January 29th, 2010 | Go to Placemaking Blog Home

Livability to Become Requirement in Federal Transportation Policy

Posted by: Craig Raphael

Transit can have a broad impact on community livability, like this bus stop in Los Angeles, which catalyzed nearby development after simple improvements were made

For years, large-scale transit projects submitted for funding in the United States have been evaluated primarily on cost and the amount of time they save commuters. While these criteria may seem perfectly reasonable, the cheapest, quickest transit route is not necessarily the one that best serves communities along the way.

Two weeks ago, the Obama Administration made a dramatic policy shift on how to evaluate major transportation projects. In a statement on January 13th, U.S Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that, “We want to base our decisions on how much transit helps the environment, how much it improves development opportunities and how it makes our communities better places to live.”

Wow! For many years, Project for Public Spaces has advocated for greater community involvement in the transportation planning process, beginning with our 1997 publication, “The Role of Transit in Creating Livable Metropolitan Communities.” Reflecting on this report, Senior Vice President Steve Davies noted, “We first had to define what livability was, because it means different things to different people. It was through this process that we first developed the place diagram, which has become one of PPS’ most influential tools.”

Twelve years later, a key theme of the report–transportation projects can positively affect the livability of communities–is poised to become a part of federal policy. PPS.org sat down with PPS Vice President Cynthia Nikitin to gauge her reaction to this exciting news and discuss the implications for the transportation planning process in the future. Read the rest of this entry »





Kathy Madden

Senior Vice President
kmadden@pps.org

Kathy Madden is an environmental designer who has been at PPS since its inception in 1975. During this time, Kathy has been involved in all aspects of the organization’s work. She has directed over 300 research and urban design projects along with training programs throughout the U.S and abroad. She also currently directs PPS’s Placemaking Training and Public Space Research and Publications programs.

Kathy has co-authored and written both books and articles, including the PPS best-selling publication How to Turn a Place Around, which has now been translated into Czech and Japanese. She has lectured extensively and conducts, in conjunction with other PPS staff, PPS’s semi-annual How to Turn a Place Around training program in New York. While at PPS she taught for six years at the Pratt School of Architecture Graduate Program in Urban Design.

In 1995, Kathy started the Urban Parks Institute with a $2.2 million grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. The Institute brought together over 2,000 parks leaders from both the private and public sectors in eight national conferences and four regional workshops. The Institute produced a volume of research and publications related to urban parks, and created a major online resource center for urban parks best practices and research, Urban Parks Online, which attracts over one million page views annually.

Prior to working at PPS, Kathy worked at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and at the New York City Parks Department where she conducted an evaluation of park equipment and street furniture.

Education

University of Minnesota, Bachelor of Arts in Design, Marketing and Advertising

Parsons School of Design, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Environmental Design

Selected Professional Presentations and Lectures

“How to Turn a Place Around” GEL Conference, New York, NY, April 2009

“World Cities Summit” National Parks Board, Singapore, June 2008

“The Quality of Density” Third Congress for Israeli Urbanism, Movement for Israeli Urbanism, Tel Aviv, Israel, May 2008

Historic Nutley Preservation Committee, Nutley, NJ, March 2008

21st World Congress, International Federation of Parks and Recreation Administration, Dublin, Ireland, September 2007

Aspen Ideas Festival, Aspen, CO, July 2007

Urban Design Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, May 2005

Mid South Planning and Zoning Institute, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, April 2005

Experts In Residence Program, Battle Creek, MI, April 2005

Greenspace Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland, February 2005

