REUTERS/Peter Andrews

Egyptian soldiers and a cleric stand on top of an armored personnel carrier as they pray together with pro-democracy supporters in Tahrir Square on Feb. 25.

"Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot."

More than 40 years have passed since the Canadian singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote those memorable lyrics. The words lament an era of privatization, a time during which attention shifted dramatically from the street corner to the shopping mall, the public park to the backyard patio, the city bus to the private car, the public airwaves to the personal computer.

Jay Walljasper has been among the sharpest critics of that shift. But his books and pieces of journalism in the Utne Reader, Mother Jones, The Nation and other publications seldom leave a sour taste. If James Howard Kunstler has been the grumpy old man of the urbanist movement, Walljasper has been its cheerful optimist, never tiring of traveling the world to tell his readers about new possibilities for reclaiming public space. His latest book, "All that We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons," should inspire a new generation to rebuild America in ways that make room for human interaction, collaboration, creativity and enjoyment. Our economy, environment and democracy may depend on it.

I caught up with Walljasper last week at a south Minneapolis coffee shop not far from his home. Here's an edited version of our conversation:

Jay Walljasper: With the revolutions in the Middle East and to some extent with the protests in Madison, there has been a lot of discussion about social media having made all the difference — the social media as a kind of commons. But the actual physical, literal commons of people gathering in these public places has been in play, too, and that may have made all this possible. I don't want to stretch the comparison between Mubarak and Scott Walker, but the Capitol Square in Madison is one of the truly great public spaces in America. Without places like that, or like Tahrir Square in Cairo, these revolutions might never get off the ground.

MinnPost: How did you first come to appreciate public space?

JW: The first time I thought about it was 1987, when the Twins first won the World Series. I wasn't lucky enough to have a ticket, but I wanted to be with the crowd for the final game, so I went down to the Metrodome and stood around with thousands of others. And when the crowd poured out of the Dome to celebrate, there was really no place to go. We were just milling around until, finally, the crowd seemed to settle near 6th and Hennepin. And it was sort of like an amputee who feels a limb that's no longer there. There should have been a park there, but there wasn't. In Cairo, I'm sure Mubarak wished there hadn't been Tahrir Square, or maybe that he'd put a shopping mall in there instead.

jaywalljasper.com

Jay Walljasper

The point is that public spaces aren't just luxuries. They are central to our lives. Democracy depends on the gathering of citizens. Communities depend them as a place for friends and neighbors to gather. They're important to the economy, as you've written about, that people need public places to generate ideas. But they're also part of our makeup as human beings. And they're important for social harmony. I wonder if we'd have such contentious politics if people gathered more often face to face rather than hunker down alone with talk radio to imagine how evil their enemies are.

In the broadest sense, the commons are everything from the environment and the Internet to scientific knowledge and cultural inheritance. Even the most market-oriented conservative might agree that there are quite a few things that don't have price tags on them.

MP: Isn't a physical commons harder to achieve in a country like ours where socio-economic differences are so great?

JW: That's really true. In the developing world it's still apparent that people the need a commons because they don't have a back yard or a private library. We have a mistaken belief that what made America great was the individual working alone to pursue his or her self interest. Actually the settlement of the West was made possible by things like the Land Ordinance of 1785 — that's before the Constitution — which laid out the Northwest territories and established townships, and one square mile of each township was set aside as a place for the public school. And so from the very beginning, there was not just a spirit of the commons but a mechanism to achieve it. It's true that there were cowboys and frontier explorers, but real settlement came when churches, schools and main streets appeared.

MP: Over the last 40 years especially there has been a growing suspicion of public spaces — that they will be occupied by people who aren't like "us." And so, we've had this inward turning of our architecture. Even in downtowns like Minneapolis,' you have big interior courtyards and skyways that seem as if their intent is to provide refuge to the middle class from the danger of the public spaces outside.

JW: In most places in the world, good public spaces are also occupied by the homeless or people who talk to themselves — not on cell phones — or who haven't had a bath for a while. And it doesn't bother anyone until they reach a critical mass. But if we didn't get so nervous and didn't desert these spaces, then things would be better. Jan Gehl, the great Danish architect, makes the point that we once depended a lot on public spaces for shopping, dining, meeting our friends. But as we became wealthier and got refrigerators, cars and back yards, we didn't consider public space so essential. Our kids had their birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese instead of the park. Now, because public spaces are discretionary, they have to be of higher quality in order to succeed.

