Why Do Public Spaces Matter? Parks, Squares, & Commons | BRIght & Early, BRI’s Student Web Series

0:03 hello and welcome young people of the Internet to the penultimate the second-to-last episode of bright and early for this semester we’re so glad you’re here and we’re I’m Rachel Davison Humphries I’m director of outreach at the Bill of Rights since you and as always I am joined by my delightful colleagues Gary and Kirk hi guys hello

0:24 Aria and we are here today to talk about a word a concept something very near and dear to all of us which is the idea a public space and what that means because I mean as we’re entering months three

0:44 was I mean third month guys I don’t know time doesn’t make sense anymore I don’t it’s all timey wimey in the words of a famous doctor and and and so we’re starting to recognize that there are there are restrictions on our lives now that may or may not be taken off in

1:04 the next couple of couple of weeks depending on where you are in the country depending on where you are in a state and then what restrictions will be put in place once you’re allowed to go back and what the implications and philosophy and legality of all of that is so we wanted to take a moment and really think about this word public and

1:26 what it means and where it comes from and what it means culturally so first is just the definition of the word if you’re not familiar with the online etymology dictionary it is it has a special tab in my life because I delight in this resource because it focuses on

1:47 looking at the the Tamala G or the history of the word through the language so for instance the word public from the old French was first in English in the 14th century it comes from the old French which comes from the Latin just meaning of the people are pertaining to the people but in our modern context it

2:09 started to evolve right so it’s not just there are public spaces that are publicly owned but then there are also public spaces that are privately owned and we’ll work through some of this throughout our throughout our conversation today but the idea being that to be to be public means to be accessible and I think that

2:30 idea of access and then the associated idea of like community that comes from things being accessible it’s kind of where we’ll go today and as always um Kirk is gonna start us off but I actually I forgot to check in with you guys so Kirk how are you guys doing we’re good yeah it’s a beautiful day

2:53 here today so hopefully it’s a beautiful day while you’re watching this but it’s like 70 and sunny and so getting outside is very top of minds for me today and right after this recording yeah absolutely absolutely yeah absolutely yeah there’s a certain I’m doing okay to answer your question and I think part of that is having the

3:13 ability a little bit to to change space a little bit you know for a while there changing space for me was changing rooms and then I’ve discovered I discovered I owned a hammock and now I’m realizing that just the simple change of scenery quite literally is having a pretty positive effect on thing that’s awesome

3:35 I have plans for hammock time this afternoon myself I have a date with my my blue hammock so Kirk I am playing Phyllis oh yeah you know but you do have a very nice porch a Dana porch I own multiple hammocks I just have nowhere to hang them I will not be able hanging out places to hang

4:02 out yeah Rachel you want to talk about public places talk about the history of things America we turned to Kirk Hagen yeah that’s right so I don’t know if that’s a wise choice but it’s the choice we make so I thinking about public places so it’s interesting public parks are a relatively new concept on an older

4:25 idea I mean the older idea comes from this idea of calm and so earlier rachel was talking about different ways of thinking about the word public sometimes we think of public ownership that can mean lots of people own it or it can mean that the government which we the people control own something and so that’s public but then there’s no way of thinking about

4:46 group shared things which is having things in common and so there’s word Commons was actually used to talk about different types of land or resources that were shared in communities particularly thinking about this it goes back to the Middle Ages in feudalism and thinking about that manorial Lord would

5:06 own his estates and there would be a place on that estate where the peasants could share in a certain parcel of that land in order to gather resources so that was called the common and so I have a very quick definition here but land owned in common or over which individuals have certain traditional rights and so those traditional rights

5:27 are the ability for them to graze their cattle for an instance on the common land or to go out I have cutting turf here only because it’s a strange concept but turf could be cut for lots of different reasons one of which is to for heating homes so you go out cut turf off of a bog that would be dried and heated and burned as fire so that could be

5:49 something collecting wood all kinds of things like that we’re all took place on the common and so one who uses n is a commoner and so that’s a phrase that we that we often hear but if you’re using the common I’m you are a commoner and that was all shared for the common good so in the Constitution says promote the general well welfare but another way of thinking

6:10 about that is promoting the common good it’s something we use in our democratic lexicon or way of speaking all the time and that common good means it’s something that shared is working toward the benefit of everybody so if if we’re working towards the common good we’re doing something that’s going to be good for everyone as a whole but Commons also had their route in this really

6:31 interesting economics term which is the tragedy of the Commons this is a concept that became more popularized in 1960s as a reference but actually comes out of the 1830s on its idea when when you have some bad actors who and maybe over exploit a common good or over exploit something that’s going on so for instance at the Bill of Rights Institute we have a kitchen that we all

