“Placemaker Profiles” highlights the individuals who have captured our imagination about the need to create great places in every community. By bringing together their valuable stories, key insights, and compelling visions, we hope to share their wisdom with our readers, honor their accomplishments, and acknowledge their profound influence on the Placemaking movement.
For more Placemaker Profiles, click here.
The United States Department of Transportation is planning to start leveraging transportation spending to build livable and sustainable communities.
Communities and advocates have been pressing the US transportation industry to be more proactive about achieving livability goals for decades. Yet, the transportation industry continued to pursue the notion that the safety and mobility of the motoring public was paramount. Prior to the Obama Administration, these calls fell on deaf ears; now, it seems, we have an opportunity to begin to turn the battleship around.
“The pedestrian is the indicator species for a healthy, vibrant community.”
- Beth Osbourne, Deputy Assistant Director for Transportation Policy USDOT
For more quotes from the forum see our live Tweeting
On Thursday, September 24, ContextSensitiveSolutions.org, an FHWA website managed by Project for Public Spaces, hosted an online Forum on Livability for the US Department of Transportation (USDOT). In this forum, USDOT detailed several new programs related to a new Partnership for Sustainable Communities among USDOT, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that promise to reshape development patterns around creating stronger community centers, more compact, mixed-use and walkable environments, and enhanced transportation options. At the same time, these programs would focus development in existing developed areas and protect farmland and open space.
Transportation policy has drastically shaped the face of America.
We hope that we will look back on this initiative as a watershed moment in the history of transportation in America—a return to the idea that transportation investment should be about livability and community outcomes, not simply moving vehicles.
The idea that the transportation system should support community and societal outcomes is nothing new. Prior to the passage of the first federal aid highway act in 1916, road building was the responsibility of communities. They built roads to serve people and the needs of the community. Even when Americans authorized their government to begin taxing them to add highway infrastructure and create dedicated transportation agencies, we did so because we wanted the government to help improve our quality of life. For reasons which I outlined in a 2007 article entitled “Back to Basics in Transportation Planning” the American transportation establishment has lost its way. It is exciting to believe that the Obama Administration will be trying to help us find our way back to our roots.
Today’s webinar built upon the anticipation and excitement created by the June announcement of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. Key officials from the USDOT’s Office of the Secretary (Beth Osborne), the Federal Highway Administration (Gloria Shepherd), and the Federal Transit Administration (Robert J. Tuccillo) covered the guiding principles of the new Partnership:
These goals signal that our transportation leaders will finally tackle broader societal issues, which for decades they have insisted were not their purview. Issues covered by the presenters included land use, housing, climate, energy security and public health.
Later, the webinar addressed the inevitable question: “What Does the Future Hold?” Answers were encouraging. We can look forward to performance-based planning, especially using benchmarks that go beyond the narrow transportation focus that has conventionally dominated DOT and MPO planning and investments. Finally, an era may be approaching in which community vitality, equitable access to transportation, and a match between housing, jobs and transportation choices are equally as important as pavement quality and congestion levels.
Major changes to long-range planning practices, which advocates such as PPS have demanded for quite some time, are also on the horizon. I have personally advocated for multi-modal corridor planning that integrates transportation and land use, with Placemaking as a key foundation. PPS will again explore some of these ideas in a blog post next week.
Most critically, the speakers indicated that there will be changes in the transportation funding structure. Currently, there is a huge disconnect between strategic and policy-level transportation planning and how public funds are actually spent. It is encouraging to hear that these expenditures will be based on performance measures that go beyond pure transportation objectives. It sounds like we may actually be getting back to the basics!
The road ahead for transportation in America will only get more interesting -- and hopefully more livable.
PPS has been contributing to the idea of livable transportation for almost two decades. We were involved in publications like the The Role of Transit in Creating Livable Metropolitan Communities, as well as a 2008 publication written for AARP entitled Great Corridors, Great Communities: The Quiet Revolution in Transportation Planning. Additionally, our recent Citizen’s Guide to Better Streets: How to Engage your Transportation Agency was published to help advocates work constructively with public agencies in order to create more livable and sustainable streets and neighborhoods. In these efforts, we are proud to have been able to build on and supplement the work of other great organizations such as the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Reconnecting America, the Surface Transportation Policy project, among others.
