Governance: Reclaiming the Grid

Since 1996, Portland’s City Repair has been transforming the nature of public space and the dialogue that surrounds it. A nonprofit organization dedicated to creating public gathering places with creativity, artistry, and compassion, City Repair is a catalyst for neighborhood-based interaction and transformation. Most of City Repair’s projects focus on what they call “Intersection Repair,” which turns intersections into public gathering places. Despite early opposition, the City of Portland has embraced the idea, and City Repair has become a model for citizen-driven neighborhood improvement.

The first Intersection Repair grew out of one man’s despair, strategic and unified neighborhood action, and a little bit of luck. In the early 1990s, Mark Lakeman, one of City Repair’s founders, returned to Portland after living with indigenous Mayan people in southern Mexico. “I was in culture shock,“ Lakeman recalls. “The only way I could begin to survive was to try to recreate places where people could begin to talk with each other. I was living in this neighborhood where no one was talking, no one was interacting on the street, and I had just come from places where the commons was everywhere.” In response, Lakeman and a few friends constructed a “renegade teahouse” in a backyard in Southeast Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood–an inviting, transparent structure made from recycled wood and plastic sheeting–and began opening it up to neighborhood residents for weekly potlucks. 

By the time the city found out about the structure and condemned it, the teahouse had already served its purpose: beginning the dialogue about the function and structure of public space. According to Lakeman, “offering up private space for the public good broke down a lot of barriers. But it was more of a mental landscape shift; all that the space was doing was facilitating the opening of people’s imagination. We weren’t even thinking about [Intersection Repair] at that point, we were thinking about the teahouse. When the city [made us take down] the teahouse, the momentum that we’d built suddenly leapt into the intersection.”

If Lakeman describes the move from backyard to intersection as intuitive, it is likely because the concept of intersection as gathering place is still familiar to us. Intersections functioned as the first public plazas and had a huge impact on our early spiritual, social, and cultural lives as places for performing rituals, exchanging goods, and socializing. It was only in modern times that intersections became the province of motorized transport, with people relegated to its periphery. Still, the concept of the crossroads remains deeply imprinted on our collective psyche, even if that role is now largely symbolic.

Additionally, for those inspired by the teahouse, there was literally nowhere else to go. Street space is often the only real public space in a neighborhood. The Land Ordinance of 1785 platted Western U.S. cities using a rigid grid format that contained no provisions for public plazas or other gathering spaces. Unable to rely on the federal government to provide public open space, and with little ability to acquire it from private landholders, many U.S. municipalities, including Portland, were left without much public land–except for the streets.

The first Intersection Repair was placed at 9th and SE Sherrett Streets, near the defunct teahouse. Renamed Share-It Square by locals, its design included a self-serve tea station (with hot tea available 24 hours a day), a produce exchange station, and a bulletin board on the corners of the intersection. The most dramatic element of the Intersection Repair was a mural: a colorful, abstract design of a crossroads painted on the street itself. Initially, neighborhood residents attempted to involve staff from the City of Portland and gain formal approval for the idea, but city officials refused discussion. When residents constructed the Intersection Repair without city approval, the Office of Transportation threatened to sandblast the mural off the street.

Recognizing the power of such projects in building strong neighborhoods, Mayor Vera Katz and the City Council intervened, not only allowing the mural to stay but creating a city ordinance which specifically permitted Intersection Repair projects. Former Portland City Councilmember and Commissioner of Transportation Charlie Hales, an early supporter of Intersection Repair, says that although Portland transportation engineers may be more open to new ideas than engineers in other parts of the country, “they are trained to move cars, and as city officials their first response to something different is ‘no’.” But once Hales and other elected officials gave their blessings, the staff of the Department of Transportation became more supportive. Peter Mason, a District Traffic Engineer with Portland’s Office of Transportation, says that while he is quite supportive of the Intersection Repair projects (he helped paint the mural at the second Intersection Repair, the Sunnyside Piazza), staff members of the Office of Transportation are generally not risk-takers. “They are typically in reactive mode,” Mason notes. “They don’t have the resources to lead the process–and they probably shouldn’t.” He adds that the Maintenance Bureau, because of their obligation to take care of the streets for “as long as the city is organized,” can be even more conservative than the Office of Transportation. Overall, Mason feels that the Intersection Repair ordinance crafted by the city does a good job of balancing the interests of bureaucrats and neighborhood residents.