Scottish Executive Committee, Edinburgh, Scotland, February 2005

Great Parks, Great Cities, London, UK, July, 2004

Iowa ASLA Annual Conference, Des Moines, IA, May, 2004

Guest Speakers Series, South Bend, IN, May 2004

Texas ASLA Annual Conference, Dallas, TX, April 2004

International Congress in Management of Urban Parks, Terrassa, Spain, April 2003

Publications and Articles

“Toward An Architecture Of Place,” Planetizen Interchange, February 2007

“One Day, Two Paris Parks,” Landscape Architecture, February 2006

“Five Ways to a Great Place,” Yes! Magazine, Summer 2005

“Five Parks that Need a Turnaround,” Projects for Public Spaces 2004

“Public Parks, Private Partners,” Project for Public Spaces 2001

“How to Turn a Place Around,” Project for Public Spaces 2001

“Creating Places that Work,” Planning Commissioners Journal, Summer 2001

“Streets vs. Malls: The Modern Dilemma of Urban Public Spaces,” Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1994.

“A Cry for Community,” Planning Commissioners Journal, Fall 1994

Streetscape: A Guide to the Design and Management of Pedestrian Amenities in Downtowns and Neighborhood Commercial Districts, Project for Public Spaces, Inc., 1987

User Analysis: An Approach to Park Planning and Management, American Society of Landscape Architects, 1983

Film in User Analysis, National Park Service, 1979



William H. Whyte

Biography • Perspectives • Quotable • Publications • Contact

William H.(Holly) Whyte (1917-1999) is considered the mentor for Project for Public Spaces because of his seminal work in the study of human behavior in urban settings. While working with the New York City Planning Commission in 1969, Whyte began to wonder how newly planned city spaces were actually working out – something that no one had previously researched. This curiosity led to the Street Life Project, a pioneering study of pedestrian behavior and city dynamics.

PPS founder and president Fred Kent worked as one of Whyte’s research assistants on the Street Life Project, conducting observations and film analyses of corporate plazas, urban streets, parks and other open spaces in New York City. When Kent founded PPS shortly thereafter, he based the organization largely on Whyte’s methods and findings. More than anything, Whyte believed in the perseverance and sanctity of public spaces. For him, small urban places are “priceless,” and the city street is “the river of life…where we come together.” Whyte’s ideas are as relevant today as they were over 30 years ago, and perhaps even more so.

“Whyte’s work remains a living and usable handbook for improving our cities, our countryside, and our lives.”

– Nathan Glazer, Wilson Quarterly

“Holly always believed that the greatest lesson the city has to offer us is the idea that we are all in it together, for better or for worse, and we have to make it work.”

– Paul Goldberger, Architecture

Biography

Whyte was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1917. He joined the staff of Fortune magazine in 1946, after graduating from Princeton University and serving in the Marine Corps. His book The Organization Man (1956), based on his articles about corporate culture and the suburban middle class, sold more than two million copies. Whyte then turned to the topics of sprawl and urban revitalization, and began a distinguished career as a sage of sane development and an advocate of cities.

In 1969 Whyte assisted the New York City Planning Commission in drafting a comprehensive plan for the city. Having been critically involved in the planning of new city spaces, he came to wonder how these spaces were actually working out. No one had researched this before. He applied for and received a grant to study the street life in New York and other cities in what became known as the Street Life Project. With a group of young research assistants, and camera and notebook in hand, he conducted pioneering studies on pedestrian behavior and breakthrough research on city dynamics.

All told, Whyte walked the city streets for more than 16 years. As unobtrusively as possible, he watched people and used time-lapse photography to chart the meanderings of pedestrians. What emerged through his intuitive analysis is an extremely human, often amusing view of what is staggeringly obvious about people’s behavior in public spaces, but seemingly invisible to the inobservant.

The core of Whyte’s work was predicated on the years he spent directly observing human beings, and he authored several texts about urban planning and design and human behavior in various urban spaces. Whyte served as an advisor to Laurence S. Rockefeller on environmental issues and as a key planning consultant for major U.S. cities, traveling and lecturing widely. He was a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He was a trustee of the American Conservation Association, and was active in the Municipal Art Society, the Hudson River Valley Commission and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Task Force on Natural Beauty.

