I would nominate Occidental Park. Apart from a few homeless people, the place seems to be deserted. Part of the problem being the parking lot on the east side, but also the lack of activity - and association - with the buildings on the west side. They appear to be locked and deserted even though in reality they are open and hoping for trade.

New York has done very well with small parks like this one by the simple expedient of adding movable tables and chairs. The best example being Bryant Park behind the public library - once a "shooting gallery" it is now a year round attraction and very welcome too. The same thing also worked in Herald Square.

I so agree with Mr. Cheek.

I would add the Seattle Schools headquarters as yet another example.

Also, thanks for naming the downtown library which I don't like inside or out. I'm glad for my local library (Green Lake).

Question is, how do we convince builders/architects to not create more of these spaces?

Two points:

(1)-The slide-show is being censored, with images 2 and 4 suppressed. (Not even with a dozen attempts could I access either one, which means that somewhere on the Internet, someone has maliciously pulled the plug on these photographs.)

(2)-Seattle's obvious preference for unwelcoming public space -- especially for seating obviously designed to inflict maximum discomfort -- is clearly an expression of its xenophobic and bigoted hatred of outsiders, the term "outsiders" used here in its broadest sense, to include not just homeless people but those of us who do not have automobiles and therefore must while away time in public space while awaiting (always tedious and invariably unreliable) bus connections.

Now that I think about it -- and until I read Mr. Cheek's commentary I had not -- I believe there's a principle implicit in (2): that a jurisdiction's use of its public space demonstrates the real-time values of its citizenry and governance.

Interesting article and of course accurate.

But too bad the slideshow -- the evidence -- is not integrated in the article so commenting is easier.
Slide # 9 for example. Two commercial buildings north of the Market. Wasn't it built in the late 80s? So nothing to do with any recent zoning changes. True?

And overall the project is a fairly good one though I agree that so much wishy-washy suburban space is the heart of all/many of the design problems you illustrate. Too much "open space." The spaces need to be tighter, more compressed. Of course the Seattle mentality --Freeway Park the perfect example -- doesn't like urbanity and prefers more suburban space.

While there are a great deal of bleak public spaces, as Mr. Cheek points out, Seattle also has an incredible wealth of beautiful green outdoor space. Our public parks are a treasure and a favorite aspect of the city for many of it's residents.

On another note, "Seattle Parks and Rec’s inexplicable new fascination with concrete and gravel" comes not from an aesthetic preference, but rather an unfortunate reality that the green space we all love takes more resources to maintain than we are currently making available for the system. If you ask any Parks & Rec landscape architect whether they would rather design greenery or gravel, I think you'd be hard pressed to find one that will profess a devotion to gray.

It's not a question of taste, but of enabling a system capable of sustaining the green space that you're crying out for.

Thank you articulating your observations regarding the massive wastes of taxpayer dollars. Especially of interest are your caption commentaries on the photo slideshow.

The comparison/contrast between the new Federal building and the downtown Kool-house library should make all of us sick to our stomachs. Maybe we will even demand more accountability from our local leaders who spend our hard-earned wages on this garbage. And, those who forced the city to accept the overpriced & overrated library design, just so we could become more of a "world-class city" should never be elected or hired to any public leadership position again. Ah, but how soon we forget! Remember all the arguments by the mayor and other city leaders back then? We just had to have the new library, didn't we?

And, let's not forget the new City Hall with its 'stairway to heaven' - a stark example of the out-of-touch leadership that governs this city - with its titanium-walled rooftop penthouse for the City Council chambers, and its unwelcoming bleak concrete plaza, which even in the middle of lunch hour in the heart of Seattle's dense urban business/government district, only has a handful of visitors on a sunny day. What a multi-million dollar urban design opportunity lost!

And, to add insult to injury, the new so-called "green" city hall is less energy efficient than the old one, which was torn down years ago - leaving in its place a huge square block wide hole in the ground which is still there in the middle of downtown.

North Seattle Community College - better left abandoned to nature, like so many of its 1960's look-alikes: old NIKE missle sites.

