We’ve had some amazingly good writing in the comments over recent weeks — it’s almost enough to restore my faith in the internet. I’m going to start pulling from that for “guest posts”. Here’s the first, a post by Tom Dahan responding to my writing on a recent Small Business Grants program by the EDA. Thanks for such an important discussion of place-making!

I don’t disagree with your interpretation of the grant program. But I want to make a different point.

From the downtown plan: ”…create a sense of place within Downtown Camden with strong design, mixes of uses, and a cross-pollination of institutional workers, students, residents, business people and Camden visitors”

From Relph’s Place and Placelessness (1976): placelessness is “the casual eradication of distinctive places and the making of standardized landscapes that results from an insensitivity to the significance of place”

When I think about the downtown of Camden, it strikes me that there is not a single block stretch that has storefronts lining both sides of the street. It seems the last one was Broadway between MLK and Stevens, which they are building the new Rowan/Rutgers building. Furthermore, the idea that fifth street represents a potential business corridor in their plan is also surprising since not a single storefront faces that street.

The city ceded to placelessness when it allowed bad design from suburbs to creep onto MLK Blvd with the construction of the TD Bank and CVS and the imposing Rand Transit Center. The preponderance of small parking lots throughout the downtown signals to the pedestrian that their mode of transit is subordinate to the car, and discourages the very idea that this grant program is trying foster. Connecting the waterfront to the downtown is impeded by the superblock of Market from 3rd to Delaware Ave with its incumbent parking lots and windowless walls will keep these places from ever developing this sense of place they are talking about in their plan and dooms the small business grant strategy to failure before it is even implemented.

I have two small ideas that might generate a sense of place:
1) at the intersection of third and market, there are open spaces at each corner. Use these spaces to set up a food truck corner or an open air bazaar sort of thing. It will activate that otherwise odd corner of the windowless structures and jury parking lots. I believe a similar idea was proposed in the space near the Broadway PATCO stop by using shipping containers to set up semi-permanent spaces (which is also a good idea there too!) http://anelessen.com/projects-of-interest/camden-downtown-institutional-plan/
2) think of alternative uses for that strange little lot between 4th and 3rd on Market. It features metal buttresses that suppport the adjacent structures. Could be a nice area to convert to an open air patio sort of thing, especially if the nearby restaurants like the soul food and salad places promoted it. Waypoints like these provide a space for conversation, a meal, or some shade.

Ideas like the above are a dime a dozen, but to an extent, they are also just that inexpensive to implement, and you don\’t necessarily need grants to small businesses to do them. If grants were tied to either or both, it could be a great opportunity to bring in businesses from other neighborhoods to program in these spaces to provide an inclusive opportunity to residents of other neighborhoods to engage in the development of the sense of place, since after all, they are third on the list of potential cross-pollinators.

Tags: place-making