7 Money from Uncle Sam, Sister State, Tia Town and Los Pueblos

Quality planning and design should be rewarded with good money. One rule of thumb is that for every hour citizens participate in planning and design of a public space ten dollars is invested in the community. Another rule of thumb is that for every public dollar invested into downtown, eight private dollars will materialize; the only catch is that the public investment usually must be committed first.

One source of public financing is the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program, run by the Local Government Division of the State of New Mexico. New Mexico communities are eligible for up to $400,000 for capital facilities, as long as a community or a neighborhood is 51% or more low- to moderate income. If the community seeks to plan a project such as a plaza to prevent or eliminate slum or blight, $25,000 CDBG planning grants are for such plaza planning efforts.

The Local Government Division can not only assist any community pursue CDBG funds, it can also assist any community with a One Stop Shop of state and federal funding agencies, who will assemble to help any town wishing to fund a plaza. This cuts down the time needed to package funding from dozens of hour to one. The Division also extends to communities use of its web site in creative, interactive ways to more fully and more meaningfully incorporate citizen viewpoints into proposed plaza designs, in an iterative process of virtual town halls.

In 2000 the state of New Mexico was the only state to give out Main Street construction grants. Should this be funding be resumed, a plaza design charrette and construction could be in the offing for Main Street communities.
Local sources of funding demonstrate local support for a project. Successful available funding sources include tax increment financing, lodgers’ tax, general obligation bonds, and private contributions.

Lesson: Raise awareness, interest, excitement and quality design, and funds will follow.

Santa Fe, 4th July 1898

8 A Plaza Works Hard

Pastoral splendor may strike one when seeing a plaza. But a lot of thought, design and work went into creating such feeling in this central public place. And even more care is needed to maintain the look and feel of the place. Just like your car, periodic maintenance of a plaza is necessary, and not just once every century, as some New Mexican plazas may seem. One way to reassess the function and design features of a plaza is to review them every five years, along with similar reviews that occur to update a community’s comprehensive plan.

Designer Christopher Alexander notes that when people with a shared way of life gather together to rub shoulders it confirms their community.5 Santa Fe’s plaza has hosted its citizenry rubbing shoulders 290 years to celebrate the town’s fiesta Every Saturday night kids cruise cars near the plaza in a quotidian ritual celebration of youth. Such celebrations offer predictable, shared experiences that bind people together in the present and allows them to feel part of history. The experience may be fleeting but the memory lasts forever.6 The plaza experience also conveys meaning, as the space is comfortable enough to allow an experience to occur within, and positive connections create a sense of belonging, safety and protection. 7

Lesson: All kinds of social activities as well as simple functions like sitting and watching the show must be thought through in order for the plaza to work.

9 The Plaza Is The Space In The Street Wall of Buildings

It’s like the space between the notes of jazz. Too much space kills the song, however, and American towns and cities invariably have too much space, in the form of parking lots, overly wide streets and other paeans to the automobile. Transforming dead urban space into plazas, parks and boulevards is a major design, political and financial issue. Even a thirty-foot gap for off street parking can kill retail on either side of that lot, according to Andres Duany. 8 Hence the beyond-aesthetic reason to insist on the continuity of a street wall around a plaza, even if opting for façade and other design tricks to hide empty space. Indeed, “facadomy” is a design tool that can add up to visually positive plaza improvements in a short period of time.9

Lesson: The plaza and its surrounding buildings create a synergistic relationship – one without the other leaves a void.

Plaza de las Armas, Havana

10 To Design Is Human, To Manage Divine

A plaza must be designed and managed to comfort. This is especially important for women and for young children, who have a heightened degree of sensitivity over issues of safety, security and comfort in the context of public spaces.
New plazas must design in maximum freedom to engage in satisfying activities while assuring plaza goers freedom from disturbance, interference or threats. The latter is a product of active management that sets out and delivers reasonable rules, adequate choices and opportunities to support the needs of users. 10

Business improvement districts are a relatively new phenomenon in American cities. It can be a tool to self assess business property owners to pay for activities such as graffiti control, street and sidewalk cleanings, crime prevention that lead to an improved and well maintained downtown. San Diego’s Little Italy BID is an example of how the little things have help in the transformation of the sleepy ‘hood into a vibrant example of New Urbanism tenets on what to do right.

Albuquerque

In sum, what works for plazas include the following examples: 11

Lesson: What holds true for plaza of the 21st century could be derived directly from the Laws of the Indies of the 16th century.

Examples of Prized Plazas

“The best public spaces are as unique as people, each with its own beauty, quirky personality, and regional accent. Qualities share by the best start with activities, the basic building blocks of a commons, says Fred Kent. They’re what draws people and what brings them back. Outdoor cafes offer people watching, as do public markets, foundations and movable chairs.