6:51 share and occasionally just occasionally not everybody will do their own dishes and so those dishes will pile up in the sink and we call that a tragedy of the Commons it’s no one person’s responsibility and so then it’s kind of nobody’s responsibility so there’s so there’s some challenges with with that common ownership but it’s something to keep in mind and I thought it worth

7:11 there’s worth kind of bringing up and thinking about so in the context of what we’re talking about today the Boston Common um is one of the first parks of the United States it dates back to 1630 for and a park becomes something that is not just for everybody’s common use for whatever they want to use it for but it’s more place for recreation for gathering together here we have an image

7:33 of the Boston Common in 1848 but the Boston Common began as more of a common and slowly over time transformed into a park and so it’s very famous for you know the several instances during the Revolutionary War one of which was British soldiers camping out on the Boston Common before they marched off the battles of Lexington and Concord I

7:55 noted here that in 1830 they banned cattle grazing and that’s been kind of late to me so up until 1830 there was still cattle grazing I expect yeah yeah there was it was limited to 70 cows you know at a time so it had to be shared just to prevent over grazing but during during really between 1815 and 1840

8:18 there’s a huge surge of population the United States as industrialization is happening there’s sort of a growing growing economy that’s that’s causing a lot of this population there’s an influx of immigrants as well and so cities on the eastern seaboard really start to boom not only Boston but New York which I’ll talk about in just a minute but this common part space is commonly and

8:38 received as a place where people could go and gather and they could they could have recreation they could meet with one another they could talk and and it was a common green space in an ever urbanizing environment as that green space was going away so a very famous example of that is Central Park Central Park was established by an act State Legislature in 1853 I’ve been

8:59 established for the purposes of of health in part there was a desire to have more green space in this ever-increasing urbanized setting but it was also to assist in the formation of civil society because again it was a it was a place where you could go and gather you could go in and march on on

9:20 behalf of something you could go and you know talk about whatever the the goings-on of the day were and you could also just go and have a picnic or relax and talk with your fellow citizens to get to know them and and so Gary as a resident New Yorker I was wondering if you had any um instances of of civil

9:40 participation on in Central Park absolutely now I’m sure you’ve all been there a number of times lived right there but yes as a New Yorker Central Park is something that that is it’s it’s such a part of your your life beat you almost I don’t want to say take for granted but really appreciate that in

10:00 the middle of a an incredibly populated a urban area where every square inch has great value that the value of having this green space in the in the literal center of the island is important so you know when you say civic engagement I think about that first sunny day of spring which may have passed for some

10:22 time but we’re almost around that time now when when many people would descend upon the park for various reasons whether it is picnics or whether it is frisbee or whether it is you know kite flying and the fact you could have so many people in this public space without I mean there are rules but without

10:42 having to establish any sort of you know formal orchestration people coexist in a really productive way it’s a real example of self-governance to throw out a phrase we like to talk about right to say like I’m not gonna throw my frisbee and run across you or a picnic or hey this is where kites can go it orchestrates oh it’s such a pleasant experience for people so so when you

11:03 talk about that my experiences were always always not stressful and yet surrounded by so many people and you would into folks and it just it really was just a beautiful opportunity to to have collective civic interactions with people yeah that’s I mean it’s and that’s the power I think of these parks

11:23 it’s a place you can go that’s outside the the urban hustle and bustle of the densely populated rest of New York and I really encourage if you’re interested in in the history of Central Park check out the Central Park Conservancy website they’ve got some really interesting information on there and more about this guy Frederick Law Olmstead who’s super interesting and

11:44 just one quick thing that I think is fascinating about parks because there was a big upsurge in the building of parks on in the 1850s in Frederick Law Olmsted was inspired by what he saw in Europe but the the landscape in Central Park isn’t necessarily what was native to to the island of many is it man it is Manhattan Island oh yeah

12:06 having a little bit of a moment there but but it’s not native to Manhattan Island it was constructed to look pastoral and so that whole process of what they were creating and how they’re creating it and and then that itself is a part of urbanization it’s really interesting history so I encourage you to check it out and then one final Park I wanted to touch on is the the National Mall yes in

12:27 this photo that’s my special furry friend chief hopper on the National Mall exercising his right I’m sure he was protesting something but the National Mall um is right in the heart of Washington DC in the federal district and it really connects this interesting area because it connects the the

12:49 legislature and the the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill down to where the White House sits so our governing structures are all sort of connected closely by the mall but so are monuments in memorials to things that are significant in the United States history so there is the Washington Monument the World War Two memorial and on Lincoln month the Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson and MLK

