Jane Jacobs goes to Greene Square

 

Entering Greene Square from 3rd Av by the rr tracks

Greene Square occupies one block in the core of Cedar Rapids, between 3rd and 4th Avenues SE, and between 5th Street and the railroad track. Our city's oldest park (1897), it received a gigantic makeover in 2015. Numerous trees were removed, and new landscaping and benches were added. Cindy Hadish's Homegrown Iowan blog has excellent coverage of the planning stages as well as photographs of Greene Square in the before times. I chimed in with this October 2014 post. I wondered then if I was being overwrought, and I certainly was, but my regrets about the removal of play equipment from the original proposal remains.

The park that emerged in 2015 is rather simple and open, as you can see in the pictures above and elsewhere in this post. It's a handy place for special events like the downtown farmers' markets, the Christmas tree lighting, and occasional presidential candidates.

Tom Steyer speaks in Greene Square, August 2019

It got some play that one summer (2017?) Pokemon Go was popular. The Cedar River Trail awkwardly straddles the railroad track alongside the wall of the parking garage. And on fine summer days you can see professionals eating lunch, though in the absence of much shade they probably miss the trees that got removed.

Mostly, though, it's underused. My 2014 fears that it would become an attraction for visitors at the expense of residents turned out to be silly; visitors don't use it much either. Mostly Greene Square is utilized by clusters of homeless people that make use of the benches and the shade from the parking garage.

Clutch of belongings on a January morning

II

I don't know that Greene Square is a problem, so much as underutilized potential. I believe that better days are ahead, although there might be things we could do to facilitate them.

Some mighty long trains run on the track

To understand what's happening and not happening in Greene Square, we turn to the "mother of us all," Jane Jacobs (1916-2006). Chapter five of her landmark The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library, [1961] 2011) is about city parks. Granted, her attention is to large cities like New York rather than small cities like Cedar Rapids, and she's considering parks on a much larger scale than our one-square-block Greene Square. Still, I think she can provide, or provoke, some insights.

Noting that people do not use city open space just because it is there and because city planners or designers wish they would (117), she compares four parks in downtown Philadelphia that date from the  colonial era but met "wildly different" fates (120). 

Why are there so often no people where the parks are and no parks where the people are? Unpopular parks are troubling not only because of the waste and missed opportunities they imply, but also because of their frequent negative effects. They have the same problems as streets without eyes, and their dangers spill over into the area surrounding, so that streets along such parks become known as danger places too and are avoided. (123)

Does that sound familiar, Cedar Rapids? If it does not, then I'm talking to myself, but if it does, read on!

What is the key difference between well-used, successful parks and parks that are empty and/or scary? It's their surroundings, and how they interact with them. Any park...

...is the creature of its surroundings and of the way its surroundings generate mutual support from diverse uses, or fail to generate such support.... A generalized neighborhood park that is not headquarters for the leisured indigent can become populated naturally and casually only by situated very close indeed to where active and different currents of life and function come to a focus. If downtown, it must get shoppers, visitors and strollers as well as downtown workers. If not downtown, it must still be where life swirls--where there is work, cultural, residential and commercial activity--as much as possible of everything different that cities can offer. The main problem of neighborhood park planning boils down to nurturing diversified neighborhoods capable of using and supporting parks. (128, 131)

Greene Square is surrounded by institutional buildings. I love the institutions and the buildings that face three of the four sides of the park, but they are used for only a small part of the day and week. They do not of themselves provide enough activity to infuse the park with life. 

View of the 5th Street and 4th Avenue boundaries

The most hopeful of the four is the Cedar Rapids Public Library, across 4th Avenue, which is open until 8 p.m. four days a week, and until 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Across 5th Street are historic First Presbyterian Church (Sunday services and free meals, some weekday events) and Waypoint Services (including child care which has some potential).

View of the trackside and 3rd Avenue boundaries

Across 3rd Avenue is the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, of which I am a proud member, but which is open only 30 hours a week, mostly in the early afternoon. Next to the museum is a vacant parking lot formerly used by Guaranty National Bank. Across the tracks and trail from the park is a parking garage, built in the early 1960s on the site of the old train station; it is hard to imagine a deader contribution than this. Greene Square is surrounded by great institutions, but which cannot and do not provide the energy to support the park--certainly not in the numbers to overcome its current "skid row" feel.

III

We may not have to wait long for that energy, though. Look again at the picture of the park, with First Presbyterian Church at the left and the Cedar Rapids Public Library to the right. In between them, across the intersection of 4th Avenue and 5th Street, is the newly-built Annex on the Square, with 224 apartments and (possibly) first-floor retail. In the surrounding blocks, more apartments have been or are being built, and some downtown office buildings are being converted to residences as well. The downtown population of Cedar Rapids has gradually increased since the 2008 flood, without much dramatic impact on the area, but the surge in construction promises to do more. We may be approaching a 24-hour downtown, with daily needs within walking distance, and a variety of foot traffic throughout the day. This will change how and by whom Greene Square is used.

The more successfully a city mingles everyday diversity of uses and users in its everyday streets, the more successfully, casually (and economically) its people thereby enliven and support well-located parks that can thus give back grace and delight to their neighborhoods instead of vacuity. (145)

This is a positive development, and it seems inevitable that what's around the park will improve Greene Square, but I'll bet we could augment that energy with some attention to what's in the park. Jacobs refers to intricacy, which

...is related to the variety of reasons for which people come to neighborhood parks. Even the same person comes for different reasons at different times; sometimes to sit tiredly, sometimes to play or to watch a game, sometimes to read or work, sometimes to show off... sometimes to keep a child occupied, sometimes simply to see what [it] offers, and almost always to be entertained by the sight of other people. (135)

That's easier to imagine in a vast expanse like New York's Central Park, but Greene Square is begging for some reason to go there. Playground equipment could serve those child care kiddos, as well as anyone with small children living nearby. A few more trees could get us all through summers that are getting longer and hotter, and would add some texture to what is now pretty much open space.  Checkers? Charging stations? A food cart? Buskers? We all have imaginations... let's use them!

 

ADDED 2/16/2024: 1910 view across Greene Square Park from r/cedarrapids