We believe that non-profit organizations and advocates across the country—at the local, state and national levels—have both leadership and implementation roles to play in helping Washington achieve these goals. PPS will continue to be actively engaged to keep the public informed to make change happen in communities across the country.
What: A gorgeous, covered market that dates to the turn of the 20th century and is a focal point for city life.
Why it Works: The spectacular building has been lovingly renovated and sits in all its glory just steps from the Danube on the Pest side, at the foot of the Liberty Bridge (itself a lovely structure). Not only is it beautiful, it is completely wheelchair accessible. Plenty of local people shop for their daily fare here undaunted by the hundreds of tourists roaming up and down the aisles. The second floor contains the handicrafts and souvenirs so dear to visitors hearts: embroidery, leather work, hand-carved chess sets, matruska dolls from Russia. The lower level is devoted to food – there are aisles of fresh vegetables, stands of fowl and meat, a couple of shops with wine and liquor. The only problem a guest faces is trying to choose from the salami, strings of red peppers and packets of saffron. Far in the back, a few small farmers come in from the country with honey, peppers and fresh berries in season.
Read the entire profile here.
Click here to nominate your favorite public space!
For one glorious day each year, an international celebration of street life commonly known as “Park[ing] Day” reclaims parking spaces as people spaces in cities ranging from Santiago to Copenhagen. As described by its local New York City organizers—Transportation Alternatives, this monumental day is intended to
“support the conversion of parking spots throughout New York City into human-friendly places for one day each year. This year there are 55 spots throughout the five boroughs. These temporary public spaces provide relief from the hustle and bustle of New York City and aim to spark a dialogue about the way residents, visitors and city officials choose to use valuable public space.”
Well said. Park[ing] Day is yet another example of grassroots community efforts to make our streets more comfortable and welcoming for the pedestrian. These efforts complement the host of steps such as the NYC Plaza Program, through which the DOT has reclaimed prominent public spaces including Times Square and various plazas throughout the Meatpacking District from vehicles to enhance the pedestrian experience of the city. Yet for us here at PPS, Park[ing] Day is so much more.
For Project for Public Spaces, parking day is like game seven, Bulls vs. Knicks, Jordan vs. Ewing, people vs. car, auto-dominated highways vs. friendly streets as places where the random sidewalk contacts are able to foster a wealth of public life. We train all year for parking day…discussing potential themes, practicing badminton in the office until the wee hours of the night, even lying down in traffic… just to practice. This year the enthusiasm was so high, we even got a countdown calendar with daily quotations by transportation visionaries such as Alan Jacobs, Hans Monderman, and Rolf Monheim.
Following a strong track record with a Mini-Bryant Park themed space at last year’s Park[ing] Day and a “disPlaced Park” the year before , expectations were high for ‘09. After great debate, with the uncanny sense of vision and passion of a seasoned veteran, new Project for Public Spaces employee Tom Peyton had a stroke of genius…Turf’s Up!…which is obviously an Astroturf beach.
Based upon this theme, PPS incorporated its “Power of 10” methodology to provide a layering of activities and uses including: Hula Hooping, Dancing, Dominoes, Music, Twister, Manicures, Pedicures, Eating, Drinking, People Watching, Football, Frisbee, Outdoor Meetings, Cigarette Breaks, and of course a small library consisting of books on Pidgin English and gossip magazines.
All in all, Park[ing] Day was a success…but there were a number of other bar raising celebrants around the world who have encouraged us to begin planning the best Park[ing] Day space ever for 2010.
For further coverage of parking day please see the following links:
http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/parking-day-2009-nyc/
http://twitter.com/parkingdayphila
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2009/09/parking-day-dc-tomorrow-september-18th.html
Cities defined by great public destinations are becoming ever more important in a competitive globalized economy. Examples can be seen everywhere, from the transformation of Bryant Park and Central Park in New York, to the emergence of Lower Downtown in Denver and the revival of once-overlooked cities such as Barcelona, Copenhagen and Melbourne.