13:11 and it’s it’s all right there in a really powerful way um as are America’s public museums the Smithsonian on the institution those museums also open onto the mall and interestingly it’s kind of the beating heart of the city because it’s where people go to protest I’m into March on behalf of movements and it’s also where people go to have

13:34 cultural moments and so the Smithsonian oftentimes will have events on the mall I’ve seen everything from the annual Book Fair which is amazing – one time I was down there and they were doing a tiny home construction bonanza we’re about to be were building different tiny homes favorite my favorite was the recent Apollo 50 that’s right yeah yeah

13:55 we’re they rattle ball yeah they projected a Saturn 5 rocket on the side of the Washington Memorial on so that looked like it was a Saturn 5 and then I think they launched it on the day they did civic like audio-visual musical experience they had seven different screens counting down the launch and then the rocket launched off

14:18 of a life-size rocket because it was the same height as the monument it was very very cool yeah I think it’s just a really beautiful encapsulation of what parks do right it is it is the life it’s where life can come to show itself and so there’s all of this activity that’s going on and all the governing buildings that are around it but the real

14:38 expression of that it portrays itself on the Washington Mall in this very public public place absolutely and and I think one of the things were we’re struggling with right now is kind of what is our role in our public spaces in the middle of a pandemic so many of us love going

15:02 to the park walking our neighborhoods being out and about in these public spaces whether they’re spaces that are governed by the public or spaces that we have free access to generally usually and so I wanted to kind of pivot over to Gary to talk about our responsibilities and how we should be thinking about these these spaces and kind of what we

15:24 can do in these spaces even when we can’t physically go to them right or can do some day no absolutely I’m enjoying the the analysis of different words we using the word public the word come in even the word space ironically when we just talked about Apollo and just these ideas of and even the phrase I had

15:46 before of taking for granted and to think you know a lot of our mindset now is the is the time after this the time when at some point we we may be able to do some things more collectively whenever that may be at some point but also you know we had said right now there’s a certain there’s a certain human health ‘no stew just fresh air

16:10 even if you’re not around other people that’s really important and what really struck me at the end of what you were just talking about there I mean the whole thing struggling but toward the end they’re talking about these these these parks or these areas that are they’re very specifically designed like the mall like Central Park is that it’s no accident you use the phrase the beating heart right that it is the

16:31 center of things so that got that got me thinking really about you know the value of of these centers that happen and so so the free another phrase to toss into our lexicon of phrases city is the idea of community may become you know maybe common I don’t know maybe that words related there somehow but idea of these

16:51 centers and and you may live in an area that doesn’t have an orchestrated park in the middle of it but I imagine that there are examples of centers that that people do go to for these same purposes maybe they’re libraries or I mean I say computer labs but if you if you don’t have a computer at home you may go to

17:12 these places or places community centers have great value they offer health services or food services or a place to have sports and recreation or even a place to communicate on the image I have there I think of the Roman Forum or or in Gora Gora in Athens and I think there’s something that has been such an

17:32 important part of our communities to have places with that access that you were talking about Rachel right where you can you can come to these things and share in a way that isn’t isn’t necessarily orchestrated right you just you you you again you self govern yourself but then also there’s there’s the value

17:52 to do so having open space right in the time after all of this you know I’m wondering I’m just speculating will our view of open spaces stay similar to the way they are now I don’t know right now if you are taking more walks than you used to I know you both have dogs so you brother you’re always been taking walks but you

18:15 know it’s an interesting it’s an interesting question to ask ourselves not only now but for the future and again I do want to stress it is really important that wherever you live is gonna have a different story of its relationship to its open space and you really should listen to the guidance of state city and local governments but but there also that there is a hope for the

18:36 future right and to think you know if there are way now to get into some open space mindful to be away from other people but but also what that will look like in the months to come and so that brings me to that brings me to one of my my last sort of what’s the word I’ve been using journaling experiences one of

19:01 my less observation I’m gonna I’m gonna start being an observation yes Journal and observe I think is one alone I don’t know I don’t know what day it is it’s a it is for for this week’s journaling and observing and sort of harkens back to our when our first conversation is about

19:21 about local history and I want to revisit that when it comes to the idea of public spaces because I think there’s a there’s a rich way to understand the the communal history of where you live no matter where you are in our country oh right here I have a map of what

19:42 becomes Arlington it’s about a hundred years ago this map is this year around 1920 in Alexandria the idea of naming this new area Arlington emerges and and it’s a really interesting way to start digging deeply into the the common spaces in the common area is that it’s that it’s that it was born

20:02 I bring up Arlington because that’s headquarters of Bri and so it’s a place that’s familiar to us but you know right around where we are all these big and small parks and areas and and may I say cornerstones that one could find and so whether or not you’re physically going out I encourage you as a local historian

