Terry Schwarz

 

Director of Kent State University's Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative

 

by Michael L. Broome, crew 6  

 

Terry Schwarz is one person who has devoted her life to improving the streets of Cleveland by   spending time with its people to prepare projects to renew the city. As a Clevelander she is passionate about providing ways for people to enjoy the city. The best word that would describe her is willing, willing to help others live wonderful lives by helping improve their community.

 

Mrs. Schwarz is the director of Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. They help the city look better through “pop up city” projects which activate vacant buildings by opening temporary businesses and shops. Another way the collaborative helps the city is by “street scape” which works to enhance the appearances of streets. For example, when a neighborhood has empty storefronts, it discourages other stores from opening. Pretty soon, these businesses will move, stop paying taxes to Cleveland, and will leave their empty buildings to rot and have no use. Also all the money that the city of Cleveland could have received from that business will go to another city.

 

Mrs. Schwarz went to college for architecture and she says that there is a          “this is how you do it attitude,” in this field. There was little room for innovation or doing things differently. She realized that she did not work well with this attitude because she had a different mindset. She saw things a little bit differently than others. This mindset caused her to move to urban design and start her lifelong career and doing what she now loves at Kent State University. 

 

Terry Schwarz said that she has faced many challenges throughout their career but the biggest one was a project called “Opportunity Corridor.” It was a project to create a road to connect the eastern suburbs to the western suburbs. But in order to build it houses would need to be knocked down and yards would be cut through. This project is one that Schwarz says she wishes could have been done differently. While she wasn’t happy with the outcome she said, “I make mistakes all the time, but I learn from them”.

 

Overall Mrs. Schwarz has made a very positive impact on her community. But Mrs. Schwarz says, “There are days when I’m not sure that I am making a difference, because progress can be slow.” That never stops her determination to help the city, however. Mrs. Schwarz works and oversees all the projects and makes sure that she has right team members on each project. They create “pop-up cities” which are more short term projects and have more immediate impacts. The pop up cities work do sometimes bloom into more permanent projects and lead to long term changes, which is really great. “It’s always great to see things happen and grow,” says Schwarz.

 

Mrs. Schwarz hopes that “the small changes will add up to bigger benefits for the city”, those being safer cities and healthier spaces for all people. This shows that she won’t ever let her guard down and looks out for where she needs to be. She also thinks that cities should be good and enjoyable places for people live and thrive. And lastly, she hopes to see more public voices, store owners, and just plain old citizens rebuild our city. This means that she want others to practice what she preaches.

 

Terry Schwarz’s work shows that finding creative ways to enhance the city is very important. When people work to make a community strong it helps them join together as one. Terry Schwarz’s work at the Urban Design Collaborative is helping to bring communities together to improve in Cleveland.