Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Creativity in street furniture

Instagram photo by FeeBee510.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that in Oakland, the stump of a tree that had been cut down was carved into a chair. Later, someone carved into the stump chair a passage from the book, The Giving Tree.

Creative seating in the public space is an element of the public realm framework.

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Earlier this week was introduced to the website of a firm called Street Furniture, which manufactures and sells street furniture, natch, but also does public space planning and consulting work.

While they have a website for the US, the firm is based in Australia and the firm's Aussie website includes writings on public space matters in a section called streetchat.

One of the firm's newest products is called the Flower Chair, named for the chief of the firm, Joshua Flowers.

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3 Comments:

At 8:49 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

there seems to be an uneven and unspoken policy on street furniture in places like the eastern market metro plaza- which at one time had park benches- then they were taken away- I had heard- to discourage drunks and mendicants from sleeping on them. It does not appear to have done much to decrease this activity but it sure makes it difficult for elderly and young mothers with children, etc. to find a place to rest . This sort of thing needs clarification and explanation from city officials who never let us know why they make decisions such as these.

 
At 12:40 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

We need different ways of managing public spaces. If you have management and programming, you can deal with vagrancy, and you can have street furniture, when by contrast if it is unattended, it can be problematic rather than beneficial.

I aim to write about this soon.

 
At 2:04 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

right now everybody suffers

 

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