20:22 you can check out these public spaces these communal areas and an interesting local history from the comfort of your own home I mean you can start with prompts like what are the origins of street names and landmarks that are around you that perhaps if you’re taking a walk you’re noticing are they named after important people and events or are

20:43 there other commemorations or are there important people and events that occur that aren’t commemorated in a way that’s so obvious one little tip that I found that I that I encourage you to check out is our National Archives and our US Census Bureau they both collect not just information about individuals but also they create maps maps and records based

21:06 on data and based on things that go way back to our beginning way back to the 18th century and so it’s it’s a really fun way to check out your local area and find out what was there and what is there now that commemorates what it looked like I mean this goes back to what you’re talking about the Boston Common and again you may take for

21:26 granted just the name of a place in the middle of Boston but it has this really interesting history and apparently a ban on cows so I encourage you to find that out for your own neighborhood yeah I think I asked someone who deeply deeply appreciates our kind of natural spaces I do take lots of walks because I do have

21:47 a dog but but I think that there’s learning more about your local local history looking at the landmarks like leaves here in Washington DC they’ve converted a lot of old police boxes into public art installations that tell you a little bit about the history of the region and so we’re stopping at those

22:09 more than we were in the past right and learning about more about our neighborhood just because we’re we’re here more we’re in it more right I’m not I’m not going down to the national long and nearly as much because I’m staying in my neighborhood because you know that’s that’s what they’ve asked us to do so I think that as we as we think about again

22:31 local history and that’s such a great way to frame our conversation and our research I also wanted to just talk about the fact that society changes based on the based on that based on the desires of the people in the society

22:51 right so the way that we change our culture and our society is something makes the something makes it change and sometimes those are catastrophes and and pandemics and so this is not the first time we’ve had pandemics that make us think about green space and public space differently this is a great article just

23:11 from history calm from a couple of years ago it’s actually not new or it is new now but it was updated but but it was out a couple of years ago so how pandemics spurred cities to make more green space for people and you’ll actually see that right now as we speak there are cities you may live in one that’s changing the way that they are

23:33 offering public space changing the traffic patterns to make it so that people can walk on the streets this is a really great marketplace article about about with fewer cars in the road some cities are making space for walking and then also again think about what Kirk and Gary we’re saying like the power of

23:53 the parks especially if you live in a city that’s critical for the physical emotional and mental health and then what are we gonna do next is is a big question for all of us this is a this is an article from The New Yorker magazine talking about how public space public

24:14 space after a pandemic may look very different but it’s essential because public spaces have a very important function within a democracy both Gary and Kirk spoke to the kind of spontaneous interactions that happen and the spontaneous governance and the kind of practicing of our democratic principles

24:35 that happen in those public spaces and they also provide the space for one of our most deeply held values which is the right to the right to to assembly and so if we if there are implications for our very democracy when we are rethinking

24:55 how how we engage with public space and so health wellness not only of ourselves but of our society and of our democracy itself is all embedded with this idea of a public space so gentlemen I think we’re gonna wrap it up on our penultimate episode any thoughts to

25:16 follow up only one because I think we’ve we haven’t mentioned one very common phrase when talking about public spaces which is the public square and throughout Europe there’s lots of public plazas on there’s lots of public areas we’re gathering there often square in shape but going to the public square is I think a euphemism for bringing some to

25:38 the public squares when you you just bring it out in the open if you have people talk about it and I think you know I think that there is something embedded in that about our nature as social beings that we want to socialize in a way of in a place where that happens is in the public square be it six feet apart from each other or not you know that kind of thing has always

25:59 happened in the past I mean we’ll continuing to happen and it’s just it’s amazing to me as we’ve been sitting here I’m reflecting on on just how much goes into that little corner you know Park down the street that yet you may pass by or go too often and and you don’t often stop and really think about it yeah it’s funny my parting thought also is thinking about things we have been discussing and and it’s spurred an idea

26:22 that we are rethinking how we do everything and we’ve been talking about physical places but I’m also thinking about the word forum again and I want to extend the opportunity that you can digitally collect and converse with us in a in a cyber space if you will by connecting through us digitally through our

26:42 our websites and our social media channels and through right here and so that idea of that need can continue even in a strange digital space that that it’s a new way of having that kind of collection and as we’re wrapping up this season this time of this kind of episode we really do want to hear from you what have you found valuable what

27:04 are you interested in what can we do better or differently that’ll make this all the more interesting to you young people of the internet and thank you so much for your time and for everything you’re doing in your communities I’m Rachel this is Gary and Kirk be well take care and we’ll see you soon