Frequently Asked Questions

Why Pomegranate?

We adopted pomegranate fruit as our symbol because:

• Early artists used it as a symbol of hope
• It is used for healing
• It is red and juicy
• But primarily because it contains many seeds, the essence of new possibilities

What constitutes a gathering place? Would a Starbucks qualify? The courtyard of a private school? A major league baseball stadium? The bleachers of a little league game?

A gathering place has three main ingredients. It: (1) accommodates many uses; (2) accommodates all people, all generations; and (3) offers opportunities for gatherings on a regular, ongoing basis, inviting return visits. Starbucks is a great gathering place for adults, but not for children. A private school courtyard is great for private school students and faculty, but not for the rest of the community. A baseball stadium and bleachers are great places for encounter, but function only for a fraction of time.

How do you know if a gathering place is successful?

Project for Public Spaces has these key criteria for a successful public space: (1) access and linkage; (2) sociability, uses and activities; and (3) comfort and image. The simple measure of success is how many people use the place.

Pomegranate Center projects are most often located in fragmented communities and not at important urban crossroads (although we have a goal to do a high-profile project at such a location in the future). The great majority of our projects are meant to initiate something that later on may become an important location, but presently is not. We get called on to start the process of neighborhood building, to galvanize the community into determining what their community place should be and how it should look and feel. Therefore, we look for these signals of success. Do people take a small detour to visit it? Do individuals like spending time there? Do children like it? Do lovers hold hands and kiss when visiting it? Do groups like to meet there? Do people use it for special events? Are people fond of it?

How can the gathering place adapt to inevitable change in the community?

Pomegranate Center’s approach is to create gathering places that are permanent. We think of them as anchors around which other things can happen—the seeds for future community growth. It is not a coincidence that we like using stones and rocks in many of our designs. We want our gathering places to stand the test of time. So, in a way, we don’t want our gathering places to adapt themselves too much, at least in their essence.

When planning the project will maintenance be considered for the life of the gathering place?

Maintenance is always a major consideration. This is why we tend to design with rocks, wood and metal. These materials are readily available, and they are durable. We have also learned that there is a natural cycle of caring that follows any project’s creation and that after a few years the emotional connection between the gathering place and the people can be lost. The project’s stewardship and maintenance grows naturally from such investment. However, if the people connected with the project’s creation move on, and new people moved in with no memory of what the project meant, vandalism does start to occur. Interestingly, the first things we see roughed-up are those elements constructed without the community’s participation.

What is the role of the plaza in Europe? Why don’t Americans put a value on that?

It has to do with history. European cities were created to survive. They surrounded themselves by walls to protect themselves. Inside the walls was dense development, outside farmland. Before we could transport food over large distances, equilibrium had to exist between the city and its surrounding agricultural land that fed people in the city. This created an ongoing incentive to keep the city dense and homes small because sprawl would diminish food supply. Breaking the city-land equilibrium would have instant results: hunger, disease, etc.

Density, by itself, is not pleasant. So plazas and parks are necessary amenities where much of social life can occur. Many early-American cities were organized around the commons. Then, with the advent of cars, things changed. People and goods traveled increasingly long distances, and parking lots (plazas for cars) replaced plazas. This trend reached its peak in the later part of the 20th century with suburban developments and shopping malls and swelling homes. Now, thankfully, we are beginning to reinvent traditional city plans.

How can you get the public to think and care about competing agendas?

We need to get over the public hearing model of participation and move into a public listening model. The public hearing model encourages people to voice their personal priorities: “I do not want bicycle shoulders on my narrow road”, says one; “I need a bicycle shoulder for commuting”, says another. In this model people are also encouraged to organize others with the same opinion to translate their preference into an informal vote. Our experience is that people come to public meetings with fixed ideas and utterly unprepared for any additional learning. In this mode, any information that may challenge the assumptions that led to one’s preference is routinely discarded. In this model, being rigid is a virtue.

Uncovering the right solution, instead, is about learning. It is about uncovering the optimal solution instead of fighting for the survival of the preexisting one. Now, someone’s preexisting solution may well be the best one, but this becomes evident through the process of deliberate and constructive conversation and examination. This model requires much more from the public, and is resisted by the “single victory” proponents. It is about responsiveness and negotiation. This shift is slowly gaining ground.

What methods do you employ to understand/know those different cultures, languages and ethnicities in your projects?

We continue to learn in this arena. In the Salishan gathering place project, we worked in a community with many different cultures and languages. We soon discovered that words, even with translators present, were not enough. In response we developed a questionnaire filled with images and all workshop participants had to do is to circle what they wanted. This gave us an initial direction which we confirmed in the following workshop during which we started to better understand the reasons behind their choices. We also learned that some groups’ way was to take the information from the workshop back to their community, discuss it there, and bring back their preferences at the next workshop.

Why is multigenerational important?

We think it is important to create opportunities where people of all ages can see, and be seen together, so that it becomes natural to think of a community as the totality of people, not just my group. Gathering places are just one of many ways to meet this goal.

Several years ago we developed Hands-On Civics, a curriculum program for high school students, the aim of which was to work in teams to develop a 3-D model of their ideal community. Their first designs were of complicated networks of roads and cul-de-sacs with every bit of the land used up for homes and huge malls—the worst sprawl you can imagine. Interestingly, most proposals had seniors (anyone over 50) living in a segregated community somewhere on the edge or an island. To counter this, we invented imaginary people-Alexa, a single mother with a low-paying job, and 72-year-old Robert who doesn’t drive but still wants to get around. This stretched the students’ imagination about who needs homes in their community.