Public Places - Pocket Parks and Small GATHERING SPACES

Unlike regional parks, recreation fields, or large civic plazas, smaller scale public gathering places provide more intimate settings where the people can connect with each other.  Thoughtfully designed, these “Pocket Parks” provide comfortable outdoor “rooms” where people can meet, talk, maybe break bread, and befriend others regardless of their background or where they live and work.  Brief moments and meetings can start conversations, lead to mutual understandings, and possibly even become lifelong friendships. An outstanding guide for the creation of civic spaces, called Assembly: Civic Design Guidelines, was put together by the Center for Active Design.

Small public gathering places can be a community’s biggest opportunity to establish a unique character for itself.  Also, because they are small, a community can create many of these “pocket parks”. Each has the potential to establish the character for areas within a larger neighborhood. These special places can have their own personalities that help reinforce, or change, the perception of a neighborhood.  They can be simply green…

… sumptuously planted …

… or durably hardscaped.

They can provide a community with a gateway…  

…or a lunch spot.

They can be intimately formal…

… or casual.

They can provide a place for activity that is energetic …

… or a place of commemoration and reflection.

Small public gathering places give otherwise unrelenting street corridor walls – even ones that have rich architecture along a thoughtfully composed street – areas of respite where people can pause, sit, relax, meet, connect, eat, and do business.

Because these places are, by definition, small they don’t have to cost very much money to build.  A thoughtfully designed urban pocket park can be modest and still achieve its goal of connecting a community.  Small gathering places can also give communities a vehicle to engage citizens to help design a place.  In just one or two well-planned meetings, people who may have very different backgrounds and outlooks on life can come together to achieve a bite-sized accomplishment. Sometimes the achievement of designing a simple pocket park can lead to a stronger willingness for people to have conversations about more complex topics.  

Communities should take care to avoid creating spaces that only provide a place for crime. However, the prospect of a crime happening at some point in a public space shouldn’t be a reason not to create that place.  Small gathering places should be designed so that adjacent buildings have windows facing it, if possible, and that access to the space is wide open, visible and doesn’t create hiding places.  Reaching the balance between creating an outdoor space with a comforting sense of enclosure, yet one that is freely open and safe, is a tricky bit of design.  Architects and designers who help communities design public gathering places understand CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) principles and can employ those principles while still creating a place that is comfortable, inviting, and active.