Perspectives

The Social Life of Public Spaces

Whyte wrote that the social life in public spaces contributes fundamentally to the quality of life of individuals and society. He suggested that we have a moral responsibility to create physical places that facilitate civic engagement and community interaction.

Bottom-Up Place Design

Whyte advocated for a new way of designing public spaces – one that was bottom-up, not top-down. Using his approach, design should start with a thorough understanding of the way people use spaces, and the way they would like to use spaces. Whyte noted that people vote with their feet – they use spaces that are easy to use, that are comfortable. They don’t use the spaces that are not.

The Power of Observation

Whyte suggested that through observation and by talking to people, we can learn a great deal about what people want in public spaces and can put this knowledge to work in creating places that shape livable communities. We should therefore enter spaces without theoretical or aesthetical biases, and “look hard, with a clean, clear mind, and then look again – and believe what you see.”

Quotable

“What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people.”

“One felicity leads to another. Good places tend to be all of a piece – and the reason can almost always be traced to a human being.”

“It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.”

“We are not hapless beings caught in the grip of forces we can do little about, and wholesale damnations of our society only lend a further mystique to organization. Organization has been made by man; it can be changed by man.”

“The street is the river of life of the city, the place where we come together, the pathway to the center.”

“If there’s a lesson in streetwatching it is that people do like basics — and as environments go, a street that is open to the sky and filled with people and life is a splendid place to be.”

“The human backside is a dimension architects seem to have forgotten.”

“Up to seven people per foot of walkway a minute is a nice bustle”

“There is a rash of studies underway designed to uncover the bad consequences of overcrowding. This is all very well as far as it goes, but it only goes in one direction. What about undercrowding? The researchers would be a lot more objective if they paid as much attention to the possible effects on people of relative isolation and lack of propinquity. Maybe some of those rats they study get lonely too.”

“So-called ‘undesirables’ are not the problem. It is the measures taken to combat them that is the problem?”

“I end then in praise of small spaces. The multiplier effect is tremendous. It is not just the number of people using them, but the larger number who pass by and enjoy them vicariously, or even the larger number who feel better about the city center for knowledge of them. For a city, such places are priceless, whatever the cost. They are built of a set of basics and they are right in front of our noses. If we will look.”

Publications

Books

The Essential William H. Whyte, Albert Lafarge (Editor), Fordham University Press, 2000.

City: Rediscovering the Center, New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, Washington, D.C.: The Conservation Foundation, 1980.

“A Guide to Peoplewatching,” in Urban Open Spaces, Lisa Taylor (Ed.), New York: Cooper-Hewitt Museum, 1979.

Plan for the City of New York, 1969.

The Last Landscape, Garden City: Doubleday, 1968.

Cluster Development, New York: American Conservation Foundation, 1964.

The Exploding Metropolis, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958.

The Organization Man, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956.

Articles

“The Gifted Pedestrian,” Ekistics, 303, May/June 1984.

“Securing Open Space for Urban America: Conservation Easements,” Technical Bulletin No. 36, Urban Land Institute, Washington, D.C., September 1968.

Obituaries

obit. The Daily Telegraph (London), January 15, 1999, p.25.

“Secret Life of US Corporations: William H. Whyte”, The Guardian (London), January 15, 1999, p.20.

obit. The Independent (London), January 15, 1999, p.7.

“Lessons From ‘The Organization Man’ Still Have Some Relevance for Today”, Los Angeles Times, January 24, 1999, p.c5.

“Dialogue: “How Has ‘The Organization Man’ Aged? Nostalgia’s Illusions”, by Virgina Postrel and “How Has ‘The Organization Man Aged? A Need to Belong”, by Arlie Russell Hochschild, both in The New York Times, January 17, 1999, p.17.

obit. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 17, 1999, p.e5.

obit. Time, January 25, 1999, p.23.

“Writer Delved Into ‘Obvious’ Quirks of Life”, USA Today, January 14, 1999, p3a.

obit. U.S. News & World Report, January 25, 1999, p.16.