City Repair, as an organization, formed out of the experience at Share-It Square. In addition to the Intersection Repair projects, City Repair has facilitated numerous other place-making projects, many of them fashioned using sustainable building techniques and recycled materials. Several more Intersection Repair projects have been completed, with the ambitious goal of creating 96 of them in the City of Portland by 2005. “It sounds whimsical,” says Hales of City Repair’s work, “but then you go walk around [the Intersection Repair] on a Saturday afternoon and you get it.” People are out talking to each other. Cars move more slowly. There’s a sense that you are in a place, rather than just passing through one. Share-It Square has been such a success that it won the 1997 Citation Award and the 1997 People’s Choice Award from the Portland Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, as well as a 1999 Governor’s Livability Award from Oregon Governor Kitzhaber and the Oregon Livability Initiative.

As could be expected, there was some initial neighborhood opposition to the Intersection Repair concept. Those involved in what was to become City Repair employed two strategies to build support among the skeptics, the first of which was education and dialogue. A basic level of understanding was necessary for residents to be able to articulate how Portland’s lack of public gathering spaces can contribute to feelings of alienation from their neighbors and their community. While planners, academics, architects, and those literate in urban issues can recognize and articulate this phenomenon, others might not understand the source of their dissatisfaction–especially if they haven’t been exposed to places with a strong public life. 

For City Repair, an understanding of Portland’s urban form begins with the 5,000-year history of the gridiron, or orthogonal, city plan. Although its exact origins are debatable, the grid layout is found throughout ancient history in places like China, the Middle East (by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians), and the Greek and the Roman Empires. Its use as a mechanism of control is a consistent theme, and some urban historians assert that the gridiron layout remains a geographic expression of the early process of colonization and spatial, cultural, and economic domination. For example, in the Assyrian Empire, the grid was used for garrisons and detention camps in conquered territories. The grid was the settlement pattern the Egyptians used for worker-slaves building the pyramids. These tightly packed, rectilinear worker settlements stood in sharp contrast to the more expansive urban form of higher-class residential areas. In the Greek and Roman Empires, the grid was the structure for colonial military settlements, and in medieval times, it was used in the French bastides (military outposts).

The grid appeared in the Americas, according to Lewis Mumford, as “an essential part of the kit of tools a colonist brought with him for immediate use.” Philip II of Spain’s Law of the Indes (1573) replicated the same grid and central plaza design throughout the Spanish colonies in the Americas for 300 years. Likewise, after the Revolutionary War, the U.S. Land Ordinance of 1785 platted land west of the Ohio River into square townships, sections, and quarter sections. The grid was the fastest, most convenient way for the founding fathers to facilitate economic exchange of land (in order to clear Revolutionary War debts), cultural dominance over the indigenous peoples, and the movement of people westward. The grid also enabled them to prevent future revolutions and contradictory land claims by settlers on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains. Public plazas were often subdivided, overlooked, or avoided. Lakeman attributes much of our current dearth of civic life to the Land Ordinance’s failure to provide public gathering spaces, and asserts that “we’re still living in those patterns that have never served us.”

Its rectilinear form is only one defining feature of the grid. In her classic text, Matrix of Man, architecture critic Sybil Moholy-Nagy points out that, “in contrast to other types of urban foundations, the modular grid plan is not generated from within the community but is determined from without.” The gridiron form is merely one example of a planning approach that places rationality and order–sometimes at the expense of logic–above aesthetics and human comfort, imposing a template upon the landscape. Although it does have a practical function, the grid is at best a mixed blessing. Whether it is used as a vehicle for transparency and cheaper service provision or to expedite colonial settlement and real estate development, it is important to realize its effects on human culture and interaction.

In his book, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, James Scott discusses the tradeoffs between the grid’s facilitation of service provision, tax collection, and way-finding, and its commodification and homogenization of the landscape. He finds significant that an imposed, geometric urban design–an order that can only be viewed in graphic representation or from an airplane–“has no necessary relationship to the order of life as it is experienced by its residents. Although certain state services may be more easily provided, … these apparent advantages may be negated by such perceived disadvantages as the absence of a dense street life, … the loss of the spatial irregularities that foster coziness, gathering places for informal recreation, and neighborhood feeling.”

