Operation Brightside's Demonstration Garden / Telok Ayer Park

I took this picture in Singapore in 2008 and uploaded it to wikipedia. 

Capital/Capita Tower is nice.  It has a fitness center and pool half way up, some incredible views accessible to the public, and a restaurant on top.  There's a subway station under it, a nice public square in front, and a complicated intersection around it.

Every parcel of land interacting with this intersection manages to embrace it or calm its wildness to some degree.  The section outlined in green on the map is Telok Ayer Park (next to Capita Tower), and it's especially interesting because it is one of those rare public parks with what Jane Jacobs called "intricacy."  It's complex and serves many purposes.  It demands to be explored and enjoyed.

Let's start with where I was standing when I took that picture.

Right where that sunny spot is, that's where one can look up and see the well-framed building.  The botanical atmoshere is pleasant and the paths to the sides encourage people to walk around and enjoy the hidden benches. 

On the corner facing the intersection, there's a small island which is friendly to pedestrians, shaded, and accessible by bus.

The corner of the park proper has a staircase to the subway station, and the sidewalk mentioned above.

Along Telok Ayer Street, there's a covered walkway which is nice in a country that's hot and rainy year-round.  There are also more short-cut paths through the park leading to those hidden benches mentioned above. 

Though it is a heavily used urban space full of people, Telok Ayer Park still has the power to hit a person in the face with nature and stop them in their tracks.  I found myself walking through it every few weeks, and never failed to stop and gawk.

So what does this have to do with St. Louis?  

Singapore bills itself as a "City in a Garden," and I now live in the Garden District near a comparably complicated intersection.

The buildings at Kingshighway and Vandeventer do not interact much with the intersection.  The library is turned away from it towards a parking lot.  The car lot and the gas station do a lot to add to the nightmarishness of the place.  Like the rest of the city, the crosswalks are implied but not marked.  If that weren't enough, there's a big vacant plot that's supposed to be an Operation Brightside garden that would also be turned inward.

As much as I want to be excited about Operation Brightside's plan, I actually think it'd mess up that intersection even more.  As it is, there is no sidewalk, and I cut across the field quite a lot.  The Operation Blightside plan would provide a narrow sidewalk around a fenced off garden accessible only from the parking lot.  A blank face of inaccessibility would be presented to the street.

We're giving up on the intersection as a space for people, and we're perpetuating the worst possible idea of what a garden should be.  Do we want a neighborhood in a garden or private gardens in a disconnected neighborhood?

I don't blame Operation Brightside for their unfriendly ambitions.  Look at the examples they have to follow.

The Earthways Center's new home is in a building oriented to two parking lots with a cold shoulder presented to the abandoned street named after MoBot's founder.

Mobot's fenced off library on Vandeventer is barely a step up from the empty parking lot(s) across the street.

Nothing says Botanical like cul-de-sacs!

The barbwire and mud sidewalk combination on Alfred is comforting as well.

...

Operation Brightside is trying to get a $250,000 grant from Pepsi to build their demonstration garden.  Please do vote for them, and sign up for a membership with MoBot while you're at it.  They are our neighborhood assets and we should support them no matter how misguided they are.

While supporting, remember to complain a lot.  They need to be reformed and urbanized.