“William Whye Dies: Urban Studies Author, Best Known for ‘The Organization Man’”, The Washington Post, January 14, 1999, p.b06.

“William Whyte, Man of the Mid-Century”, The Washington Post, January 18, 1999, p.c02.

Contact

info@pps.org

Categories: Articles, Placemaker Profiles



Jane Jacobs

Biography •  Perspectives • Quotable • Publications • Links • Contact

Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urban writer and activist who championed new, community-based approaches to planning for over 40 years. Her 1961 treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, became perhaps the most influential American text about the inner workings and failings of cities, inspiring generations of urban planners and activists. Her efforts to stop downtown expressways and protect local neighborhoods invigorated community-based urban activism and helped end Parks Commissioner Robert Moses’s reign of power in New York City.

Jacobs had no professional training in the field of city planning, nor did she hold the title of planner. She instead relied on her observations and common sense to illustrate why certain places work, and what can be done to improve those that do not. Together with William H. Whyte, Jacobs led the way in advocating for a place-based, community-centered approach to urban planning, decades before such approaches were considered sensible.

“With humility and common sense, she taught the world how to understand and value cities through direct observation, persistent questioning and discovery. Her faith in the wisdom of local citizens lives on in the civic battles in which she participated and her wisdom lives on in the writing of her nine seminal books.” — The Center for the Living City at Purchase College

“Probably no single thinker has done more in the last fifty years to transform our ideas about the nature of urban life.” — Chicago Tribune

“Jane Jacobs’ observations about the way cities work and don’t work revolutionized the urban planning profession. Thanks to Jacobs, ideas once considered lunatic, such as mixed-use development, short blocks, and dense concentrations of people working and living downtown, are now taken for granted.” — Adele Freedman, The Globe and Mail

“Jane Jacobs, the world-famous apostle of livable cities, almost single-handedly reshaped the way urban planners think about their profession. Planners hated her book when it came out, but it’s required reading in universities around the world.” — Alexander Ross, Canadian Business

“Both critics and admirers have attached the word ‘anarchist’ to her, because she believes in power being exercised by individuals or people in small groups rather than big governments and corporations. Jane Jacobs believes that most problems, if solvable at all, will be solved not by the elaborate schemes of experts but by spontaneous invention.” — Robert Fulford, Imperial Oil Review

“Mrs. Jacobs’ Protest Results in Riot Charge: Jane Jacobs, a nationally known writer on urban problems, was arraigned in Criminal Court yesterday and charged with second-degree riot, inciting to riot and criminal mischief. The police had originally charged that Mrs. Jacobs tried to disrupt a public meeting on the controversial Lower Manhattan Expressway. ‘The inference seems to be,’ Mrs. Jacobs said, ‘that anybody who criticizes a state program is going to get it in the neck.’” — The New York Times, April 18, 1968

Biography

Jacobs was born in 1916 in the coal mining town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a doctor and a former school teacher and nurse. After graduating from high school, she took an unpaid position as the assistant to the women’s page editor at the Scranton Tribune. A year later, in the middle of the Depression, she left Scranton for New York City. During her first several years in the city she held a variety of jobs, working mainly as a stenographer and freelance writer, often writing about working districts in the city. These experiences, she claims, “…gave me more of a notion of what was going on in the city and what business was like, what work was like.” While working for the Office of War Information she met her husband, architect Robert Jacobs.

In 1952 Jacobs became an associate editor of Architectural Forum, allowing her to more closely observe the mechanisms of city planning and urban renewal. In the process, she became increasingly critical of conventional planning theory and practice, observing that many of the city rebuilding projects she wrote about were not safe, interesting, alive, or economically sound. She gave a speech on this issue at Harvard in 1956, and William H. Whyte invited her to write a corresponding article in Fortune magazine, titled “Downtown is for People.” In 1961 she presented these observations and her own prescriptions in the landmark book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, challenging the dominant establishment of modernist professional planning and asserting the wisdom of empirical observation and community intuition.

