Everyday (and night) urbanism
After six years attending Clemson, I have experienced downtown in so many different ways. In the introduction to "Everyday Urbanism" Margaret Crawford mentions how "the city of a bus rider or pedestrian does not resemble that of the automobile owner." I would take this further, and say that simply as a pedestrian, we can experience several vastly different downtowns here in Clemson just in the span of 24 hours. The "social geography" is rapidly changing, in a series of overlapping cycles. The cycle of night and day, weekday and weekend, football season and basketball season, summer and winter, rain and shine. Each resident of Clemson experiences downtown differently. Some live there, some work there, some dine there, and some drink there. It is not just the differences between experiencing a city on foot or by bus as Margaret Crawford mentioned, but differences in time, weather, season, and age all matter. As for non-everyday urbanism, below are a few unique examples when downtown Clemson as we know it totally transformed for a special occasion.
A summer afternoon in downtown Clemson. How it is experienced by year-round residents. Not a student in sight.
A Monday night in January - usually a pretty quiet scene. The national championship watch party totally changed the experience of downtown Clemson. The street was the center of activity, with open containers allowed for a night.
A Saturday afternoon in January - usually very quiet in downtown Clemson. This particular photo was the day of the Championship Parade. The amount of people and lack thru traffic (aside from the actual parade) transformed the city for an afternoon.
I agree with this observation of Clemson through space and time. I have experienced the summer in Clemson and it is completely different than the school year. Businesses in the downtown struggle to stay open through the summer. Time is a very important factor in everyday urbanism and needs to be considered in all strategic design decisions.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post, but I want to take a different angle of approach and talk about how College Avenue might be a successful urban project because it is a one way lane on each direction with parallel parking or diagonal parking on the sides of the street; there are multiple stops along the road between the traffic light at Old Greenville Highway (Route 93) and Keith Street where the pedestrian has safe places to cross the road and all of the retail / restaurants /bars have large sidewalks that encourage patio sitting and outdoor dining. I think the road would be a lot less successful if it has two lanes in both directions.
ReplyDeleteMy question to you is what sort of tactics interventions do you think could benefit the urban aspects of the street to make it better in the "off" seasons - during the summers that Chelsea describes above or during the academic break between December and January?
Downtown Clemson could really benefit from more t-shirt shops and parking spaces -Good Ole Boy
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