Based on more than 30 years of work at Project for Public Spaces, the non-profit organization I founded after working with Holly Whyte, I am convinced that place-based initiatives are the best way to promote vitality and prosperity in cities everywhere. Our experience helping people in more than 2500 towns around the world improve their communities shows that mobilizing people to make great places strengthens neighborhoods, cities and entire metropolitan areas.
Nearly every city today can brag about at least one success story where determined citizens, guided by the idea we call Placemaking, made a difference in the place they call home. Even downtown Detroit now enjoys a popular town square—Campus Martius— whicnh has brought thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment to the hard-hit city center. These remarkable turn-around stories did not happen through the grand visions of designers, but rather by the creativity of a diverse group of people who thought imaginatively and applied broad skills to transform their communities into great places.
But the recent trend toward “iconic” architecture—which has gained a big following in the media and among high-profile clients, winning numerous architectural prizes—minimizes the importance of citizen input and dismisses the goals of creating great public places. Instead it promotes a design-centric philosophy where all that matters is the artistic statement conceived by an internationally recognized celebrity. Frank Gehry, an architect of considerable talent and imagination, drew world attention to the iconic design movement with his famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In the process, he inaugurated an era in which designers call all the shots in creating our cityscapes, leaving us with showy buildings meant to be admired from a distance rather than contributing to the vitality of everyday life in a local community.
Gehry's iconic Bilbao Museum makes a singular statement
Gehry’s Bilbao Museum made a definitive design statement when it opened in 1997, putting this Spanish city on the map of contemporary cultural destinations. But this sort of media buzz enjoys a short life. To make an enduring impact, a place must continually reinvent itself to stay relevant to the times and its setting. The next step for this groundbreaking museum should be for it to evolve it into a great place that keeps people coming back for more than just architecture and art. It needs to become a spot where people naturally want to hang out in order to enjoy the entire experience and energy of an amazing city. Our assessment is that the Bilbao museum does not do that. We have praise for the building as a work of art, but not as a destination.
The two people coming out of the stairs at the sunken entryway were mugged by the two people in the above photo and their camera was stolen. Muggings are common in the empty plazas.
I am a big fan of some of Gehry’s buildings. I think the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park is outstanding – a true iconic architectural achievement. The concert stage, the “Trellis” that spreads an excellent sound system across a large expanse of grass and the seating area are all awesome. I think it is his finest work.
The Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millenium Park, Frank Gehry’s finest building, fosters vibrant public life and contextually creates a real center for Millennium Park.
The public spaces around Queens Courthouse have been improved but are not yet a gathering space.
Sweeping changes in the judicial system and society call for courts to become civic gathering spots [T]he story that a building tells through its design may be as important to the community it serves as is its function. By shaping our thoughts about ourselves and our institutions, it will directly affect our efforts to work productively together. — Justice Stephen G. Breyer (United States Supreme Court, 1994–present)
The courthouse used to be a cornerstone of the community, a source of local pride and the nexus of social life and ritual. But today, courthouses and the public spaces that surround them are often physically and programmatically disconnected from public life, even though they usually occupy central property in a community. Citizens don’t visit their courthouses unless compelled to do so, and very few serve as public destinations.
The good news is that court properties have much potential for resurgence when there is positive leadership, open-minded management, and the desire for change. Courts have the opportunity and responsibility to serve as integral places, key parts of the communities in which they reside. Courts are, after all, the people’s houses of justice, and only by becoming engaging places can they live up to their potential.
While early American courthouses often shared space with other public institutions (like the post office or the county clerk) and were heavily used, more recent court design has encouraged segregation and specialization of uses, so that citizens have little reason to enter the doors of court buildings. The design of court facilities has shifted from welcoming to foreboding, and from public to monumental. The resulting diminution of the courthouse’s community role is indicative of a larger trend: a widening disconnect between the judicial system and public life. While courts are busier than ever, trials are vanishing, and more cases are resolved by private settlement or in non-public forums. Through such privatization, court spaces are no longer truly civic, and don’t support community vitality.
PPS's work with Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square has included efforts to connect the courthouse to the Square.
