City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

5. FACILITATION AND/OR MANIPULATION: THE CHALLENGES OF TAKING PART IN FORT WORTH, EVERETT, CHARLOTTESVILLE, AND CLEVELAND

209 THE COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS in Fort Worth, Texas; Everett, Washington; Charlottesville , Virginia; and Cleveland, Ohio, conducted by Lawrence Halprin & Associates represent the most complex application of the participatory process. The workshops in each of these cities presented different challenges and achieved varying levels of success. The firm conducted other Take Part Processes during the early 1970s in Wilmington, Delaware (regarding the redesign of the city’s major retail corridor, Market Street); Morningside Heights, Harlem (for resolution of a long-standing conflict between Columbia University and neighborhood residents over Morningside Park);1 and Tulsa, Oklahoma (particularly focused on the development of an open space network). Additionally, the firm conducted “Leadership Training Workshops,” funded by a federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) demonstration grant, in San Francisco (predominantly for the Halprin staff) and in Indianapolis (for representatives of poverty programs, Model Cities, and the city and state planning divisions) to instruct individuals how to create, “score,” and conduct their own workshops.2 5. facilitation and/or manipulation the challenges oF taking part in Fort worth, everett, charlottesville, and cleveland 210 facilitation and/or manipulation taking part in fort worth, texas The years 1969 and 1970 posed a major turning point for Halprin and his firm. As described in chapter 1, with a staff of nearly sixty employees Halprin began to feel more and more alienated from everyday decisions at the same time many of his employees began to resent his lack of involvement but retention of final authority.3 It was at this time (March and April 1970) that the firm underwent the “radical reorganization” that resulted in the exodus of nearly twenty-five employees and a revamped management system aimed at open dialogue. In early June 1970, Halprin hired Robert (Bob) Mendelsohn to head the community participation division of the restructured firm. He had previously served as a San Francisco supervisor, simultaneously teaching political science and community organizing at both San Francisco State College and the University of California, Berkeley, and before that he was a community information chief for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, the context in which Halprin most likely met him. The fact that Mendelsohn was a political scientist, not a designer, is indicative of the new directions the firm was taking at this time. Lawrence Halprin & Associates’s first workshop in Fort Worth (June 26–27, 1970) became “Mendelsohn’s debut as an urban interlocuter,” according to Halprin.4 Perhaps because of Mendelsohn’s background in politics, as one who “hews to traditional views of management,”5 or perhaps simply because Halprin began the project working with business and government officials rather than everyday citizens, the process in Fort Worth was not as inclusive as the authors of Taking Part recommended in 1974 or as “microcosmic” as Paul Baum suggested in his section on “Encounter Groups” in the New York, New York report. Yet this may be the reason why consensus seems to have been achieved seamlessly in the Fort Worth case and why Halprin could declare it a “resounding success.” The workshop was comprised of twenty-five “community leaders,” including “directors of the major banks and insurance corporations, the major city planning officials, the chamber of commerce, managers of the largest retail stores and others.”6 In other words, the participants were members of the city’s power structure whose extensive private efforts at “civic betterment” and “beautification” had long proven influential.7 facilitation and/or manipulation 211 Despite the relatively homogenous composition of the group and the city’s general conservatism, Halprin’s firm used lessons learned from the “Experiments in Environment ” to develop a “common language of awareness between the various city leaders (business, financial, and political) and the design team,” as stated in the final central business district (CBD) report presented in chapter 2.8 The process unfolded in the transparent manner the firm intended and generated positive enthusiasm among participants. However, the Fort Worth City Sector Planning Council was resistant to opening up the decision-making process to the general public, as indicated by a memo to Mendelsohn from a Halprin staff member in which he complains about chairman of the Sector Council Burl Hulsey’s refusal to distribute a “handout” at a public presentation in the summer of 1971: The idea behind the “handout” was to facilitate citizen participation through intelligent written responses and criticisms; and would be an inexpensive key step towards citizen approval of the plan. Burl...