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It’s time to start thinking about public squares as democratic tools
First there was the Bilbao Effect, a quasi-spiritual conviction that erecting architecturally compelling museums would bring in droves of tourists and revitalize woebegone industrial cities. Now we’re starting to what you might call the High Line Effect (after New York’s High Line park). The Bilbao Effect is a quasi-spiritual conviction This is perhaps a touch unfair: Parks are not museums and landscape architect James Corner’s recent works shouldn’t all be labeled High Line 2.0 just because he designed the original. Nevertheless, consider the dek for Eric Jaffe’s “Reclaiming the Public Square,” which appears in the July/August 2015 issue of The…