Turning a Place Around: let's go!

It's hard to know where to begin writing about my recent trip to NYC.  I haven't travelled alone in a while and life is so busy here at the moment that it's hard to focus my reeling mind on anything other than what I have to get done tomorrow.  Nevertheless, it was a fabulous trip, and the workshop I attended, called "How to Turn a Place Around" was excellent.  I went because I think Woodstock could use a little turning around. Our downtown looks like it's been hit by a bomb, and it's been that way for over a year.  Here's my first in a series of posts.

DAY 1 - Thursday, April 29th. 

We gathered in a room full of anticipation, strangers with no common frame of reference except some vague affinity for "great public places," whatever that means.  We came because we were interested in change, because we could envision a world beyond the one we knew right now.  We were sick of being told it "couldn't be done" and that "nothing would ever change around here." Wherever "here" was, we had all been told the same thing.

Then the presentations began, with no manifestoes about "the man" or "the machine" or invectives against cars or capitalism, no conspiracy theories, no MBA's, nothing except discussions of benches, moveable furniture, garbage cans, crosswalks, sightlines, trees and bicycles.  Really elemental stuff, objects with which everyone has had direct contact, spaces we can experience in the flesh and report back on, whether we are homeless people or corporate executives.  It felt very liberating not to have to "apply the formula" or "read the manual" in order to give valid feedback on something we'd experienced.

It was really nice to study how to create a place that would acknowledge human needs and meet them, instead of rigidly demanding that humans set their deep needs aside and bow to "rational management." It felt good to acknowledge that people want to be in the presence of other humans in a way that isn't rabidly commercial or psychotically self-interested. That fullfillment isn't in staying home and surfing the thousand channel universe.

The workshop threw ideologies out the window and let us be ourselves.  We were glad.