During the 1960s Jacobs also became involved in urban activism, spearheading local efforts to oppose the top-down neighborhood clearing and highway building championed by New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. In 1962 she became the chairman of the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway, in reaction to Moses’ plans to build a highway through Manhattan’s Washington Square Park and West Village. Her efforts to stop the expressway led to her arrest during a demonstration in 1968, and the campaign is often considered one of the turning points in the development of New York City. Moses had previously pushed through the Cross-Bronx Expressway and other motorways despite neighborhood opposition, and the defeat of the Lower Manhattan Expressway was an important victory for local community interests and an instigator of Moses’s fall from power. Jacobs’ harsh criticism of “slum-clearing” and high-rise housing projects was also instrumental in discrediting these once universally supported planning practices.

In 1968 Jacobs moved with her family to Toronto, in opposition to the Vietnam War. In Toronto, she remained an outspoken critic of top-down city planning. In the early 1970s she helped lead the Stop Spadina Campaign, to prevent the construction of a major highway through some of Toronto’s liveliest neighborhoods. She also advocated for greater autonomy of the City of Toronto, criticized the bloated electric company Ontario Hydro, supported broad revisions in Toronto’s Official Plan and other planning policies, and opposed expansion of the Toronto Island Airport.

After publishing The Death and Life of Great American Cities, her interests and writings broadened, encompassing more discussion of economics, morals, and social relations. Her subsequent books include The Economy of Cities (1969); The Question of Separatism (1980), an analysis of the question of sovereignty for Quebec; Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), a major study of the importance of cities and their regions in their nations and thus also in the global economy; Systems of Survival (1993); and most recently The Nature of Economies (2000). She became a Canadian citizen in 1974 and lived in Toronto until her death on April 25th, 2006.

Perspectives

Cities as Ecosystems

Jacobs approached cities as living beings and ecosystems. She suggested that over time, buildings, streets and neighborhoods function as dynamic organisms, changing in response to how people interact with them. She explained how each element of a city – sidewalks, parks, neighborhoods, government, economy – functions together synergistically, in the same manner as the natural ecosystem. This understanding helps us discern how cities work, how they break down, and how they could be better structured.

Mixed-Use Development

Jacobs advocated for “mixed-use” urban development – the integration of different building types and uses, whether residential or commercial, old or new. According to this idea, cities depend on a diversity of buildings, residences, businesses and other non-residential uses, as well as people of different ages using areas at different times of day, to create community vitality. She saw cities as being “organic, spontaneous, and untidy,” and views the intermingling of city uses and users as crucial to economic and urban development.

Bottom-Up Community Planning

Jacobs contested the traditional planning approach that relies on the judgment of outside experts, proposing that local expertise is better suited to guiding community development. She based her writing on empirical experience and observation, noting how the prescribed government policies for planning and development are usually inconsistent with the real-life functioning of city neighborhoods.

The Case for Higher Density

Although orthodox planning theory had blamed high density for crime, filth, and a host of other problems, Jacobs disproved these assumptions and demonstrated how a high concentration of people is vital for city life, economic growth, and prosperity. While acknowledging that density alone does not produce healthy communities, she illustrated through concrete examples how higher densities yield a critical mass of people that is capable of supporting more vibrant communities. In exposing the difference between high density and overcrowding, Jacobs dispelled many myths about high concentrations of people.

Local Economies
By dissecting how cities and their economies emerge and grow, Jacobs cast new light on the nature of local economies. She contested the assumptions that cities are a product of agricultural advancement; that specialized, highly efficient economies fuel long-term growth; and that large, stable businesses are the best sources of innovation. Instead, she developed a model of local economic development based on adding new types of work to old, promoting small businesses, and supporting the creative impulses of urban entrepreneurs.

Quotable

“Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”

“Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance. But vital cities are not helpless to combat even the most difficult problems.”

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

“Vital cities have marvelous innate abilities for understanding, communicating, contriving, and inventing what is required to combat their difficulties… Lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.”