Urban sociologist Richard Sennett, discussing American land development, describes a process by which the grid is used to “neutralize” urban space. He argues that by eliminating public spaces and references to the natural environment and by creating a clear relationship between the grid and real estate development (rectangular units are easy to survey, buy, sell, and tax), the grid became a space solely for economic competition. The result is “more than a blank canvas for development. [The grid] subdues those who must live in the space, … disorienting their ability to see and evaluate relationships. In that sense, [gridiron planning] is an act of dominating and subduing others.” From the perspective of a city bureaucrat, a real estate developer, or even a visitor to a city, the grid is transparent and simple. A resident might see it as simplistic and alienating.

Or they might not notice it at all.

For those who do not have an understanding of the broader cultural context of urban form and development, what is lacking in their neighborhood life may only really become evident when they are confronted with a public space that works. The second strategy City Repair employed to gain support was demonstration projects. The teahouse and the intersection repair elegantly show that it is possible to create public space in existing neighborhoods. Lakeman says that “one of the most important tools that City Repair employs is creating models that people inhabit and experience. It’s just like putting two worlds in contrast.”

The teahouse first helped Sellwood neighborhood residents understand what a commons is. Although knowledge of urban history may help people understand why U.S. cities lack public plazas, people need to experience what life is like with them to really buy into the concept. Public life is not an academic endeavor. Once people experienced the teahouse, they began to feel passionate about these issues. “Once people were feeling strongly about the absence of a commons, then they started to take it personally,” Lakeman says.

According to Lakeman, by the time the teahouse came down, neighborhood residents understood the importance of public space better than the planners and traffic engineers. At that point, they realized that “the people who had authority didn’t understand. We knew that they would understand, but they needed an example.” Ultimately, city officials had to be shown what these residents were talking about. Former Commissioner Charlie Hales agrees that a successful example “encourages [city government] to be more welcoming of the next unconventional idea that comes along.”

Neighborhood residents of all political leanings have united behind the Intersection Repair projects. Neighborhoods must apply for City Repair’s technical assistance in a project, and so there is no imposition by City Repair in neighborhoods that aren’t interested. Furthermore, Portland’s Intersection Repair ordinance requires that 80 percent of all residences within a two-block radius and all four property owners on the corners of the intersection sign off on the project. It is to City Repair’s advantage that creating public space, although not an apolitical act, is something that can’t easily be politicized.

Some neighbors do require more convincing than others. Americans have little tradition of engaging with public spaces, and in general, they approach public life as individuals rather than as communities. Without that tradition of neighborhood interaction in the public realm, some may not understand its importance at first. This lack of widespread understanding often manifests itself as fear: fear of property values going down, of crime, or of eyesores. “We see it every time we do a project,” Lakeman says. “Somebody is afraid, maybe a whole class or group of people in a neighborhood.” Going through the process of coming together and making decisions with others in their neighborhood “gives people a chance to rethink those biases.”

Although there has been interest from people in many other cities, so far no one outside of Portland has implemented any sort of Intersection Repair project. Considering that Portland is known for its progressive politics, strong neighborhoods, and support of civic life, this may not be surprising. As Hales says, “it’s the character of Portland to lead. We like to be first.” However, given the grid’s ubiquity in cities across North America, City Repair sees almost limitless potential. With the success of Intersection Repair in Portland as a case study, staff and volunteers have given countless workshops, slide shows, and lectures all over the West Coast. A tour of the East Coast and Canada is scheduled for the fall.

In the end, the point of the City Repair projects is not the structures or the murals themselves; it is the power of a small action that has the enormous effect of allowing people to experience the culture of participation and public life, something they may never have come into contact with before. “It doesn’t just facilitate sitting down or aesthetic enjoyment, it facilitates interaction in a place where there hadn’t been any before,” says Lakeman. “And for people that are used to the absence of culture, when they suddenly see places that … stand in such contrast they are changed immediately. They start to see their whole world differently. It’s a powerful impetus for change.”

The City Repair tour starts the last week of October and will end the last week of November. Stops will include Boston, Providence, New York City, Philadelphia, Ithaca, and Ottawa. Please see City Repair’s website, www.cityrepair.org, for more information.