Coming Attraction: Stratford's Market Square 06
The Market Square, the Town, and the Planet
Published in the Stratford Gazette, 7 June 2012
“Whenever we create a public space, it’s amazing: people just materialize out of thin air in minutes.” This is Janette Sadik-Khan, the person responsible for New York City’s 6,000 miles of roadways, interviewed by Taras Grescoe for his book Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile. “We’ve stopped looking at the streets as corridors for moving cars as fast as possible. We really look at them as valuable public spaces. In certain areas we can transform pavement to plazas in a matter of days. I think New Yorkers are really tired of waiting ten or fifteen years to see any kind of change.” A New York Times article about the now-permanent pedestrianizing of part of Broadway reports: “Foot traffic grew by 11% in Times Square, and more than two-thirds of the area’s retailers wanted the project to become permanent.”
Create a public space … and people materialize out of thin air. Can’t you see this happening in the Market Square here in Stratford?
The people who “materialize” are like a blood transfusion. They revitalize the whole area. Because there are more people, more businesses come. In Ottawa, the Sparks Street Mall “has generated the highest taxes in the city, and no vacancies remain in the area.” Oshawa’s downtown revitalization reduced the commercial vacancy rate from 21% in 2006 to 11% in 2012, and between 2011 and 2012 pedestrian traffic downtown increased by 25%.
Oshawa’s revitalization was helped by the University of Ontario Institute of Technology moving two of its faculties into repurposed historic buildings downtown. Mayor John Henry told the Globe and Mail: “Once the University made that commitment, that’s when it really started. Students being downtown has brought student-oriented businesses downtown: Thai food, Italian food, coffee houses. The students have brought a real diversity to our downtown core.”
What’s attractive to students attracts other visitors and local residents: street life, street furniture, shops, comfortable spaces for spending quality time. “Create a public space and people materialize out of thin air.”
Rick Haldenby, speaking at the Market Square Discovery Session on May 16th, described the effect on downtown Cambridge of moving the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture there. “It has attracted not only students – he said that 92% of the students live within walking distance of the school – but locals as well. He said that improving the area for pedestrians is crucial. Because of the increasing and interweaving improvements, students and others are moving back downtown.
As the businesses on New York’s Broadway discovered, pedestrian traffic is hugely important. People on foot look at displays in shop windows, pop in to have a closer look, buy. They see an attractive restaurant with tables and chairs out front: they’re ready to take a load off their feet, look at the menu, order a meal or a drink. While they’re eating and drinking, they spot another nearby store, and when they’ve paid their bill they stroll over to have a look. Because they’ve enjoyed themselves, they come back another time. They tell their friends.
Part of this is slowing down the movement of people. This is what makes a street or square lively and commercially successful. When urban experts analyze how attractive a public space is they record how much time people spend in it, not just moving but sitting.
Stratford is much smaller than the cities mentioned earlier, but on its own scale it has just as much potential. Besides the University and the many cultural and culinary attractions, it has a Market Square described by Rick Haldenby as “one of the most promising public spaces in Canada and North America” with the potential, he feels, to “rank with some of the great public spaces in Europe.”
Stratford needed to be told that, and the fact that it comes from someone who sees our city with the eye of an outsider – an experienced and informed outsider – makes it especially valuable. We need to realize the value of what we have, not just the visual attractiveness of the Market Square but its attractiveness in another sense – the way in which it could act as a magnet for visitors and local residents alike. Through the Market Square would flow most of the life of downtown, enriching the area (and the city as a whole) in both human and commercial terms.
And the process of revitalizing Stratford’s downtown is beginning.
Taras Grescoe’s book was published this spring. The N. Y. Times article, “New York Traffic Experiment Gets Permanent Run”, appeared on Feb. 11, 2010. The information about the Sparks Street Mall comes from “Best Practices of Market Square Revitalization”, prepared by the Stratford Market Square Project Team in 2010. The article about Oshawa, “Civic buildings boost Oshawa’s economic engine”, appeared in the Globe and Mail on May 14th, 2012. Rick Haldenby’s words are quoted from the Stratford Gazette’s report on the meeting, published in the May 24th issue.
Rick Haldenby has been Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo since 1988.