“Whenever and wherever societies have flourished and prospered rather than stagnated and decayed, creative and workable cities have been at the core of the phenomenon. Decaying cities, declining economies, and mounting social troubles travel together. The combination is not coincidental.”

“In our American cities, we need all kinds of diversity.”

“As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense.”

“…that the sight of people attracts still other people, is something that city planners and city architectural designers seem to find incomprehensible. They operate on the premise that city people seek the sight of emptiness, obvious order and quiet. Nothing could be less true. The presences of great numbers of people gathered together in cities should not only be frankly accepted as a physical fact – they should also be enjoyed as an asset and their presence celebrated…”

“Intricate minglings of different uses in cities are not a form of chaos. On the contrary, they represent a complex and highly developed form of order.”

Publications

Books

Dark Age Ahead, Random House, 2004.

The Nature of Economies, New York: Modern Library/ Random House, 2000.

A SCHOOLTEACHER IN OLD ALASKA: The Story of Hannah Breece, Owen Sound, Ontario: Ginger Press, 1995.

Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics, New York: Random House, 1992.

Cities and the Wealth of Nations, New York: Random House, 1984.

A Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty, New York: Random House, 1980.

The Economy of Cities, New York: Random House, 1969.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Random House and Vintage Books, 1961.

Ideas That Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs, edited by Max Allen, Owen Sound, Ontario: The Ginger Press, 1997.

Articles

“Downtown is for People,” Fortune, April 1958.

“Vital Little Plans,” in Conference Report titled, “Safdie/Rouse/Jacobs: An Exchange.”

“Putting Toronto’s Best Self Forward,” Places, 7:2.

“Market Nurturing Run Amok,” Openair-Market Net, October 1995.

“Why TVA Failed,” The New York Review of Books, vol 31, num 8, May 10, 1984.

Essay on Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, in The New York Review of Books, 48 (12), July 19, 2001.

Introduction to the new edition of Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, New York: Modern Library, 2002.

Introduction to the new edition of The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, New York: Modern Library, 2002.

Introduction to the new edition of Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain, New York: Modern Library, 2003.

Articles about Jacobs

Saunders, Doug, “Citizen Jane,” The Globe and Mail, 11 Oct 1997.

Kapusta, Beth, “How Jacobs Changed a City,” The Globe and Mail, 11 Oct 1997.

Hume, Christopher, “Jacobs sees humanity among urban concrete,” Toronto Star, 18 Sep 1997.

Martin, Sandra, “An urban legend,” Maclean’s, 20 Oct 1997.

Barber, John, “Jacobs embraced as economic guru,” The Globe and Mail, 15 Oct 1997.

Interviews
Jane Jacobs Interviewed by Jim Kunstler, September 2000.

Urban planning guru Jane Jacobs on the traps we set for ourselves, by Anne-Marie Tobin, Canoe, March 27, 2000.

The Convention Follies, Part 5: A Conversation with Jane Jacobs, by Hank Bromley, ARTVOICE, vol 11 num 30, July 27, 2000.

City Views: Urban studies legend Jane Jacobs on gentrification, the New Urbanism, and her legacy, by Bill Steigerwald, Reason Magazine, June 2001.

Urban Economy and Development: Interview of Jane Jacobs, by Roberto Chavez, Tia Duer, and Ke Fang, The World Bank Group, February 4, 2002.

Cities and Web Economies: Interview with Jane Jacobs, by Blake Harris, The New Colonist, December 1, 2002.

It’s Everyone: A Panel Discussion with Jane Jacobs, Olivia Chow, Joan Doiron, Marilou McPhedran, Lisa Salsberg and Sue Zielinski.

