CLEVELAND, Ohio – Say what you will about Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.

The Republican National Convention, where Trump gave his acceptance speech Thursday night, was a great, crashing success for its host city – and especially for the revitalized public spaces that framed the event and made it possible.

Around 50,000 visitors came, including some protesters possibly bent on violence that could have tarnished Cleveland's reputation and evoked embarrassing memories of its dysfunctional past: default, burning river and all.

Watching it all were 15,000 media representatives from around the world, poised to broadcast mayhem in an instant.

The weeks prior to the convention were punctuated by horrific terrorist attacks and police shootings in cities including Orlando, Florida; Dallas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Nice, France.

It was reasonable therefore to fear that the volatile combination of impassioned protesters and global media could have produced a bloody result. Trump even promised violence at one point.

Whew

But that didn't happen. Instead, conventioneers and protesters generally co-existed peacefully in what amounted to a festive celebration of free speech.

And that was due principally to two factors.

One, certainly, was the city's excellent management of the week, including the deployment of 3,000 police offers from around the country.

The other was the way in which visitors and police were able to use streetscapes, parks and other civic infrastructure that has taken decades to build, and without which the convention would have been inconceivable.

Of course, the convention produced moments of tension. Overall, 24 protesters were arrested, far more than the 2 arrested at the 2012 Republican convention in Tampa, Florida.

Barrier city

Security precautions also required the erection of numerous temporary barriers and barricades that walled off portions of downtown, especially around Quicken Loans Arena and the Mall.

Then again, the barriers turned the downtown core into a pedestrian district, for the duration of the event, as if it were the historic heart of a city in Europe.

By and large, visitors and the media experienced a smoothly professional demonstration of civic competence likely to burnish Cleveland's image as a Rust Belt city that's reinventing itself.

That reinvention – minus the all-but-finished Public Square – was nearly on full display during the June 22 parade and rally celebrating the NBA championship victory of the Cleveland Cavaliers, which functioned as something of a rehearsal for the convention week.

The revitalized public realm is comprised of landmark attractions completed during the mayoralty of Michael R. White in the 1990s, including the Gateway sports complex, home to Quicken Loans Arena, which hosted games in the Cavaliers' championship series with the Golden State Warriors just before the Republican convention.

It also included the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on the Lake Erie waterfront at North Coast Harbor.

Making connections

Under White's successor, Jane Campbell, and under Frank Jackson, who became mayor in 2005, the city has focused on connecting the previously built attractions with improved public spaces that are just as vital to a city as individual buildings.

"It's been a concerted effort at place-making," said Chris Ronayne, the city's planning director from 2001 to 2005, and now president of University Circle Inc., the nonprofit that manages the city's educational, medical and cultural hub four miles east of downtown.

Ronayne pointed out that recent improvements represent a rediscovery of the city's historic armature, including the downtown street grid and Public Square, laid out by city founder Moses Cleaveland 220 years ago, and the downtown Mall, a legacy of the 1903 Group Plan for downtown led by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham.

Jackson's collaboration with former Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, for example, enabled the reconstruction of the downtown Mall in 2013 as the green roof of the city's new underground convention center, built on the site of the previous decrepit and outmoded facility.

Jackson deserves particular credit for the $50 million renovation of Public Square, completed on time and on budget just prior to the Republican convention.

In a surprising 2011 interview, Jackson said he wanted to close Superior Avenue and Ontario Street to turn the square into a single, unified central park for the city.

A city for people on foot

Jackson's stance amounted to a statement that he wanted downtown redesigned, at least in part, to better serve pedestrians and bicyclists after decades in which the city's public realm had been designed to serve automobiles.

The mayor didn't get his wish entirely. Traffic engineers made the case that a narrowed Superior Avenue, running east-o-west through the square, needed to stay open for bus traffic.

That's still a debatable point, and one the city may wish to reconsider in the months ahead.

But during the convention, which effectively served as an impressive global debut for the redesigned, 6-acre civic space in the heart of downtown, the square earned glowing reviews from outlets including Wired, Politico and PBS New Hour.

James Corner, the leading American landscape architect who designed the renovation, said in Cleveland weeks before the convention that he hoped the renovated square would promote democracy and peaceful protest.

The redesign enabled large crowds with opposing viewpoints to gather while being separated from each other by phalanxes of police using bikes, mounted patrols and living barriers made of rows of their own blue-uniformed bodies.

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