The Plant Architect Inc. design for renovating the Market Square can be found at www.stratfordmarketsquare.com
Brandis has lived in Stratford since 1996 and is a full-time writer. She is the author of a number of books – visit Marianne's website
Published in the Stratford Gazette, 7 June 2012
“Whenever we create a public space, it’s amazing: people just materialize out of thin air in minutes.” This is Janette Sadik-Khan, the person responsible for New York City’s 6,000 miles of roadways, interviewed by Taras Grescoe for his book Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile. “We’ve stopped looking at the streets as corridors for moving cars as fast as possible. We really look at them as valuable public spaces. In certain areas we can transform pavement to plazas in a matter of days. I think New Yorkers are really tired of waiting ten or fifteen years to see any kind of change.” A New York Times article about the now-permanent pedestrianizing of part of Broadway reports: “Foot traffic grew by 11% in Times Square, and more than two-thirds of the area’s retailers wanted the project to become permanent.”
Create a public space … and people materialize out of thin air. Can’t you see this happening in the Market Square here in Stratford?
The people who “materialize” are like a blood transfusion. They revitalize the whole area. Because there are more people, more businesses come. In Ottawa, the Sparks Street Mall “has generated the highest taxes in the city, and no vacancies remain in the area.” Oshawa’s downtown revitalization reduced the commercial vacancy rate from 21% in 2006 to 11% in 2012, and between 2011 and 2012 pedestrian traffic downtown increased by 25%.
Oshawa’s revitalization was helped by the University of Ontario Institute of Technology moving two of its faculties into repurposed historic buildings downtown. Mayor John Henry told the Globe and Mail: “Once the University made that commitment, that’s when it really started. Students being downtown has brought student-oriented businesses downtown: Thai food, Italian food, coffee houses. The students have brought a real diversity to our downtown core.”
What’s attractive to students attracts other visitors and local residents: street life, street furniture, shops, comfortable spaces for spending quality time. “Create a public space and people materialize out of thin air.”
Rick Haldenby, speaking at the Market Square Discovery Session on May 16th, described the effect on downtown Cambridge of moving the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture there. “It has attracted not only students – he said that 92% of the students live within walking distance of the school – but locals as well. He said that improving the area for pedestrians is crucial. Because of the increasing and interweaving improvements, students and others are moving back downtown.
As the businesses on New York’s Broadway discovered, pedestrian traffic is hugely important. People on foot look at displays in shop windows, pop in to have a closer look, buy. They see an attractive restaurant with tables and chairs out front: they’re ready to take a load off their feet, look at the menu, order a meal or a drink. While they’re eating and drinking, they spot another nearby store, and when they’ve paid their bill they stroll over to have a look. Because they’ve enjoyed themselves, they come back another time. They tell their friends.
Part of this is slowing down the movement of people. This is what makes a street or square lively and commercially successful. When urban experts analyze how attractive a public space is they record how much time people spend in it, not just moving but sitting.
Stratford is much smaller than the cities mentioned earlier, but on its own scale it has just as much potential. Besides the University and the many cultural and culinary attractions, it has a Market Square described by Rick Haldenby as “one of the most promising public spaces in Canada and North America” with the potential, he feels, to “rank with some of the great public spaces in Europe.”
Stratford needed to be told that, and the fact that it comes from someone who sees our city with the eye of an outsider – an experienced and informed outsider – makes it especially valuable. We need to realize the value of what we have, not just the visual attractiveness of the Market Square but its attractiveness in another sense – the way in which it could act as a magnet for visitors and local residents alike. Through the Market Square would flow most of the life of downtown, enriching the area (and the city as a whole) in both human and commercial terms.
And the process of revitalizing Stratford’s downtown is beginning.
Taras Grescoe’s book was published this spring. The N. Y. Times article, “New York Traffic Experiment Gets Permanent Run”, appeared on Feb. 11, 2010. The information about the Sparks Street Mall comes from “Best Practices of Market Square Revitalization”, prepared by the Stratford Market Square Project Team in 2010. The article about Oshawa, “Civic buildings boost Oshawa’s economic engine”, appeared in the Globe and Mail on May 14th, 2012. Rick Haldenby’s words are quoted from the Stratford Gazette’s report on the meeting, published in the May 24th issue.
Rick Haldenby has been Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo since 1988.
The Plant Architect Inc. design for renovating the Market Square can be found at www.stratfordmarketsquare.com
Brandis has lived in Stratford since 1996 and is a full-time writer. She is the author of a number of books – visit Marianne's website