Links

Ideas That Matter

Healthy Cities, Urban Theory, and Design: The Power of Jane Jacobs

Categories: Articles, Placemaker Profiles



Public Art: An Introduction

What exactly is “public art”? Public art differs from art produced for display in a museum, gallery, or other public place, and from art collected by individuals, in three major ways:

  1. It is commissioned by a very public process, in which the community has a clear and defined role in selecting the artist, the site, and the artwork
  2. Public money funds the creation of the art piece, especially in the case of percent-for-art ordinances. This arrangement means that the art has many audiences to please, not just the artist and the selection committee, and that there is a degree of accountability assumed about the artwork that artists do not encounter as much when creating work for private use or display.
  3. It is associated with a sense of longevity. Whereas a work of studio art or in a museum collection may be sold or removed at a predetermined time, a work of public art, is protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act and must go through an official process (called Deaccession) if it is to be sold or removed.. It also must be designed to rigorous standards, as it is often expected to last from 20-50 years, if not more, in an outdoor, fairly unprotected environment.

Topiary sculpture, San Diego Zoo

For general purposes, the term “public art” refers to the following kinds of artworks and media:

"Group of Four Trees" by Jean Dubuffet, Chase Plaza, New York, NY

Generally speaking, a work of art cannot be considered as “public art” if it is not one-of-a-kind or an original (in the case of a work of sculpture or painting) or it is reproduced in editions of over 200 (in the case of fine art prints and photographs). In general, reproductions, unlimited editions/mass productions, decorative, ornamental, and functional elements of architecture, directional elements such as super graphics, signage, and color coding, and landscape usually are NOT considered artworks unless done by an artist. (At top: Lucien Labaudt mural depicting San Francisco life, the Beach House, San Francisco, CA)

Categories: Uncategorized



The Main Street Farmers Market

Washington, PA (2009-2010)

Client: Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation; The Main Street Farmers Market, Inc.

The Main Street Farmers Market has experienced great success in just a few years of operation. On any given Thursday afternoon, a growing number of vendors sell local produce, dairy and baked goods to enthusiastic shoppers. Building on this local support, PPS was hired by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation to explore the feasbility of expanding and relocating the market to a historic train station just down the road..

Initial research conducted by PPS included vendor and customer surveys, an evaluation of potential sales for an expanded year-round market, and a gravity model for determining the viability of the historic Wiley Station site. This site ultimately presented logistical and financial difficulties, but PPS identified a variety of other alternatives that could grow the market successfully into the future.

These alternatives included a market store that sells goods from local farmers year-round; a market cafe and bakery; and an expanded outdoor market housed underneath a pavillion that could also host local events. The feasibility of other indoor locations, including another former train station and a vacant lot, were also illustrated with site plans.

Finally, opportunities for local partnerships and alliances were examined with the goal of identifi ying fi nancial resources, volunteer help, education, and perhaps most important of all – more customers.

Categories: Markets, Projects



Pippa Brashear

Pippa recently joined PPS as a project manager with the streets as places campaign. Pippa is a landscape designer and urban planner whose work strives to integrate design and planning in improving the public realm, specifically making spaces of transportation successful public places.  Through her professional work and academic endeavours she has developed a focus on transportation, where design, planning, and public input can come together to create successful places for movement and activity in our communities. Pippa has been working in New York City for three years since receiving her masters in Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She has worked with the firm Wallace Roberts and Todd and as a freelance consultant.

Experience

Freelance Designer and Planner. Clients included: Office of the Chief Urban Designer, Department of City Planning, NYC; Stephen Yablon Architects. (2010).

Landscape Designer and Planner with Wallace Roberts & Todd, New York. Projects included: Renovation of the Olmsted Center Landscape, Flushing, Queens; Portsmouth Master Transportation Plan, Portsmouth, VA;  Trenton Capital State Park, Trenton, NJ; Liberty State Park Interior, Jersey City, NJ (2007 – 2010).

Research Assistant to Alan Berger, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard GSD, Cambridge, MA. ( 2005 – 2007).

Design Intern with New Yorkers for Parks (www.ny4p.org), New York (Summer 2004).

Education

Master in Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, MA.  (2007).