“The great commons are highly visible and easy to get to, by many different modes. Convenient and easy to circulate within make them popular destinations. Safety and education, an apparent management presence, practical amenities such restrooms and waste receptacles, especially ones that attract not repel women and children: all are key.

“Character and charm: Is the space inviting and visually pleasing? Are there sculptures? Shade trees? Fountains? Are people happy there? Outstanding commons provide focal points for public gathering and accommodate a variety of social activities – concerts, art fairs, to just plain conversations.

“The simple vital functions: places to sit, plenty of shade, touchable water, good food and well connected streets and sidewalks. All these can offer is a sense of identity. Belonging. Connectedness. Fun. Tradition. Stories. Great public places are what memories are made of.” 12

San Antonio -- Planning had its inception in San Antonio with the first Spanish migration into this region at the close of the Seventeenth Century. The Laws of the Indies prescribed town planning by dictating an elevated location, central plaza, street pattern, and sites for church, shops, government buildings, hospitals, and slaughterhouses. Today this is most clearly seen in downtown San Antonio, where the Spanish Governor's Palace borders Military Plaza and San Fernando Cathedral fronts Main Plaza. The plazas were built to the specifications of the old laws and have persisted to the present in shape and form. 13 Following the independence of Mexico from Spain, San Antonio was controlled by the Laws and Decrees of Coahuila and Texas, which regulated town planning in the territory and were similar to the Laws of the Indies. 14

New Orleans -- Pierre Le Blond de la Tour designed the initial layout of the old historic district in 1722, using squares with measured streets running in a gridded symmetrical pattern around the main square, showing full use of the Laws of the Indies. In 1762 Louisiana fell under Spanish rule; even with the change in power there was a consistent need felt to preserve this core of the city.

After the fire of 1788, the city was to be rebuilt in the French plan. Between 1803 and1835 New Orleans went back and forth between the hands of Spain, America and France, as the land became a source of wealth and power. In 1803 the city was declared American, and has remained American ever since. The 1815 plan shows the continuation of a planned gridded system of streets, struggling to be symmetrical along the water with new public squares locating centers of "suburbs". 15

Mexico City – From the outset, the colonial city was laid out on a gridiron pattern as prescribed by the Spanish monarchy and later embodied in the Laws of the Indies. Urban life centered on the main plaza, which for Mexico City is called Zocalo Square. All governmental offices, the National Palace, and the great majority of commercial activities are located within a short distance of the plaza. While this main plaza is enveloped in nine lanes of traffic on each side, walking into the zocalo is not an impossible task. 16

Las Vegas, NM – By the 1790s, the increase of population in the Rio Grande valley caused Spanish settlement to expand out to the eastern face of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In 1835, twenty-nine individuals applied for and received the Las Vegas land grant from the Mexican government. The Alcalde (administrative justice) of nearby San Miguel del Vado accompanied the settlers to "the meadows", and, in accordance with the Laws of the Indies, they laid out a large plaza and surrounding community. The Plaza, which had longed served for parking wagons, began to change. A windmill, erected in 1876, served briefly as a vigilante gallows. A bandstand encircled by trees and a picket fence replaced this sign of frontier justice in 1880. Today's Plaza, with its gazebo under a canopy of mature trees, reflects efforts of Las Vegas' first historic preservation movement in the 1960s. The community continues to show through architecture and land use the intersection of the cultures and people that settled Las Vegas. 17

Plaza Functions & Activities

Design and management of a plaza must allow both evocative and flexible settings, responsive to changing users and uses over time. The plaza should be “open minded space not single-minded, designed for a variety of uses, including unforeseen and unforeseeable uses, and used by citizens who do different things and are prepared to tolerate, even take an interest in, things they don’t do.” 18 This may be hard to do where many cultural groups with differing traditions and antagonistic views of one another, but NM has down the art of normally celebrating yet not despising differences. With that in mind, here is a partial list of functions, use and activities possible for New Mexico plazas:

Notes:

5 Public Space, page 119.
6 Public Space, page 134.
7 Public Space, page 190.
8 Andres Duany, Smart Growth Conference, Baltimore, 1997
9 Chris Calott, AIA, Your Town Session, Silver City, 2001
10 Public Space, page 158.
11 Public Space, page 118.
12“Great Commons of the World.” Kari McGinnis, Yes! Summer 2001
13 Handbook of Texas Online, www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/print/UU/hyunw.html
14 www.salsa.net/aiasa/sa-mastp.html
15 Gateway New Orleans web site, www.gatewayno.com/VieuxCarre/vieuxcarre.html
16 James Palmer, Macalester College, www.macalstr.edu/courses/geog61/jpalmer/streets.html
17 Las Vegas Citizens' Committee for Historic Preservation; www.nmhu.edu/research/cchp/tours/plaza/default.htm
18 Walzer, “Pleasures and Costs or Urbanity,” Dissent 33,4; 430.