The morning began with a successful conversation made up of a planner, an anthropologist, an architect, a lawyer/politician (a former member of the Knesset) and myself. After the travails and personal crises of yesterday, people came back to the charrette hall with a new willingness to work. I spent the morning tackling the larger principles that could guide a plan for the center of Kiryat Shmona. The main goal we developed for the area around the civic plaza, the Zahal Square, is as follows:
Concentrate youth, cultural, elder, and small local businesses at the south side of the downtown.
Based upon this we developed a series of recommendations including reusing vacant buildings before building new buildings and the primacy of small-scale improvements to catalyze activity and local identity. A third, to restrict commercial activity in the civic square area to local businesses and a fourth, to encourage a framework of local entrepreneurship for people of all ages were meant to further reinforce the idea that by reinforcing the local environment in this portion of the downtown the revitalized town would in turn create a unique local identity that in and of itself would become the basis of a sustainable economy that both benefits of the people that live here and through this type of local uniqueness attract tourists.. This is all of course music to my everyday urbanist ears. Perhaps this could be called do-it-yourself (DIY) urbanism, and potentially suffer from well meaning amateurism, but in this situation where for so long there has been a disconnect between townspeople, government and institutional entities it seems worthwhile to create self-governing mechanisms as a first step.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of our principles discussion was the discourse surrounding the opening and closing of businesses on Saturdays. I cannot begin to fully understand the complexities of the social and religious relationships surrounding this issue and the ways that this affects local commerce, the success of individual stores and the ability of Kiryat Shmona to compete with surrounding towns and even kibutzes. Suffice it to say that Kiryat Shmona is mostly closed on Saturday, which is generally accepted. But given that many people have also suggested that the town should be more open on Saturday and that most if not all of the team is secular, one of the planners who has been working on the charrette issues for many months suggested, and our group adopted, a recommendation that first actions to implement any plan can not be based upon actions or programs that depend for success of Saturday use. This was felt by all to be a critical recommendation that would help gain public acceptance of the charrette work and ideas.
Public design is always sensitive and diverse groups always have differences that need to be brought together through negotiation and compromise. I have no idea if this attempt at sensitivity in Kiryat Shmona will be helpful to the promulgation of our ideas. I do know that it is a new experience for me to deal in such a direct way with the nexus of urban design, context and religion, and that this nexus is not easily or quickly settled and even if it is settled not guaranteed to be stable, and like all things here requires humble patience if there is any expectation for success.
In the afternoon, I worked with the group developing principles and ideas for the reuse of the bus terminal site. Again there was great cooperation between the traffic engineers, a young architect, the economist, a student and myself. Everyone enjoyed working together and new ideas for the redevelopment of this site were quickly generated. Every other work group seemed equally enthused and cooperative and by the time of the evening presentation a great deal had been accomplished and unlike the day before there was a great spirit of unanimity – all had crafted a plan that was both principled, consistent throughout and all seemed to feel strongly and confidently that it was correct for this time and place.
The evening presentation was before a distinguished panel of professional and political guests. Citizens also came forward, though not in great numbers as the final presentation is scheduled for tomorrow. Also in attendance was a leading Israeli cultural and architectural critic. The presentations reflected the spirit of the day. From my perspective a wonderful vision that was at once cultural and physical was presented within a compelling framework of modest and implementable ideas and recommendations. I presented the bus terminal work and in the process suggested publicly that the existing development plans were very unfortunate and that we hoped the principles we had developed would be used as a basis for further negotiation to ensure a higher quality effort on both the part of the city and the developer.
The bus terminal site ended up being a major point of discussion amongst both the experts and the citizens. With one exception the citizens that attended expressed strong opposition to the development plan. Amazingly the City Manager told everyone that there was nothing they could do about it, there was nothing he could do about it, and though announced only ten days ago the project was a done deal. I have never seen such a nonresponsive approach to the public by an official. What happened next was even more amazing. One of the invited guests, the chair of a planning council responsible for development in the central part of the country stood up in this public forum and publicly berated the City Manager, telling him in no uncertain terms that claiming that there was nothing he could do was simply in abrogation of civic responsibility There was something crackling about the way this women accused the manager of weakness. Something hopeful. My translator at this point told me he thought the City Manager would cry. This of course did not happen yet this was a wonderful democratic moment. It gave me a sense that the charrette process was achieving its goals of awakening a new sensitivity to urbanism, indeed good urbanism in Israeli cities.
A side note; the journalist and critic broke her silence at one point and stated strongly that she thought our attempts to be contextually sensitive, incremental and act in a small-scale manner on the civic center and the bus terminal site was useless. She stated that there was nothing special about Kiryat Shmona center, that the only hope was the big shiny project proposed by the developer, that the developer’s surface parking lot was a wonderful invitation for people to finally stop and shop in this town, and that the developer’s plan deserved support. Maybe I lost something in translation. Maybe this was populism Israeli-style from a person who commands great respect and critical authority. Maybe all my Southern California mini-mall enthusiasms have finally come back to haunt me. After a day of collectively seeking and gaining unanimity amongst our team and after three days of listening to local people describe the need for something intensely local all I could think of was one of the most influential books on urbanism ever written, “The Death and Life of American Cities”, and how it’s author Jane Jacobs, a crackling women who stopped a freeway from destroying New York City’s Greenwich Village, must be rolling over in her grave.
What a terrible comment by the journalist – what a defeatist view of one own’s city to assert that you must reduce its city center to a single big box. She probably thinks a high road bypassing the rest of the city would even further enhance this Shangri-la.
John, aside from this note it seems you are having a great time. It is invigorating to read that the principles of “Everyday Urbanism” enable people to formulate visions for their own communities, visions that are inclusive rather than exclusive and rich rather than one-dimensional – in such unexpected places as Kiryat Shmona.