplace and minimizing risk. They also serve to make a city more adaptable to changing social or economic circumstances, thereby forging a more resilient place.
Meet the author
Stephen Deal
Extension Specialist (Land Use Planning)
Stephen works with floodplain managers, building officials, city officials, scientists and Sea Grant partners to provide information and training related to flood and storm resilience. He holds a... Read more
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