Today, many claim credit for the park's success and, in effect, each is correct.  Each consultant, architect,
landscape designer, and civic organization, especially the Parks Council, New York's preeminent parks advocacy group, added to Whyte's original, simple, but brilliant strategy. Successes are often the better, the more diverse the input. Step by step, ideas have been proposed, debated, revised, debated again, and modified since the reopening in 1992, just like a garden that gets weeded, cultivated, and fertilized over time.  Today much celebrated and much
loved, Bryant Park still attracts "undesirables" and
unfortunate term of varied meaning depending on who is using it.  In this case, it is whomever the individuals now congregating so comfortably in Bryant Park today would stay away from if they were not part of a crowd.  The drunk, the poorly dressed, the unstable, the menacing.  But they are so in the minority and so unthreatening, people hardly notice... or care.  The poor, the homeless, the so-called
undesirables have the right to be there too, after all, and their presence forces people to be aware, to let a
different reality intrude, to reflect.  Without them
visible, we don't think about them.  Out of sight, out of
mind is what too many people strive for today, a sure way to avoid difficult societal dilemmas that don't just
disappear.  Bryant Park, in that respect, is as democratic a space as one can find in an American city today.

Perhaps the greatest lesson of Bryant Park is that it is
never "done," "finished," "complete."  It is continually
being modified, improved, adjusted, always fluid, never frozen.  This is a defining quality of an urbanistically vibrant place.  To his credit, Dan Biederman, executive director of the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, is always prowling the park, observing how things are working, reviewing the care and attention given by staff, looking for new ideas, changing what he thinks needs changing.  And
While his judgment may not always be to everyone's liking, at least he is giving the care and attention a public place needs to fulfill its promise.

Bryant Park is the greatest legacy of William H. Whyte, who is one of this country's cogent urban critics.  Whyte personifies the non-expert expert, the problem solver, who like Jan Jacobs, embodies the urban wisdom many planners ignore.  "In the age of specialists," architecture critic David Dillon (Dallas Morning News) wrote in Preservation Magazine, "Whyte remains an inspired amateur who follows
his nose rather than theories and fashions."  "The premier urban gadfly," Dillon added.  As fitting as Whyte's strategy was, no one anticipated -- and, surely, no one planned for -- the kind of splendid center of urban life it became, the very definition of spontaneity, at the heart of one of the city's most important districts.  The fashion industry turned it into its front lawn, taking it over for two annual fashion shows.  A summer film festival shows classics outside while viewers sprawl on the lawn. Concerts and chess tournaments are favorites too.

While Whyte focused on a specific park and building
entrance, his observations can be broadly applied to parks, public paces, town centers, and building entrances.  Noting the need to redesign the park, Whyte wrote:

    "There has been some concern that easier access would undercut the sanctuary and refuge quality that people cite as a reason for coming.  I see no merit in this charge.  In the first place, if people rally wanted a walled-off sanctuary, Bryant would be a great success.  It's a walled-off sanctuary.  But it isn't a success and there's some fairly obvious evidence that they come, say, to enjoy the lawn because of the lawn, and not because there's a wall and iron fence around the outside.  Well-used places accommodate all sorts of use, all sorts of people, and in varying moods."

Available from John Wiley and Sons

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