North Seattle's newest park, Hubbard Homestead on 5th Avenue NE just north of Northgate, is also a study in desolate urban minimalism. Bleak. Bleak. Bleak. About a third concrete. There are some tree plantings, however, which in a few years may soften the stark landscape - but for now it is a cold, grey, dreary place - without even a small playground to add some life or color.

Opening up these concrete wastes to cart vendors would add some life and vibrancy to the bleak landscape - but alas, with the oppressive and burdensome restrictions, licensing, taxation and regulatory schemes foisted upon entrepreneuers and small businesses by the city, state, and county, that will never happen.

Very good article, thank you. Your comments on Counterbalance Park were accurate but perhaps too constrained. It is a public space with no redeeming qualities. How can it be so totally bad and still be boring? you are also too kind to South Lake Union Park. The designers would have us wait thirty years for the trees to get big (and that will help a lot) but in the meantime it's all sidewalks.

Your comment on the siting of the Tsutakawa fountain at the downtown library -- "a knickknack at the door of Jor-El’s Krypton palace." -- ouch!

Beyond the snappy patter, though, I appreciate the attention you've given to the small park/public spaces we've managed to accumulate. Since many of them are part of a swap during the development process (public space "buys" increased height or some other boon to the developers) I think it's important that we get something valuable out of the exchange. I know this is not the time to ask the city government for another project, but it would be great to have a list of these public/private spaces somewhere on the city website. A few of them (like the example in your slide show) are easily identified as 'open to the public,' but others look much more like private property, and so don't get the use they were intended to get.

And tangentially, about spaces under the freeways, my neighborhood (Roosevelt) does a pretty decent job with a park and ride lot that includes some bike parking boxes. The location helps (right next to onramp downtown) but it is a boon to the neighborhood, both the residents and the business district.

Coincidentally while reading a travel article last night, I marked a passage to deploy in some forum! Thank you for the spendid illustrations of the problem and the opportunity:

"By any account, Vancouver is growing fast. In terms of city planning, it appears to be uniquely graceful growth. The beauty and elegance of Vancouver's downtown can be traced to one simple thing: setbacks. Yes, there are the specatacular mountain views, the balmy sea breezes coming in from all sides of the peninsula, the cosmopolitan mix of cultures and the food, always the food. But it's a humble building regulation, introduced in the 1950s and sustained through a major construction boom in the 1990s adn the 2000s, that gives this compact, dense city its sense of spaciousness. New high-rise residences in the city core must be built wth an apron of space at street level. Gardens and playgrounds and cafe seating and little lawns spread over these open spaces, making sidewalks feel uncrowded and welcoming. More important, the setbacks decrease the footprint of the buildings, giving them a narrow and light appearance and leaving wide corridors of space (and views) between the structures....They let the light in."

The setbacks might be an oversimplification because as Lawrence Cheek's article notes, bleak, large open spaces are as forbidding as canyons in cities, but a combination of setback requirement and good landscape architecture along the principles Cheek suggests might work wonders.

I think this is the gist of it. Seattle's coddling attitude towards vagrants and addicts leaves the city with a surfeit of people prone to engaging in "unwelcome activities" in public places. There are two solutions to this problem: Better behavior in public; or broad, lifeless expanses with no features to conceal that behavior. Not surprisingly, Seattle has opted to punish its citizens rather than offend its bums.

Seattle is a case of trying to make the mountains, the earth and the sky "more beautiful".

The density crowd has been creating ever more arcane structures, imported from LA, NY and SF -- with little regard to the existing natural beauty.

At this point, we should be taking things away...demolishing...old (or new) structures that are in bad taste, ugly or just unsafe.

Someday we will realize, the Nisqually were right and set up common longhouses and sweat lodges...again.

In the 1960s, William H. Whyte set out to discover why carefully-contrived plazas and other open spaces in crowded cities so often turn out to be design horrors. I always assumed Whyte's resulting text, plus his charming and revealing short film, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, were required study for every architect, landscape architect and urban planner.

Perhaps I'm deluded on the last point, since Whyte was a sociologist and (gasp) a journalist, not a credentialed member of the design trade.

Still, there's no denying that the rules for what works and what doesn't have been known for decades. Thanks to Mr. Cheek for the design primer plus the cringe-inducing photo tour. Plus the added two jewels among the thorns at the end.