What is needed – and a real opportunity – is a fundamental reconsideration of how we think about and design court spaces. If courts find ways to recapture their relevance and resonance within communities, they could once again become civic destinations that engage with and respond to their users.
Project for Public Spaces is committed to playing a key role in facilitating these discussions. PPS has worked extensively to revitalize many types of civic centers, including courthouses, post offices, museums, libraries, and seats of government. Since 1999, PPS has partnered with the General Services Administration’s Good Neighbor Program in helping communities envision public spaces that will draw a variety of people, uses, and activities. PPS has worked in this capacity in almost two dozen cities.
PPS’s extensive placemaking experience with civic centers, and our history of collaboration with GSA, give us a strong foundation on which courts of all types can build in fulfilling their potential as true civic destinations.
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By Karen Levy with Fred Kent, President and Cynthia Nikitin, Civic Anchors Program Director for Project for Public Spaces, Inc. Karen Levy is an attorney and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in sociology at Princeton University. Karen has been working with Project for Public Spaces as an Arthur Liman Public Interest Summer Fellow, a program sponsored by Yale Law School and Princeton’s Program in Law and Public Affairs.
Federation Square, in Melbourne, had the primary goal to create a great place.
The Role of Placemaking in Fostering Better and More Creative Design
“Architecture needs to evolve from expressing the individual’s creativity to supporting the community’s creativity.” — Silvia Soonets, Architect, Arqui5
If the primary goal of architects and landscape architects was to create places that people want to be in, would we be designing our communities the way we do today? If contemporary architecture was asked to be responsive to community outcomes, public uses and human comfort would it be done differently? Would it create more demand for the skills of designers?
Looking at design magazines and looking at our cities, it appears that the professional shaping of the built environment has been reduced to creating isolated physical forms with little consideration for their contribution to a larger experience of a place. This reality no doubt closely reflects a demand on design professionals to merely create designs (for buildings, parks, roads, master plans, etc.). Since they have rarely been asked to create places that attract people, it follows that they have not, for the most part, created such places.
At a time when the skills, technology and need for creating successful places has never been greater, there are so few truly successful examples of new public spaces being created or improved.
It Will Take Architects to Create Great Places
Design professions can be much better employed in shaping the public realm. The role of design can and should be much broader and bolder, but will undermine itself if it continues to try to drive a city building or Placemaking process the same way it does today. If the role of design is to create places, design actually become more valuable and creative while developing more productive relationships with clients, partners and communities it is serving.
But if we merely focus on the goals of “good” or “world class” design as an end in itself, we limit the potential of what can be accomplished, and we ignore architecture’s ability to respond creatively to context. When a project prioritizes creating places that meet the needs of its community, the design problems and solutions become more clear, interest in the project rises, and talented people step up to collaborate in the process. Read the rest of this entry »
What: A former industrial area that has been redeveloped to promote outdoor activity in both summer and winter – important in a northern city like Winnipeg.
Why it Works: This community place is used year round for gathering and recreation. In the summer there are concerts and markets and lots of greenspace. In the winter, once the river is frozen, the City prepares the ice for ice skating (originating at the forks), curling rinks and sleigh rides. The Forks promotes outdoor activity both in the summer and winter. The Forks originally was an industrial area of the city. Once it was no longer used industrially, the city redeveloped the area for community interaction. The buildings (old train stations) were turned into markets and the river had a walkway developed along it. It is also a historical site with museums, a childrens’ museum and other creative spaces. The nice thing is that it is a success story: people in the 1980′s didn’t expect it to work, and it has.
Read the entire profile here.
Click here to nominate your favorite public space!
For more information about the conference, click here.
On the 23rd and 24th of September Agenda Cascais 21 will be holding a conference which will, for the first time, bring together Local Agenda 21 practitioners from all the country. The aim is to exchange experiences, discuss best practice and define a path for the way forward. Regarding the latter, it is also our objective to prepare the ground for the implementation of a National LA21 Network. Each day will begin with the presentation of a keynote speaker who will focus on the process of public participation, a major cultural hindrance in the Local Agenda 21 process in our country. For more information, click here.