Golis: Can the new Old Courthouse Square make up for past missteps?

After more than 20 years of dithering, the city of Santa Rosa last week began the demolition that will make way for the reunification of Old Courthouse Square. With the remnants of the divided square removed, what you notice first is how large the new square will be.

Before the end of the year, the new Old Courthouse Square will become the city's newest and most ambitious public space.

It will be a place “where residents and visitors can enjoy a wide variety of community events such as farmers' markets, concerts and outdoor art exhibits,” city officials said last week.

This is no doubt true, but Santa Rosans hope the new square becomes something more than just another events venue. The best public spaces come to symbolize what it means to be a community. Can you think about Healdsburg or Sonoma without thinking of their plazas? These are the places people want to be.

In a new book with an apt title - “City Squares” - the architectural critic Michael Kimmelman explains, “So, in fact, a successful square is not just about light, air, proportion and people. It must also give form to some shared notion of civic identity.”

“Squares,” he adds, “reaffirm our commonality, our shared sense of place and our desire to be included.” (Kimmelman, the architectural critic for the New York Times, is among 18 prominent essayists who contributed to the book, which focuses on “the spirit and significance of squares around the world.”)

The reuniting of Old Courthouse Square becomes the most prominent expression of Santa Rosa's desire to make up for past decisions that pursued progress without regard to the city's distinctive geography and history.

Years later, hindsight is easy. Every decision gets made in the context of its time.

But whether it's pushing a street through the middle of the town square, or insisting the downtown be partitioned by a freeway, or agreeing to let the downtown be walled off by a shopping mall, Santa Rosa lives with the consequences of these decisions.

In the name of progress, Santa Rosa became the city that buried sections of two creeks, Santa Rosa and Matanzas, and then built its city hall on top of them. (With no sense of irony, city officials later traveled to other cities to learn how they used natural waterways to make their downtowns more attractive and livable.

In the name of progress (and sales tax revenue), Santa Rosa also joined the parade of cities promoting big-box stores and strip malls on the edge of town - businesses that drew customers from the downtown and made the entrances to Santa Rosa look more like countless other cities.

These decisions were made during the time that planners and developers all over America were smitten by the idea that old-fashioned neighborhoods were relics of another time - obstacles to the convenience of cars and concrete. Only later did these decision makers figure out that people want to be with people, and they don't want their town to look like every other town.

If you've ever been to New York City - or seen a movie about New York City - you probably know Washington Square Park. It's the heart of the urban neighborhood that is Greenwich Village. It comes close to being central casting's idea of the perfect community square - the place where people of all ages come together to stroll or play chess, walk the dog or meet a friend.

Once upon a time, Kimmelman recalls, the purveyors of progress in New York City wanted to run a highway through the middle of Washington Square Park. Sound familiar?

Downtown Santa Rosa has endured despite past missteps and years of foot dragging at City Hall. Along the way, blue-ribbon studies came and went, and seemingly every new City Council declared its desire to re-unite Old Courthouse Square. Until now, however, no council wanted to step up to the plate and make it happen.

Cities learn from their mistakes, or at least we hope they do.

And the world is changing. More people, especially young people, are moving to cities, drawn by the jobs and the urban amenities. They're less interested in getting from here to there in an automobile. (In the past 20 years, the number of automobile miles driven by young Americans has declined by a third.)

No one can guarantee that Old Courthouse Square will become the heart of Santa Rosa, the place where people come to be together to celebrate their town.

But this project honors the city's history. (In the 1850s, the first official map of the city identifies the space simply as “PLAZA.”)

And it acknowledges people's eagerness to return to public spaces, where they can walk to a restaurant or shop, sit and read a book, listen to a recital or simply watch the world go by.

The space exists (which isn't true in every town). All we have to do is use it.

Whether it's the Plaza in Healdsburg or Campo de' Fiori in Rome, the most prosperous and livable cities are known by their public spaces. There's no reason Santa Rosa can't be the same.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.