Question: You gave Peter Walker a deserved thumbs up for the lovely federal courthouse plaza. Why no professional credits for the failed projects? (The unspoken indictment of Rem Koolhaas in the library overhang goes without saying.) I sense a little too much Seattle Nice at work here.

Also, it's surely true Seattle has gone bonkers with concrete. You can imagine the discussion in any given design firm. "Freeway Park – i.e. Valhalla for the concrete industry -- won all those awards so no one can fault us if we use two-dozen manhole culverts for planters in the middle of Lake City Way."

But Lawrence Halprin's Auditorium Forecourt Fountain in downtown Portland is concrete writ large and it's hard to imagine a more creative and successful solution to a block of downtown open space. It's as beloved and admired today as it was when it debuted forty years ago. I realize the Portland fountain was a big money project. It's not 1,000 square feet sandwiched between two midrises on 4th Ave. South. Still, we shouldn't diss concrete out of hand. We know how to use it well when we want to. Plus it's the color that most reflects our collective personality. Be bold! Be gray! I'm just saying.

Eugene Carlson
Vashon

Another cheap shot at the viaduct. The structure looks as if it could have been designed by famous Northwest architects Paul Thiry or Roland Terry. Their designs made use of covered open-sided spaces to provide ways to enjoy being outside in our rainy climate. The structure could be easily incorporated into any number of configurations for the waterfront, all more interesting and vibrant than just another horizontal, flat plane with grass and concrete. It also is the only solution that provides a bypass for downtown that allows for a way to control how much traffic enters the core. Plus none of the other plans for the 99 corridor match the viaduct in any transportation related category.

I was sorry not to see any reference to Seattle's Olmsted heritage. Admittedly John Charles Olmsted had a broader palette to work with during his month in the city in 1903 but if his or his step-father's eye had been cast on these smaller spaces maybe more felicitous results would have obtained. See www.olmsted.org for current work of the National Association for Olmsted Parks, in particular the mapping project in our state.

Seattle's high art community is narcissist. A once quite popular style of tower 'overhung' a narrow base which gave the impression that the tower was 'above' nature. The statement is Nature is dirty and dangerous and rightly observed only from sanitized interiors through hermetically sealed glass walls. Many public spaces are still designed in this way to be observed rather than utilized or appreciated. Seattle's upper-class sophisticates view the masses of humanity beneath them as nature's defect and objects of derision.
Hammering Man is a blatant insult to Labor.
Sculpture Park neglects the magnificent view of Elliott Bay.

Great piece. You left out my "favorite" for bleak: the UW's Red Square.

Hey, Freeway Park is actually quite lovely this time of year. Also, the I-5 Collonade, while not lovely, is not bad considering the difficulty level of the sites.

Your positive examples from elsewhere with bright plantings and fountains seeem much more expensive and not so sustainable. Still, wherever there is rain and sun (in whatever varying amounts, green things should be allowed to grow.

I would challenge that assessment of UW’s Red Square. While bleak when empty, it is a very useful space: campus groups regularly host stalls, students eat there, etc. Having been on many college campuses, the common space tends to be open (but under-used) grass spaces; great for frisbee, but lousy for almost anything else. Red Square enjoys lunch carts and some functional seating. The space is less bleak than many listed here simply because it enjoys usage. Additionally, its views of Rainier are spectacular.

Some notes about various comments:

1) In response to E. Carlson: Every architect who has graduated from the professionally accredited Master of Architecture program at the University of Washington since about 1990 has encountered William H. Whyte (as well as Jane Jacobs, etc.). I know because I teach the required course that includes this material.

2) In response to jmrolls: I believe research on the period of the late 1940s early 1950s will show that Paul Thiry was one of the few who openly opposed the Viaduct before it was ever constructed. And the reference to Roland Terry in relation to the Viaduct is simply mystifying.

