Culturally and Socially Enriched
This cafe naturally encourages social interaction
Places that are culturally and socially enriched do not get
that way by accident. Cultural enrichment comes by investing in facilities that
attract and support creative peoples and enable them to earn enough to afford
to live in the VillageTown. Social enrichment comes from investment in public
space - plazas, pedestrian streets, public buldings and facilities - that
creates a 24/7 complete community.
Social Enrichment: Social enrichment is about diversity, but it also is about activity.
The opposite of conviviality is gossip. The opposite of citizenship is consumerism. The opposite of creative growth is boredom. People who come from small towns say they fled because they were narrow-minded, banal, spiritless infestations of incestuous boredom. One would not expect such a description for a VillageTown.
The VillageTown design includes multiple villages, founded by different groups of people with different values - meaning what is important to one group will be different than what is important to the next. By its very definition, this eliminates the mono-culture that makes some small towns toxic. The different villages provide reality checks. If your village gets boring, walk to the plaza in another. Social enrichment also comes through economic diversity. If everyone earns a living in the same sort of jobs, a form of conformity is introduced. The VillageTown endevours to be a complete community, meaning it supports a wide range of jobs. The outlook on life of a high-tech factory worker in the Industrial Park may be different than that of a professor in the college, a pork-belly broker working out of a second-floor plaza office or a violinist in the VillageTown symphony orchestra. Yet all these people may meet at a plaza tavern, and over time some may get to know each other, and in doing so, each of their social outlooks can be expected to expand.
Enrichment is Personal
Nothing has a greater effect on our daily life than the physical environment that surrounds us all day, every day... our homes, where we work, where we go to relax, to shop, and the means by which we get to those destinations. Reality is a non-derivative experience. It is not what we read or hear about, but what surrounds and touches us in day to day life.
Yet due to the way we have structured the rewards people earn for their work, we pay insufficient attention to what's around us and life becomes bland.
For example, consider something as simple as buying a cup of coffee: the café where you go, order a drink, read the paper and watch the world go by. Good cafés become popular; a community emerges as people see each other day after day and strike up conversation. In fact multiple communities emerge... the workers first thing in the morning; the mothers with babies arriving mid morning, the lunch crowd and so on. Successful ones last for decades, so long as the proprietor keeps their focus on the physical environment... the taste of the coffee, the comfort of the chairs and most importantly, the sense of welcoming and community.
Contrast this experience with the chain store café phenomena. Founded by a businessman who sought to capitalise on that classic urban, European archetype (think Italy or Vienna), they transformed it into a brand driven by market dominance which aims for tens of thousands of branded stores all over the world. Is it the same as the archetypal Italian café that inspired it all? Sadly the answer is no.
It's a challenge to figure out what is missing. English author, Paul Kingsnorth, did a good job explaining it in a book he wrote, Real England - The Battle Against the Bland. He explains: The problem comes when change is initiated by distant, over-powerful forces, in the interests of their profit margins rather than of the people that the change will affect... What I'm after is the diversity and character which is created when people are given the freedom and power to express themselves without interference from deskbound, rulebound profit-watchers in some distant business park. Essentially the problem with the chain store model is that it is cartoon characture of the Milan café. But unlike those real cafés, it does not have a proprietor; it only has employees who must follow a prescribed routine that emanates out of some division of the remote corporate structure. The workers are there to earn money, the café does not belong to them, and the profits it earns leak out of their community to some distant place.
It is very difficult for designers to create a physical environment that remains invigorated, enriched and refreshing. When one looks at archetypes that succeed, one finds that authenticity and character comes from a less controlled process, where one provides the basic materials, but then steps back and lets people do what they do.
Another example: Consider two groups of children at play. One has been given a playground populated with engineered toys that do specific things. The other group has been given the large cardboard boxes those toys came in, some ropes, trees, old tires, and perhaps a few bales of hay. The second group will use their imagination and create their own world, their own playground and one will find them at it long after the first group of children have become bored and gone home.
What happens when the developer's brief includes creating an environment of positive effects and avoiding designs with adverse effects?
The very meaning of design changes. A designer who wants to control the process places a chain-store café on the plaza and ticks the box. A designer who sees value in a great café on the plaza makes sure there is a plaza with an available space on the sunny side, a population large enough to support a café and an infrastructure to enable a person or family to open their café. The designer may also make sure that the location is affordable, and the proprietor has access to credit that does not come with a requirement that the café only buy its goods from the lender's product line, as happens with franchises. But after doing all that, the designer steps out of the process, and lets a proprietor step forward to create the café of their dreams. Yes, there is a risk in this... not all such cafés will be great, and some will fail because the proprietor is bad at business, or has a personality seeking to emulate that of Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers. However, over time, such problems sort themselves out, especially in small communities. In an owner-operated business where the business is personal, success comes when the person running the business loves their work, loves their customers and loves their life. The designer cannot create such people, but the designer can help create an environment that attracts such people.
Let me know your thoughts. I'm looking for people who would be interested in establishing a Village Town in Eastern Missouri.
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