Christopher alexander - A pattern language

2. The location of local town halls.

If these local town halls are to be successful in drawing people in, the question of their location must be taken seriously. From earlier work on the location of multi-service centers, we are convinced that town halls can die if they are badly located: twenty times as many people drop into commwiity centers when they are located near major intersections as when they are buried in the middle of residential blocks.

Here, for example, is a table which shows the number of

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Number of people Number of people

people who dropped In at a service center while it was located on a residential street, versus the number of people who dropped in after it was relocated on a major commercial street, close to a main pedestrian intersection.

dropping in, with appointments, per day per day

Before the move i—2 15—20

Two months after the move 15—20 about 50

Six months after the move about 40 about 50

The details of this investigation are given in A Pattern Language Which Generates Multi-Service Centers (pp. 70—73). The conclusion reached there, is that community centers can afford to be within a block of the major pedestrian intersections, but if they are farther away, they are virtually dead as centers of local service.

This information must be interpreted to suit the different scales of neighborhood and community. We imagine, in a neighborhood of 5 00, the neighborhood town hall would be quite small and informal; perhaps not even a separate building at all, but a room with an adjoining outdoor room, on an important corner of the neighborhood. In a community of 7000, something more is required: a building the size of a large house, with an outdoor area developed as a forum and meeting place, located on the community’s main promenade.

Therefore:

To make the political control of local functions real, establish a small town hall for each community of 7000, and even for each neighborhood; locate it near the busiest intersection in the community. Give the building three parts: an arena for public discussion, public services around the arena, and space to rent out to ad hoc community projects.

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Arrange the arena so that it forms the heart of a community-crossroads; and make it small, so that a crowd can easily gather there—activity nodes (30), small public squares (61), pedestrian density (I 2.3). Keep all the public services around this square as small as possible—small services without red tape (81) ; and provide ample space for the community projects, in a ring around the building, so that they form the outer face of the town hall—necklace of community projects (45). . . .

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45 NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

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. . . local town hall (44) calls for small centers of local government at the heart of every community. This pattern embellishes the local town hall and other public institutions like

it-UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE (43) and HEALTH CENTER

(47)—with a ground for community action.

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The local town hall will not be an honest part of the community which lives around it, unless it is itself surrounded by all kinds of small community activities and projects, generated by the people for themselves.

A lively process of community self-government depends on an endless series of ad hoc political and service groups, functioning freely, each with a proper chance to test its ideas before the townspeople. The spatial component of this idea is crucial: this process will be stymied if people cannot get started in an office on a shoestring.

We derive the geometry of this pattern from five requirements:

1. Small, grass roots movements, unpopular at their inception, play a vital role in society. They provide a critical opposition to established ideas; their presence is a direct correlate of the right to free speech; a basic part of the self-regulation of a successful society, which will generate counter movements whenever things get off the track. Such movements need a place to manifest themselves, in a way which puts their ideas directly into the public domain. At this writing, a quick survey of the East Bay shows about 30 or 40 bootstrap groups that are suffering for lack of such a place: for example, Alcatraz Indians, Bangla Desh Relief, Solidarity Films, Tenant Action Project, November 7th Movement, Gay Legal Defense, No on M, People’s Translation Service. . . .

2. But as a rule these groups are small and have very little money. To nourish this kind of activity, the community must provide minimal space to any group of this sort, rent free, with some limit on the duration of the lease. The space must be like a

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small storefront and have typewriters, duplicating machines, and telephones; and access to a meeting room.

3. To encourage the atmosphere of honest debate, these storefront spaces must be near the town hall, the mam crossroads of public life. If they are scattered across the town, away from the main town hall, they cannot seriously contend with the powers that be.

4. The space must be highly visible. It must be built in a way which lets the group get their ideas across, to people on the street. And it must be physically organized to undermine the natural tendency town governments have to wall themselves in and isolate themselves from the community once they are in power.

5. Finally, to bring these groups into natural contact with the community, the fabric of storefronts should be built to include some of the stable shops and services that the community needs—barbershop, cafe, laundromat.

These five requirements suggest a necklace of rather open storefront spaces around the local town hall. This necklace of spaces is a physical embodiment of the political process in an open society: everyone has access to equipment, space to mount a campaign, and the chance to get their ideas into the public arena.

Therefore:

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Allow the growth of shop-size spaces around the local town hall, and any other appropriate community building. Front these shops on a busy path, and lease them for a minimum rent to ad hoc community groups for political work, trial services, research, and advocate groups. No ideological restrictions.

45 NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

Make each shop smali, compact, and easily accessible like individually owned shops (87) j build small public spaces for loitering amongst them—public outdoor room (69). Use them to form the building edge—building fronts (122), building edge (i6o), and keep them open to the street—opening to the street (165). . . .

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prepare to knit the inside of the building to the outside, by treating the edge between the two as a place in its own right, and making human details there;