3) In response to Knute Berger: In the 1990s UW's Red Square was studied using time-lapse photography following the example of William H. Whyte. The time-lapse photography showed a level of use and patterns of activity that were surprising and the conclusion of the consultants was that Red Square actually worked fairly well. It also should be remembered it is on top of a 3 level parking garage. And, when I came out of my class in Kane Hall this morning (Wednesday, 5/18/11) at 11:30 a.m., the place was "hopping"--all kinds of things going on.

If you look at the work of William H. Whyte on plazas like that in front of the Seagram Building, which he touts as a success in his video and in his book, he indicates that the use is low, but builds toward lunch time, then after 1:30 winds down fairly quickly. The level of activity depends on time of day, as well as the weather conditions. I think the same could be said of Red Square.

Seattle has a long and nefarious history of attempting to deter so-called socially inappropriate activity through park bench removal, tree-clearing, paving over beautiful landscape, and even wholesale destructive redesign of public spaces. This intentional effort has mostly succeeded in producing dismal, inhumane spaces for some of our civil shortcomings and design failures.

My reference was about the covered/open spaces as a feature of their work as it relates to our weather. You can step outside and still have cover overhead. I have no idea what Thiry thought about anything nor was that part of my post. I lived in a Terry designed home for years and enjoyed the ability to step from living areas to adjacent covered outside decks year round...great for parties too.

Pardon me for mystifying you. I’m trying to quit.

I'm sure Red Square is used--it has to be. But it has no focus, no greenery to speak of, it's a center without a center. It doesn't really even take advantage of the AYP view corridor except from one angle, and the west side makes a bizarre entrance to the campus. The square is vast and uninviting. The food trucks and awnings always look less like they belong and more like a FEMA set-up. It's a place to get some sun on the few days that matters, but there are many grassy areas around campus that are better and more comfortable. In the winter, when wet, it's slippery too. Yes, it feels like the lid of a parking garage.

If Red Square is good, then what it replaced was better, at least that is what I have always thought, having experienced both. But even better still were skilled responses to the frequent 12 hour sketch problems for festivals and whatnot in that space that were assigned in the School of Architecture back when a buried parking garage (Kane Hall too and its mates) would have been considered travesty in such a long cherished space.

The quality of architectural work on campus although constantly compromised by the shoe horn approach has improved since the first round of international style. The Faculty Club being an exception to the rule. It will be interesting to discover if the HUB redo is or is not an exception to the first sentence in this paragraph. Hard to tell now.

I don't think Seattle has an unusual amount of 'bleak spaces,' and I am not really sure what that means! Bleak seems to mean no pretty flowers and speculative developer driven architecture and urban design based on the cases you have chosen. Perhaps it's simply a place people don't care enough about? Does lake union have the residential density yet to justify and demand a new 'jewel' of a park for Seattle? Gas Works sums up Seattle for me pretty neatly!

How many American cities have a Koolhaus building (not even LA)? A Gehry? A Steinbruck? An amazing water front sculpture garden? Incredible Olmstead parks? Not very many. And the building behind hammer man is a Venturi, another very significant architectural figure. My point in bringing this up is not to blindly celebrate capital 'a' architecture, but to mention the breadth of significant architectural works and progressive urban design in Seattle. It is easy to focus on what one may label a 'bleak space,' but far more interesting to wonder why it feels that way. Take the cantilever of Koolhaus's central library (LMN were the executive architects); that overhang may not have felt so scary if budget realities didn't require a fat off the shelf framing system on the cladding. Imagine if it had been as designed: a light and thin million system; it may have felt less daunting. Here is a great case study for how and why we select architects for public projects. And your statement that people do not like concrete; I would say people respond poorly to concrete or any material which is not done well. Part of the sculpture parks success is it's use of concrete; there are some beautiful details in that concrete that add to the experience. Another amazing project with concrete is fischer pavilion, by MillerHull, in the Seattle center. Other landscaping projects like the park in capital hill with the water sculpture (can't remember the name) and the mountain bike trail/dog parks at the I-5 colonnade park speak of a design in response to community needs while still adding to the urban design discourse. 

