Photo credit: Brian Libby

Recently we overheard some rumbling, dyspeptic piffle about the Vera Katz Park being “underwhelming…feels a little too cement,” or brazenly dismissed as, in fact, “Not much of a park.”

Well there’s no pleasing some folks—seems a shame to squander all of life’s joy on being a grumbly Old Sneep—but it does bring up a couple of things:

What is a park? What function does it serve? And just what does public space like this symbolize?

Consider this. The Park is in many ways an apt reflection of Mayor Katz’s legacy: it literally embraces arts and culture and the rebirth of a historic landmark and nurtures connections between civic space, the creative spirit, innovation and reuse, and the public good. The 18 x 200-foot urban oasis’ native plants and bioswales (which filter and reduce stormwater runoff) contribute to neighborhood livability—and the “delicate sidewalk ballet” that accentuates the vitality of the Pearl.

The gentle rhythm and flow of Scott Murase’s black granite’s recycled rainwater channel echoes Katz’s gentle reminder that, “A great city never sleeps…A great city never stands still. A great city shares its vision with its community and makes it very clear that we are going to work together to make it happen. A great city thinks about its future.”

So what is a park?

Parks have an ability to accommodate many different types of uses and people. They are where you might meet a friend for lunch, stage an outdoor concert for thousands, or just relax and read a book.

Originally parks were seen as a respite from the Zola-esque grit and grime of city life and work. But it’s easy though to assume too much pastoral primacy when thinking about parks, as historian William Cronon has noted, “idealizing a distant wilderness, too often means not idealizing the environment in which we actually live.”

Portland is at the forefront of cities that are reframing our understanding of parks and public spaces. On the one hand we’ve got Forest Park, the US’s largest urban forest (and fourth largest park) and we’ve got the world’s smallest park (look it up in your Guiness Book): Mill Ends Park—the thoughtful little-park-that-could that measures two feet across in a traffic median along Naito Parkway. The Project for Public Spaces reminds us that Pioneer Courthouse Square, “Portland’s Living Room,” is one of this nation’s most successful public spaces, an electrified “volksgarten” and a great park, despite there being not one blade of grass growing there.

Of the many intrinsic values Portland possesses, our necklace of parks, open spaces, squares, greens, plazas (a veritable strings of pearls caressing the city’s urban fabric) are among the dearest. The entire notion of the Park is evolving from their recreational role, to “serve as important catalysts for community development and enhancement.” Small parks like the Lawrence Halprin-designed Pettygrove Park, or PCS’ Vera Katz Park can take on the character of urban “rooms of one’s own”—quiet places for reading or recharging, putting the maelstrom of 9-5 on pause temporarily.

A great illustration of that is the balance between the teeming vitality and serenity and calm, exemplified by Jamison Square and Tanner Springs, just a block or two apart in the Pearl, on a warm day.

We like this city because it gives us choices: A Thomas Merton Moment in Tanner Springs, water fight at Jamison, sneaking a chapter from Elizabeth Gilbert or a poem from Frank O’Hara amid the “hum-colored cabs” at O’Bryant Square, dipping tired feet into Keller Fountain at high-tea; sequestering under a canopy of green or play bocce in the North Park Blocks, or enjoying a breeze on the wood benches “a step away from them” along the Vera Katz Park.

So to Old Sneep, bear in mind: as we all spend more and more time at work, in front of computers, at gyms, malls, disconnected from fellow citizens and neighbors, public space tends too often to come in the form of parking structures—the consequence being that our communities and hope for all that parks can be are being left behind.

We’re in a new age of public space and engagement. Parks are no longer merely passive green tracts, they’re pocket-parks nestled into streetscapes accommodating multiple uses, they’re social capital that knit together the complexity and diversity of our communities. A space like the Katz park helps us nurture a different relationship with public art and civic space–the granite waterways are a subtle bit of functional art that counters Public Art as the out-of-scale sculpture in the bank lobby, embracing instead a more human element that encourages us as Jane Jacobs suggests to “look, listen, linger and think about what you see”—to sit down and relax for a much earned moment or two.