FALL 2008 / Volume 8 - Issue 1
 | Urban Design Center's 'Pop-Up' projects are way outside the box
BY KIMBERLEY SIRK
chwarz, a senior planner with the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, has embarked on an ambitious set of projects to prove, in a playful and whimsical way, that shrinking cities can retain expansive hope.
The Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) is the combined home of Kent State’s graduate program in urban design and the public service activities of the Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio (UDC). Through a grant from the Civic Innovation Lab of the Cleveland Foundation, Schwarz is realizing her vision of creating now-you-see-them, now-you-don’t Pop-Up events throughout Cleveland.
A Pop-Up event is, as Schwarz explains, a temporary use of vacant land or buildings. The intent is to highlight the different kinds of potential in vacant sites in Cleveland, and to develop a sustainable business model for others who want to try their hands at similar festivities. The events, or installations as they are sometimes called, are envisioned to include outdoor markets, restaurants and shops, art installations, concerts, landscape interventions and other fun, yet thought-provoking events.
Schwarz even floated the idea of a Pop-Up dog park, to showcase the idea that people conduct their daily lives within the boundaries of the city.
The idea was the immediate result of a Shrinking Cities Exhibition Tour, which the CUDC brought to Cleveland in collaboration with SPACES Gallery on the city’s near west side. Shrinking Cities is a project of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
The exhibition examines the worldwide phenomenon of urban population decline, bringing to light the consequences of suburbanization, deindustrialization and a number of other factors contributing to the growing issue of shrinking cities.
As a result of the tour’s stop in Cleveland last year, Schwarz began to ponder the other side of the dour predictions of Shrinking Cities. She left that experience not so much feeling that something was missing, but that potential was unrealized.
Something from nothing
"I thought more about vacancy as opportunity," she says. "Can we perhaps push back against what could easily be depressing in the Shrinking Cities message?
"In several conversations after the event, we dreamed up hopeful, playful interventions to the plight of the post-industrial city."
The Pop-Up concept was born. The Civic Innovation Lab was the perfect partner in the endeavor. Since its founding in 2003, the lab has fueled innovation through $1 million in funding to 37 entrepreneurs who were willing to stretch the boundaries of the possible. The lab provides mentorship and training, as well as $30,000 to visionaries who present ideas that have a measurable economic impact on the Greater Cleveland community.
"Pop-Up City and Terry Schwarz are addressing one of the lab’s economic development focus areas — enhancing downtown vibrancy," says Civic Innovation Lab Executive Director Jennifer Thomas. "Pop-Up City shines a light on downtown vacant space as a possibility rather than a liability, and by presenting creative events gives the public a new vision on the city’s potential."
Christopher Diehl, director of the Urban Design Collaborative, wholeheartedly supports Schwarz’s concept of constructive projects to highlight the opportunity theme.
"A dilemma for urban designers," Diehl explains, "is that we’ve always planned for a lot of growth — it’s the American way."
Terry Schwarz, a senior planner with the Urban Design Center in downtown Cleveland conference room.
In December, the project launched with a temporary alternative craft show, aptly named "Bazaar Bizarre," which Schwarz describes as "an art show with an alternative sensibility." Vendors occupied the Sincere Building on East 4th Street and Prospect for one day, selling a variety of wares, from jewelry and pottery to what Schwarz described as "traditional crafts — with a twist."
"It wasn’t your grandma’s craft fair," Schwarz recalls, as she related the story of one vendor who sold samplers cross-stitched with off-color messages.
This was not the first gathering of the vendors, which totaled about 45, but was the first time many of them set up shop in downtown Cleveland. A few of the participants came from as far away as Pittsburgh.
Now you see it . . .
Pop-Up events, by nature, abhor standard boundaries, even those of the notorious Cleveland winters. On Feb. 29, Pop-Up City ventured outdoors to Cleveland’s Flats to celebrate the bonus day the calendar grants once every four years with Leap Night.
Most would think that February in Cleveland, especially at night, means deserted streets only animated by the howl of the wind.
Schwarz, instead, dreamed up a winter festival, complete with bonfires and snowboarding. Guerilla marketing hyped the event with promoters walking around in bear costumes handing out fliers.
Her idea was so compelling that Flats East Development LLC committed $5,000 to the event and provided access to the vacant areas required to stage the winter festival.
Diehl put it succinctly when he said that drawing people out of their cars and offices into downtown Cleveland in the winter is not exactly a completely foreign concept.
"If one can go to a Browns’ game," he says, "one can attend an outdoor Leap Night event."
Continuing to challenge the boundaries
Hope will continue popping up all over, since the $30,000 Civic Innovation Lab award will allow Schwarz to assemble events and partnerships throughout the year.
The lab funding, according to Thomas, not only provides a financial headwind for the recipients, but also recognizes and supports creative, grassroots efforts to counteract just the negativity Pop-Up City addresses.
"Terry is what the lab calls a ‘champion’ — an individual with a great idea who is passionate, dedicated and knowledgeable about their space," Thomas says. "In addition, Terry is a risk taker, taking on three kinds of risks to drive her project forward: career risk — this is a second job; financial risk — putting in her own time and money; and reputation risk — knowing that failure is a possibility."
Ideas for the future include the dog park, a Pop-Up rooftop restaurant, an art installation in an underserved neighborhood (complete with inflatable wading pools in a vacant lot), and partnerships with neighborhood organizations to help sustain the energy and momentum of Schwarz’s work. Schwarz also may draw graduate students into projects this fall.
Aside from instilling hope, Schwarz’s ultimate goal is to create projects that are not only sustainable, but also those that will inspire neighborhoods and other groups to take ownership of their city.
|
|