We forget that Seattle is a relatively small (23rd with a city population of a little over 600,000) and remote commercial port city; I-5 ripped the city in two in the 60's, the viaduct was built, these two major projects defined so much of Seattle's character. The history of seattle is important when discussing its architecture and urban design as well as its social personality, could Kurt Cobain have written "underneath the bridge, the tarp has sprung a leak," in any other city with the same miserable feeling? Where else does one find a troll with a vw beetle in its grasp? A gay bar (re-bar) at the base of two office buildings that look like a 60's b-movie set? The 'bleak' is as much a part of Seattle as its amazing natural geographic beauty. Seattle would not be Seattle without the house boats, created by the montlake cut, the noise from the ship canal bridge freeway, the forgotten spaces. In the end, an urban space exists in a context which we must not ignore.

The built environment is a meeting of for profit, and usually speculative, developers, corporate clients and established designers and engineers. But Seattle, unlike many places, not only has a thriving architectural and engineering community headquartered at the UW's built environment department (many of whom are also practitioners) but also an active community made up of well educated people who choose to be aware of their environment. The bell street corridor, the light rail, hiawatha co-housing on south rainier, and other projects show Seattle is not a city of bleak spaces, but a city not afraid to experiment and sometimes fail, but on the whole, win! There are homeless people; there are tent cities, the 43 bus is a TB hotbed, it is an incredibly cloudy and depressing place at times, but that is part of its charm! Otherwise we will end up living in well planted caricatures; like disneyland or San Diego, or worse, Bellevue! They have some nice cheery parks!

Thanks for a great article and all the interesting comments!

Excellent piece. I used to live in Southern California and in Orange Couny where they effectively made bleak strip malls more welcoming by incorporating concrete and wooden couches and chairs (complete with water - resistant cushions) throughout the areas between shops and abutting the parking. They covered the seating with trelises and flowers to create shaded "cozy" spaces. The spaces were very popular making finding a seat challenging.

Dbreneman: I believe you were referring to the "park" at Lake City Way NE and NE 125th. I live in Lake City and have traveled past there quite often, and the only "unwelcome" behavior ever seen in that park was homeless people simply sitting on ledge of the planters (since the benches had been taken out). Occasionally, they'd have a beer. (That happens on the sidewalks outside of local restaurants in the summer, but of course those people are not homeless and they buy their beers from the restaurant, which makes it Ok, I guess.) The local merchants were upset about people sitting in the park; thus, they asked the local beat cops from the North Precinct to trespass the homeless people from the park. It is now completely empty, just a stretch of concrete and brick. The business community calls it the merchant park, although no merchant is ever observed there. The rest of us call it the concrete park.

Good piece, and juxtaposed to the story about the forthcoming bleakness of the new waterfront park to boot.
As to Red Square, it's stark - plain and somewhat severe, but as others have pointed out it's lively with people, and that isn't bleak. I'd like to credit Broken Obelisk, but I suspect it's more than that fine work which makes that surprising space work.
Finally, concrete can be softened by texture and color. FL Wright used patterned texture in his concrete structures to great effect, modern practitioners have too often limits their texture to the wood grain of plywood forms. Paint or colored concrete can work wonders, the unlamented Kingdome got a mild boost indoors when paint was used with mild abandon in the early 90's, Arizona paints portions of their freeway a nice burgundy, and the Green Lake freeway area looks better with green and yellow columns. More texture and color, please!

Your 6 bullet points are fine, but you've missed the one most important principle that dictates the success or failure of any public open space. What happens in the midst of a park or plaza or courtyard is not nearly as significant as what happens at its edges. The perimeter must be alive, lined with active uses (commercial, cultural, etc.), and animated by the activities of people who are not just zipping past on their way somewhere else. Open space for its own sake rarely works.

The great irony in the failures of the Downtown and Ballard library courtyards is that a public library should be a perfect use to activated the edges of an open space, but it can only work if the activity within the library connects visually and programmatically with the adjacent open space. Both the Ballard and Central libraries are organized to isolate the activity within from the space outside. The Counterballance Park is another vivid example, surrounded on two sides by busy streets, and on the other two sides by mute concrete walls 25 feet tall. Graffiti bait, nothing more...

Hi Larry- Hadn't read CrossCut
for a while. Glad to see you're
still a good Critical Critic.Jerry-

See my Mercer Island PatchBlog-
http://mercerisland.patch.com/