As I walked to my classrooms during the first week of the fall semester, I realized I had forgotten just how much humanity moves through this campus every single day. It also occurred to me how few thoughtful public spaces exist for a student body this massive.
IU undeniably has a lot of outdoor green space, and it also has a lot of indoor seating scattered throughout various buildings. However, there are only a few areas around campus that provide for sincere enjoyment of our beautiful Indiana landscape and only a few that foster social mixing.
Sure, the arboretum is like a neat museum of trees. And yes, there are nooks to study in Jordan Hall and spots to meet with student groups in the Indiana Memorial Union. But what we need are areas that combine the positive aspects of all of these things.
During my time in Denmark this summer, I was struck by a culture so many of the country's natives have adopted due to the long periods of darkness and cold throughout the year. With so little sunshine, it becomes wildly important to soak it up during the warmer summer months. The need for sun pushes urban planners to create more and higher-quality outdoor gathering spaces in cities.
While Indiana has no lack of sun, as my farmer’s tan will assure you, our campus is lacking in ways to connect students to their environment and to each other effectively.
Jan Gehl, a prominent urban planner in Denmark, said in his book “Life Between Buildings” that “public life in good quality public spaces is an important part of a full life.” He further advocates for “meeting our fellow citizens face to face and experiencing directly through our senses.”
The built environment can drastically affect the way humans interact or don’t interact. Simple structures like outdoor picnic tables with movable chairs or ones that offer communal activities like a horseshoe set can bring people together.
Public spaces that draw people and encourage them to stay awhile are the ones that can foster connectivity between social groups. This can be incredibly important for the mental health of students who feel they aren’t fitting in at a large institution like IU, especially in these first few weeks of classes.
Having an outdoor space is nice because nature provides some health benefits, and an outdoor space is also cheaper and easier than an indoor one.
Transforming human behavior can be achieved through pop-up urban planning, which requires no permanent structures. It's as easy as the addition of plastic lawn chairs to Times Square in 2009 or a chalk energy efficiency tracker in Brighton, England.
These things each unified their respective communities in different ways. For Times Square, it was a place for people experiencing the hustle and bustle of the city to sit down and potentially meet people they may have walked by every day for years. In Brighton, a community rallied together to be more sustainable in its energy usage.
If IU implemented more enticing public space — permanent or temporary — students would have a greater chance of meeting someone they had never planned on meeting, or of developing a relationship they hadn't had before with a space.
With a few additions to IU’s campus, we can break down a lot of social barriers.
meickhof@indiana.edu
@maggie_eickhoff
