Terry Schwarz

 

Director of Kent State University's Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative

 

by Gabrealle McKellar, crew 5 

 

                                                                               

Terry Schwarz is very successful. Terry is the Director of Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. Terry has a specific role. She leads a team of city-planners and architects to work on projects that improve the physical conditions of spaces in the city. Terry and her team work with the community partners to listen to their needs and wants. Then she leads the projects to address these needs.

 

Ms. Schwarz said that when she was younger she didn’t know what she wanted to be. She explained that over time this changed. “Everyone is sort of who they are since they were younger but things that were important to them then aren’t important now,” she explained. Over time she developed her interest in urban planning and design. She uses creativity to try to address problems that cities face.

 

Ms. Schwarz’s organization was created to provide urban design services that people do not have access to them. “The most distressed parts of the city is where these services are needed. I work to improve the physical conditions in cities.” The Urban Design Collaborative does a lot of work in vacant lots because they are areas that are not used for their potential. They work to fix them so that they are. They come up with their own projects as well as take on projects from other organizations.

 

Terry Schwarz and her team are working on a big project on the Detroit/Superior Bridge. This is a two story floor bridge and they are trying to open the lower level to the public. Also Ms. Schwarz and her team worked on a project called Reimagining a Sustainable Cleveland. It worked on vacant lands to re-use them for the land rather than just building houses on them.

The vacant lots have been places where Ms. Schwarz has done a lot of work. “I also work with scientists who study plants on the vacant lots because the city plants grass on these lots, and it must be maintained,” she explained. The scientists study the growth of the plants on the lots to determine how the land can be used. She also works on projects that deal with the trash in vacant lots. One of the main questions the ask is, “Are there things you can do to make people not dump things on a lot?” Ms. Schwarz explained, “We have realized that if a lot or space looks like people are maintaining it, then people will most likely not dump their trash there. So we try to make the space look nice and maintained.” Vacant lots are not just a Cleveland problem. They are all over cities in the nation. “We want vacant lots to be turned to a more pleasant and safe place,” Ms. Schwarz said.

 

Terry Schwarz has had lots of successes, but she has also faced challenges in her work. “I make mistakes all the time, but I learn from them,” she said. She said that one of the biggest challenges she ever faced was a project now called the “Forgotten Triangle” It’s an area of Cleveland that got its name because apparently no one thinks about the area any more. Ms. Schwarz and her team had an idea to use this area to create a road that connected the west suburbs to the east suburbs. However, building the road would require knocking down houses and crossing across yards of where people were living. “I felt terrible about this” Ms. Schwarz said. Building the plan for the road was not thoughtful of the community living there because it did not consider the people along the road. While Ms. Schwarz wishes this project would have gone differently, she still learned a lot through it.

 

In conclusion Terry Schwarz has done a lot to improve the way spaces are used in Cleveland. She has done so many of these projects for the people that can’t afford it. She explained why she believes her work is important saying, “We can’t develop a city the way we want from border to border, so we start small. Our staff is pretty small, only five of us on a team, we inspire each other to do more.” Although her team is small, the impact Terry Schwarz is making on Cleveland is large.