This is the second in a three-post series on the role of civic space and parks in Atlanta. We want to hear from you! What’s your neighborhood park? Why do you love it? Comment below or email us at designandourcity@perkinswill.com.
Hello, July. What a time to be talking about civic space and parks! And there is a lot to talk about, between sharing out what we heard in response to our last post’s question—where is Atlanta’s town square?—and answering the question with a new one—is the BeltLine Atlanta’s town square? A few in-the-know people around our studio weighed in, but we also called on two of our city-building partners for their perspectives: Kaziem Woodbury, director of Just Solutions at the Partnership for Southern Equity, and Kevin Burke, director of design for Atlanta BeltLine Inc. Bowtie wearers, both, they bring a lot to this conversation.
But it’s hot out there, so let’s dive in.
A lot of people—including our urban design team’s design principal, Jeff Williams—join Maria Saporta in nominating Piedmont Park as Atlanta’s town square. It makes sense. Historically and culturally significant, centrally located and now with a well-established connection to the BeltLine, Piedmont Park serves the neighborhood, the city, and the region as a place for big and small gatherings around all kinds of civic needs.
Bruce McEvoy, co-director of design in our studio, pointed to Centennial Olympic Park for similar reasons, plus the fact that it’s Downtown. The catch is, he notes, that the park is actually owned by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. Atlanta is really good at giving the impression of generous public space, but, as we noted in our post about public art in the city, it can be hard to tell the difference between “privately owned public space” and City-owned public space. On that note, Day’Zhanera King, an Atlanta native in our studio (they exist!), grew up in Summerhill and says Atlantic Station was her town square growing up. Also not public space. But imagine if they were. Imagine the impression we’d make if Centennial Olympic Park were a truly public space rubbing shoulders with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights next door!
Micah Lipscomb, senior landscape architect in our studio, has his reservations about the scale of Piedmont Park as a town square. When he thinks of a town square, Downtown Asheville or Portland, Oregon, come to mind, he says. These cities have literal squares where, for example, musicians play or people protest for all to see, join in, or pass by. Town squares are discrete, well-defined spaces, such as “one-plot parks” for people to gather or speak, he says. Here in Atlanta, Woodruff Park, Hurt Park, or Georgia Plaza Park could fit the bill in scale and location. And yet they clearly do not anchor the city the way Piedmont Park does. Case in point: we’re betting you had to look up at least one of those parks.
Then Cassie Branum, who leads urban design in our studio and firmwide across Perkins&Will, reset the board: Could we think of the BeltLine as Atlanta’s town square? Open and welcoming to satisfy the Piedmont Parkers. Downtown to satisfy the Centennial Olympic-ers. Mixed-use to satisfy the Atlantic Stationers. Discrete and well defined to satisfy the Woodruff Parkers. Certifiably public.
It’s a provocative notion, right? It might even satisfy the Atlanta exceptionalists in our midst! More important, it conveys the BeltLine’s significance as an Atlanta icon: We’re a big city. An international city. A dynamic city. A creative city. Rooted in community. Always on the move. A city of dreams and plans and follow-through. The BeltLine is the result of all the qualities we pride ourselves on.
Let’s check in with what our esteemed partners had to say, though, because they didn’t take the bait.
“Maybe 80 years ago Downtown was the town square, with Rich’s department store, government, City Hall, business, railroads, the whole thing,” Kevin Burke says. “But I’ve thought since I got here in 2009 that there is no Downtown here.” Not that he needs more validation, but somewhere right now Rem Koolhaas is nodding with approval.
To our last column’s list of Atlanta’s “distributed downtowns,” Kevin adds the crossroads at the center of Decatur’s Oakhurst. Restaurants, grocery, auto shop, professional offices… The intersection ticks all the pedestrian-friendly “gather here” boxes needed for the classical town square. And no surprise, it hosts several annual festivals.
The BeltLine, on the other hand? Not so much. “If you’re describing ‘town square’ as a spot on a macro scale of the city that everybody comes to, I don’t think the BeltLine qualifies for that.” It’s more like a series of town squares, he suggests—in part because they haven’t yet closed the loop. He and Atlanta BeltLine Inc. (ABI), however, are “pushing very hard by the World Cup to have basically from 1 o’clock to 10 o’clock completed,” he says.
“My one Vietnam War protest event was at Boston City Hall. That really was a town square, like the agora in Greece, because that’s where you went to do everything. And we don’t do it that way anymore.”
Kevin Burke, Director of Design, Atlanta BeltLine Inc.
If the agora is not how we do it now, as Kevin observes, then maybe the better question is, Is the BeltLine how we do it now? Or better yet: if the BeltLine is how we do it now, what is “it”?
As it happens, that is precisely the question that Kaziem Woodbury tossed back to us: “‘Where is Atlanta’s town square?’ sounds to me like a search for something,” he said. “What is it we’re searching for?”
In fact, it didn’t just happen that Kaziem reset our reset. Reframing the question is the first step in solving for equity in the built environment, he says. When his Just Solutions team joins a project, they look for “a question behind the question” to uncover the underlying motivation: what does the client think they are missing?
“We talk about civic spaces and town squares. But we also want to unpack, you know, where does that concept come from? If I go to India, where do I find the town square?”
Kaziem Woodbury, Director of Just Solutions, Partnership for Southern Equity
If the City or ABI is the client, Kevin might answer that the BeltLine is trying to restore the urban fabric that was rent by “urban renewal” policy in the middle of the last century. He might also answer that the public space opened up by the BeltLine is critical to the strength and sustainability of that fabric. If we are the client, on the other hand, well, we might answer that we see a need for that invaluable civic space of old. We want a BeltLine that gives us back our agora, our forum, our piazza or promenade, our medina, our rynek.
And that’s where Kaziem and team step in again with the follow-up, because identifying the want is only round one. The next question is, What are the “people in place” dreaming about? What do they think they need or are missing?
Maybe we’re the only ones who miss the town square. When we aren’t out building the future with our partners, we can get enamored of books with witty drawings of “The True City.” Kaziem allows that short of “doing everything” in such places, people did once upon a time rely on public squares for the news and exchanging ideas and goods. While the BeltLine is a place of civic engagement, it is definitely not how we do that now.
So are you a person in place on the BeltLine? If so, what are you dreaming about for that public space? What are you missing? Are you a person in place in Atlanta? If you don’t need a town square, what can the critical public space delivered by the BeltLine do for you? Your neighbors? Your community?
We launched this column with the claim that “good design starts with good questions.” Kaziem’s ask us to do a bit of soul searching. What can we make space for—together, for all of us—with this new perimeter? What’s our “it,” Atlanta?
You don’t have to think of the BeltLine as a series of town squares, but there’s no denying it will connect all our parks. And look at all the people who nominated a park for Atlanta’s town square! In the third and final post in this series, we’ll get into why parks are critical infrastructure, not just the best place to barbecue.
In the meantime, we want to hear from you! What’s your neighborhood park? Why do you love it? Leave your answer in a comment below, on IG @perkinswill_atl, or by email at designandourcity@perkinswill.com.
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