MP: So now we see the rebirth of high-quality public spaces.

JW: It has been a remarkable turnaround. Look at Central Park in New York. A few years ago, you wouldn't set foot there. Now it's this amazingly beautiful and popular place.

MP: One problem is that good public spaces tend to appear only where there's a lot of money: a newly rich Manhattan, places like Fifth Avenue in Naples, Fla., or Michigan Avenue in Chicago. It's easy to have a nice public space if you have money.

JW: Well, I think we have a wonderful counter-example in Minneapolis with the public park system. By in large I think they're tremendously successful for a wide range of people.

REUTERS/Darren Hauck

Protesters crowd the rotunda floor at the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin.

MP: Yes, I was amazed that 600 people showed up at the Walker a few weeks ago to see the design proposals for the Upper River. Not many of those people live in North or Northeast Minneapolis, but they care about the river nonetheless.

JW: I think the spirit of the commons is stronger here than in most places in this country. People feel especially strong about the lakes and the river. One argument you hear against the commons is that if people don't personally own something they won't take care of it. That's not true here. I think people feel a great deal of ownership for the parks.

MP: I keep going back to the public ownership of the lakeshore being a huge factor in the character development of Minneapolis. It would be a far different city if lakes were bounded by private back yards.

JW: We're going through a period of antigovernment mania, and some people think of the commons as government, which has become a dirty word. But there are many reasons for the government to be in our lives. I'm glad that when it snows the city plows our street so I don't have to do it myself, and I'm really glad there's a water filtration plant and I don't have to dig one in my back yard.

MP: Does climate make it harder for some places — like ours — to have good public spaces?

JW: A lot of hot-weather cities use the same excuse. So let's shoot down once and for all the notion that cold-weather cities can't have good public spaces. Montreal is doing amazing things. It's probably the best biking city in North America. It's always had great plazas and squares. They're as cold as we are and have more snow. But you can wander for miles in downtown Montreal without seeing a surface parking lot.

Copenhagen has a wretched climate. It's cold, damp, windy and dark much of the year. But the streets are full of people. They have outdoor cafés with heaters and movable tables so people can catch the sun or get out of the wind, and they have blankets. By using those things, businesses have been able to extend the "nice" season by 12 weeks a year.

MP: I've always emphasized the difference between public spaces for recreation and public spaces that are part of your everyday routine — the value of a nice sidewalk along which you can walk to work or to the store or the movies. To me that's different from an intentional walk around Lake Harriet — which is not a bad thing. But just having a recreational option isn't the same as being in a walkable neighborhood. Here we have many great places to walk for recreation, but almost no good public spaces that we encounter in the course of everyday life. In New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Vancouver you'd easily walk a couple of miles to a restaurant or a movie because there's so much to walk past along the way. We don't have that yet.

JW: It's a reason that mixed-use development is so important. We have made strides on mixing uses in the parks with places like Tin Fish and Sea Salt. What strikes me as so great about Europe is that there's not much of a dividing line between parks, commercial and residential areas. That boosts the quality of all those spaces. Public spaces, despite our fears about them, also have a huge capacity to delight us. You see a guy playing an accordion or a pretty girl or a kid with a balloon, things you don't see in your car. There are a lot of serious reasons for the commons, but in the end, it's just a more pleasurable way to live.

MP: What are some of your favorite places in the U.S. and in the Twin Cities?

JW: Newbury Street in Boston, Broadway on the upper West Side of Manhattan, Division Street in Northfield, the pedestrian mall in Iowa City, the bike trails around Lanesboro, Stanley Park and the Granville Island farmer's market in Vancouver, the French Quarter in New Orleans, Mears Park, Rice Park and College Park in St. Paul, Chicago's neighborhoods through the window of an El train.

MP: What public spaces stand out as failures in our community?

JW: The festival marketplaces that we tried — Gaultier Plaza, Bandana Square, St. Anthony/Main, those failed because they weren't public enough, among other things. Block E. The sidewalks in downtown Minneapolis qualify as a failed public space. They have activity of sorts, but it's not a place that invites you to linger. It's very utilitarian. A lot of our streets aren't outright failures; they just fail to live up to their potential. The one that stands out for me is Hennepin Avenue heading south into Uptown. It screams out to be as nice as Grand Avenue in St. Paul, but it's not even close. We're to the point in this city where we should narrow some streets and widen the sidewalks to allow street life and neighborhood interaction to actually take place.

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