241
45 NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS
242
. . . local town hall (44) calls for small centers of local government at the heart of every community. This pattern embellishes the local town hall and other public institutions like
it-UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE (43) and HEALTH CENTER
(47)—with a ground for community action.
-!* ❖
The local town hall will not be an honest part of the community which lives around it, unless it is itself surrounded by all kinds of small community activities and projects, generated by the people for themselves.
A lively process of community self-government depends on an endless series of ad hoc political and service groups, functioning freely, each with a proper chance to test its ideas before the townspeople. The spatial component of this idea is cruciaclass="underline" this process will be stymied if people cannot get started in an office on a shoestring.
We derive the geometry of this pattern from five requirements:
1. Small, grass roots movements, unpopular at their inception, play a vital role in society. They provide a critical opposition to established ideas; their presence is a direct correlate of the right to free speech; a basic part of the self-regulation of a successful society, which will generate counter movements whenever things get off the track. Such movements need a place to manifest themselves, in a way which puts their ideas directly into the public domain. At this writing, a quick survey of the East Bay shows about 30 or 40 bootstrap groups that are suffering for lack of such a place: for example, Alcatraz Indians, Bangla Desh Relief, Solidarity Films, Tenant Action Project, November 7th Movement, Gay Legal Defense, No on M, People’s Translation Service. . . .
2. But as a rule these groups are small and have very little money. To nourish this kind of activity, the community must provide minimal space to any group of this sort, rent free, with some limit on the duration of the lease. The space must be like a
243
TOWNS
small storefront and have typewriters, duplicating machines, and telephones; and access to a meeting room.
3. To encourage the atmosphere of honest debate, these storefront spaces must be near the town hall, the mam crossroads of public life. If they are scattered across the town, away from the main town hall, they cannot seriously contend with the powers that be.
4. The space must be highly visible. It must be built in a way which lets the group get their ideas across, to people on the street. And it must be physically organized to undermine the natural tendency town governments have to wall themselves in and isolate themselves from the community once they are in power.
5. Finally, to bring these groups into natural contact with the community, the fabric of storefronts should be built to include some of the stable shops and services that the community needs—barbershop, cafe, laundromat.
These five requirements suggest a necklace of rather open storefront spaces around the local town hall. This necklace of spaces is a physical embodiment of the political process in an open society: everyone has access to equipment, space to mount a campaign, and the chance to get their ideas into the public arena.
Therefore:
 | (WK- |
| .0 | |
Allow the growth of shop-size spaces around the local town hall, and any other appropriate community building. Front these shops on a busy path, and lease them for a minimum rent to ad hoc community groups for political work, trial services, research, and advocate groups. No ideological restrictions.
45 NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS
Make each shop smali, compact, and easily accessible like individually owned shops (87) j build small public spaces for loitering amongst them—public outdoor room (69). Use them to form the building edge—building fronts (122), building edge (i6o), and keep them open to the street—opening to the street (165). . . .
245
| summary of the language | |
|---|---|
| 153- | ROOMS TO RENT |
| •'4-1—( | teenager’s cottage |
| 155. | OLD AGE COTTAGE |
| KHON• | SETTLED WORK |
| i57. | HOME WORKSHOP |
| 158. | OPEN STAIRS |
prepare to knit the inside of the building to the outside, by treating the edge between the two as a place in its own right, and making human details there;
| 159. | LIGHT ON TWO SIDES OF EVERY ROOM |
| >-“iOnO• | BUILDING EDGE |
| I 6l. | SUNNY PLACE |
| l62. | NORTH FACE |
| 163. OUTDOOR ROOM164. STREET WINDOWS165. OPENING TO THE STREET | |
|---|---|
| l66. | GALLERY SURROUND |
| 167. | SIX-FOOT BALCONY |
| l68. | CONNECTION TO THE EARTH |
decide on the arrangement of the gardens, and the places in the gardens;
| 169. | TERRACED SLOPE |
| 170. | FRUIT TREES |
| 171. TREE PLACES | |
46 MARKET OF MANY SHOPS**
246
. . . we have proposed that shops be widely decentralized and placed in such a way that they are most accessible to the communities which use them—web of shopping (19). The largest groups of shops are arranged to form pedestrian streets or shopping streets (32) which will almost always need a market to survive. This pattern describes the form and economic character of markets.
It is natural and convenient to want a market where all the different foods and household goods you need can be bought under a single roof. But when the market has a single management, like a supermarket, the foods are bland, and there is no joy in going there.
It is true that the large supermarkets do have a great variety of foods. But this “variety” is still centrally purchased, centrally warehoused, and still has the staleness of mass merchandise. In addition, there is no human contact left, only rows of shelves and then a harried encounter with the check-out man who takes your money.
The only way to get the human contact back, and the variety of food, and all the love and care and wisdom about individual foods which shopkeepers who know what they are selling can bring to it, is to create those markets once again in which individual owners sell different goods, from tiny stalls, under a common roof.
As it stands, supermarkets are likely to get bigger and bigger, to conglomerate with other industries, and to go to all lengths to dehumanize the experience of the marketplace. Horn and Hardart, for example, have been contemplating this scheme:
. . . the customer either drives her car or walks onto a moving ramp, is conveyed decorously through the whole store, selects her groceries by viewing samples displayed in lighted wall panels (or unlocking the cases with a special key or her credit card), and chooses her meat and produce via closed circuit TV. She then drives around to a separate warehouse area to collect her order, paid for by a uni-
versal credit card system. . . . Most of the people would be invisible.
. . . (Jennifer Cross, The Supermarket Trapy New York: Berkeley Medallion, 1971).
Now contrast this with the following description of an old-fashioned market place in San Francisco:
If you visit the Market regularly you come to have favorite stalls, like the one with the pippin and Hauer apples from Watsonville. The farmer looks at each apple as he chooses it and places it in the bag, reminding you to keep them in a cool place so they will remain crisp and sweet. If you display interest, he tells you with pride about the orchard they come from and how they were grown and cared for, his blue eyes meeting yours. His English is spoken with a slight Italian accent so you wonder about the clear blue eyes, light brown hair and long-boned body until lie tells you about the part of northern Italy where he was born.