SET THE STAGE: Embrace the opportunity to design dynamic public spaces for connected communities

By Scott Archer, AIA, AICP, LEED AP ND

Bursting with white and pink blossoms, more than 3,000 century-old cherry trees surround the Tidal Basin. Each spring in Washington, D.C., this annual display marks a fleeting moment of “peak bloom.” For a few brief days, people gather from every ward of the city, from across the nation and from around the world to witness it. According to the National Cherry Blossom Festival, these blooms — and the cultural events surrounding them — drew 1.6 million attendees in 2024. The National Park Service is working with DAVID RUBIN Land Collective, GWWO Architects, VHB and Liz Sargent to protect and enhance this cultural landscape, ensuring it can be loved and visited for another century and beyond.

Before Washington, D.C. — one of the few planned capital cities in the world — became the seat of government, the nation’s capital moved among eight other cities: Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton, Annapolis, Trenton and New York. This history reminds us that while the architectural symbols of American democracy such as the U.S. Capitol, the White House, the National Mall, the Washington Monument and Pennsylvania Avenue hold tremendous meaning, the true sites of democracy are where people gather to converse and share ideas. Ideally, they are places where people can gather, find comfort in a communal spatial experience and perhaps begin a conversation that recognizes our shared humanity.

At a moment when differences often dominate headlines, shape our social communities or even influence where we choose to live, public space remains one of the few arenas where we must navigate shared experiences. As any urban designer might, I include an obligatory quote from Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities: “Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow.” These casual interactions — what Jacobs described as the “ballet” of urban life — are the roots of civic society, and it is our duty as designers to create the dance stage.

These spaces demand complicated negotiation — not unlike the debates among the nation’s founders while drafting the Constitution to frame our democracy. We may not always get it right and we may need amendments, but the act itself is what matters: asking questions, stating a case, listening and sometimes even changing a mind or opening your own.

The conversations might be modest negotiating which tables can be used for a birthday party versus for the chess tournament in the park, or two parents discovering they share a mutual friend while watching their children take turns on the playground slide. These moments may seem small or incidental, but they form the foundation of community life. They are how mutual aid emerges, how neighbors come to recognize one another and how we notice when someone nearby may be in need.

For this reason, it’s critical to hold an expanded definition of democratic space — one that extends beyond national symbols to the everyday streets, parks and plazas where civic life unfolds. These places must be accessible and welcoming to all, creating settings where coexistence and unscripted encounters can occur. I believe three principles can guide designers toward this goal: participatory processes, designing for encounter and understanding landscape as civic infrastructure.

First, participatory processes are essential. Architects and designers regularly act as negotiators, working with communities and clients to envision new futures. The resulting building, interior or landscape is not the most important outcome — the lives lived within these spaces are.

Work that is inherently public and centers on facilitating community engagement allows stakeholders to help shape the vision for their shared spaces. One example is our work with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation on the Marconi Plaza Plan. In conversation with the surrounding community, we proposed improvements to critical infrastructure, enhanced active play spaces and a reimagined civic center for gatherings and events.

While the plan’s recommendations are important, the process itself proved equally valuable. Engagement activities connected neighbors, strengthened a constituency that cares deeply about the park and fostered a shared vision for its future. Over three engagement events, participants imagined possibilities through our “analog Instagram,” explored programming via layout optioneering exercises and invested symbolic dollars into their priority projects. These activities helped translate community aspirations into actionable ideas.

Designers learn an enormous amount from working alongside communities. Residents know their parks and neighborhoods far better than we ever could. At the same time, architects, landscape architects, urban designers and planners bring tools that help translate those needs and desires into spatial outcomes — through visual communication, contextual research and an understanding of the systems shaping a place.

A designer could create a space without community participation, but it is unlikely to resonate. More importantly, those who use the space will not see themselves reflected in it. The sometimes complicated and contentious process of participatory planning, design and construction can, at its best, strengthen communities by binding them together in a shared accomplishment. When people feel ownership in the outcome, the resulting space becomes something they care for and carry in their collective memory for generations.

