In the Park With Christo

From everywhere people flocked to New York City to experience the extraordinary installation in Central Park by the environmental artists Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude. For sixteen days, 7,500 sixteen-foot-high gates draped with billowing saffron banners brightened twenty-three miles of walkways that wind their way through this masterfully designed 843-acre park in the center of Manhattan.

People of every nationality, income, profession and age came together simply to experience this cultural phenomenon occurring in one of the country's pre-eminent public parks. Strangers talked to strangers. People took one another's pictures. Kids played. Couples strolled. Everyone seemed to smile. This is what democratic public space is all about. The spotlight appropriately was on the artists. The Gates were Christo's gift to New York, the $21 million cost paid entirely by him. But his greatest gift has been to provoke everyone to re-examine, re-appreciate and rediscover the inspired design of Central Park by Frederick Law Olmsted, a founder of The Nation, and Calvert Vaux. No better illustration can be found of how a well-designed and well-used public space enhances civil society.

The public's enthusiastic embrace of this populist spectacle should be a wake-up call across the country. For too long, communities have been losing public spaces that offer the opportunity for people to serendipitously mix, mingle and meet. Today, the privately owned mall is often a community's only remaining gathering space. Unlike in a true public place, public assembly or leaflet distribution can be legally denied in private malls. And when genuine public places are absent, the human hunger for connection is fulfilled by "hanging out" at the Wal-Mart or roaming the corridors of any big box. Is this why studies show Americans spend so much leisure time shopping at malls?

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