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114 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
The new park is mostly an expanse of concrete, stone, and some grass. The
walkway is narrow and has a greatly reduced number of benches (all of these face
in the same direction). The benches, of course, are a crucial symbol and reality.
In 1993 we won one of the only (narrowly defined) major political victories
in the history of our political action and advocacy. We tested the city ordinance
that prohibited lying on a city park bench (or against a tree!). In two actions in
September and October of 1993, twelve of our number were arrested and went
to jail for “slouching” or lying on the benches of Woodruff Park. The city council
rescinded the law. Amazing.
Exactly one year later, the park was closed for a five-million-dollar renovation.
Nimrod Long, whose firm was paid three hundred thousand dollars for a
new design, was frank. He said that they were charged with the mission of creating
a park that would be inhospitable to homeless people. This, of course,
must include park benches with armrests spaced so that it is impossible to lie
down.
Well, we can be proud of the fact that they darn well did their job. This park
clearly does not invite homeless people to gather. Trouble is, if we mandate a
public space inhospitable to any one group of people, we end with a public space
that is inhospitable to everybody.
Woodruff Park is unfriendly space. This is not, for instance, a place you
would think to bring children to play. There is no play equipment, no bathroom,
no drinking fountain, no convivial space for parents to gather while the
children play, and it simply is not clear whether or not the grass is an inviting
space to run and tumble.
Gone are the wraparound-bench tree planters that invited long chess games
and spontaneous lunch gatherings. What is left is a narrow walkway, a relocated
Phoenix statue (the post–Civil War image of Atlanta rising out of the ashes), a
huge, very expensive thirty-foot cascading waterfall, and a stretch of grass. The
grass will be nice if people are allowed to sit for picnics, naps, and conversation.
But it will not do to replace the benches, especially for the elderly, the disabled,
people in business attire, or for anybody when the weather is wet or cold. Neither
will it do if the powers that be decide, as they did with the old park, that
people cannot sit or play or walk or lie down on the grass. In fact, in the old
park they installed what our street friends call “pneumonia grass”—sprinklers
buried invisibly that come on without warning, drenching anyone who might
be unwittingly sitting or sleeping.
The park is intended to be, as Mayor Campbell proudly proclaimed at the
opening ceremony, “a beautiful place to look at,” which seems a gross concession
to the suburban mentality that controls our city. Downtown Atlanta is designed
more to entertain tourists and suburbanites who want to drive through,
with doors locked and windows rolled up, than to foster an urban life and