Second, we must design for encounters. In an age when many of us periodically disappear into the dark abyss of our digital devices, vibrant public spaces must capture our attention. This is not simple. People often seek environments that feel legible and familiar, offering a sense of trust that encourages cooperation and civic engagement. Yet when spaces become too routine, we disengage.

Designing for overlap rather than separation can foster flexible common places where many activities coexist. Such environments encourage regular use and increase the likelihood of social interaction. Franklin Park in Washington, D.C., illustrates this approach. The play area is intentionally safe but importantly not fenced off, allowing the climbable rocks to double as amphitheater seating when an impromptu dance performance occurs nearby.

This approach requires designers to relinquish some control. Spaces should invite participation and allow people to adapt them — whether rearranging the chairs to gather with friends or finding the perfect sunny perch on a winter afternoon. We reimagined the symmetrical Beaux-Arts landscape from the 1930s by removing obscuring hedges and reconstructing the historic central fountain on a slightly elevated plaza. This allowed the entire park to become fully accessible while restoring long sightlines for social connectivity across the landscape.

Today, custom oversized wooden benches encourage shared seating with someone you don’t know, and the human-engaged fountains animate the park. Moments of encounter— the casual “May I use this chair?” or “I’m reading that, too”— are shaped by design decisions that either segregate activities or thoughtfully allow them to overlap.

Finally, we must consider landscape as civic infrastructure. Budgets are always constrained, and as any architect knows, every element must perform multiple functions or risk appearing on the value-engineering spreadsheet. Grand Junction, in Westfield, Indiana, proudly illustrates this principle. The park serves as the community’s central gathering place, hosting summer concerts, a weekly farmers’ market, winter skating and a cadre of kids creek-stomping in search of amphibians.

While all of those are socially crucial for the community, the site also lies within the path of a significant 500-year flood event that once caused major damage in the city. The park needed to function not only as social infrastructure but also as part of the city’s climate resilience and flood mitigation strategy. The creek where children search for wildlife doubles as a stormwater channel designed to absorb floodwaters and mitigate downstream damage. A new bank of stacked stone — constructed at the location of a failed culvert that caused the original flood — functions both as a playful climbing surface and as an emergency overflow structure during high water events. Since the park’s completion, it has already performed successfully during a second 500-year storm event.

A Purdue University study, funded by the Landscape Architecture Foundation, outlined several measurable ecological benefits since the park was built. Soils are healthier with increased phosphorus concentrations and organic matter, and tens of thousands of square feet of new riparian woodland and wetland habitat were created. At least nine consistently observed fish and amphibian species have been documented over the last three years, along with 51 observed bird species, including 13 not recorded the year prior.

The park is not only ecological infrastructure and public utility, it’s also a real estate investment the city made with the promise of new mixed-use development. The adjacent neighborhood has seen significant growth since the park’s completion, with more than $125 million in applied investments and $350 million proposed. The park serves as an economic catalyst. The park design anticipated new construction, and within just a few years that development was emerging, introducing new housing types and revitalizing local retail along the town’s main street.

With hundreds of daily visitors at this junction of five regional trail networks, Grand Junction functions simultaneously as natural habitat, mobility hub, event venue, playground, civic gathering space and real estate catalyst. Truly democratic landscapes must accomplish many things at once, becoming essential social, economic and ecological infrastructure.

Democracy is not expressed only through formal civic institutions but through everyday encounters in shared public spaces. Landscapes, plazas, gardens and civic corridors operate as cultural infrastructure — shaping belonging, access and collective identity. By expanding the definition of democratic space beyond political symbolism, architects and urban designers can better understand their role in fostering civic life. I hope designers everywhere take up the challenge to advocate for spaces that are participatory, encourage encounters and function as infrastructure.

If we succeed, perhaps as we sit beside a neighbor or a visitor from out of town, enjoying the cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin, an event in Marconi Plaza, lunch at Franklin Park or a hangout at Grand Junction, we might begin a conversation, make a connection and practice democracy together.

SCOTT ARCHER is principal at DAVID RUBIN Land Collective, a landscape architecture, urban design and planning studio in Philadelphia, Indianapolis, and Washington, D.C. Scott also teaches at Virginia Tech’s Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center.