Master in Urban Planning with distinction, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, MA.  (2007)

B.A. cum laude in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard College, Cambridge, MA. (2001).

Categories: Staff



Great Parks We Can Learn From

Why do some parks succeed as lively public spaces while others fail? This is one of the questions people ask PPS most frequently, and we’re always encouraged by it. As more communities actively seek ways to create great parks, it seems inevitable that the quality of our parks will improve.

With the importance of parks growing in the public consciousness, now is the right time to revisit the question of what distinguishes great parks from all the rest. Of course, there’s no magic formula that yields a perfect park every time. But the true standouts, the parks that define the identities of their cities, tend to share certain elements that together explain a great deal of their success. The more great parks PPS observes, the more these elements leap out at us.

We offer here a list of six truly outstanding parks. Each example highlights particular strategies for achieving greatness and illustrates how these different strategies interact and enhance each other. As more Americans search for ways to improve their local parks, these are six parks we can all learn from.

Jackson Square (New Orleans, LA)

The lively and walkable ”outer park” draws people into the ”inner park.”

Jackson Square is the centerpiece of New Orleans’ French Quarter. Bordered on one side by the main street of the historic district and surrounded by a mix of uses–including restaurants, retail, offices, residences, and a church–the park manages to retain its grace and calm amidst all the surrounding activity. In fact, the park’s periphery, or “outer park,” is what successfully integrates the inner park into the city fabric. The attractions available on these adjacent streets are what draw people to the area, giving the park a steady flow of users. And the lively character of these streets and sidewalks makes people want to stay and linger: Three of the park’s four bordering streets receive little or no vehicle traffic, and the park’s multiple entrances allow people to come in from all sides. Thus, on Chartres Street, people drawn to the fortune tellers, street performers, and musicians often find themselves wandering into Jackson Square to enjoy its serene pleasures.

The calm interior of Jackson Square is supported by the bustling activity on its edges.

Pioneer Courthouse Square (Portland, OR)

The square attracts people in different seasons thanks to its integration with the transit system, sophisticated management, and diverse funding sources.

Pioneer Courthouse Square is a great park even though there’s not one blade of grass growing there. Known affectionately as “Portland’s Living Room,” its creation cannot be separated from the fundamental role played by Tri-Met, the city’s transit agency. Planned concurrently and seamlessly integrated with the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) light rail system, the Square’s role as transit hub makes it the nerve center of downtown Portland. The Square’s popularity is further enhanced by the 300 separate events it hosts each year. Frequent programming is made possible by the efforts of the nonprofit Pioneer Courthouse Square, Inc. (PCS), which manages not only events but maintenance, security, and promotion of the park as well. PCS employs a staff of six and is funded by an innovative combination of sources.

Integration with Portland's light rail system is one of Pioneer Courthouse Square's main assets.

The city of Portland covers the cost of security and landscape maintenance. In-park tenants such as Powell’s travel bookstore, Starbucks Coffee (reputed to be the largest-grossing Starbucks in the country), and food and flower carts pay rent to PCS. Income is also generated from sponsorships and special events. This steady and diverse revenue stream boosts the capabilities of a sophisticated management team, which is constantly evaluating the park with an eye for ways to make it even better.

Central Park (New York, NY) and Prospect Park (Brooklyn, NY)

Superb management maintains these flexibly designed gems that accommodate activity during all seasons.

These two New York City parks go hand in hand as examples of both the public/private management model and the craft of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Both parks faced dire troubles in the dustbowl days of the 1970s, and both were revived beginning in the 1980s thanks to the pioneering efforts of the Central Park Conservancy and the Prospect Park Alliance. The organizations now coordinate the efforts of thousands of donors and volunteers, enabling the implementation of complex restoration projects, capital improvements, maintenance programs, and event schedules.

When the first major restoration projects were completed in the 1980s, it allowed the parks’ spaces to work their magic, accommodating a staggering variety of activities at all times of year. Take Prospect Park’s celebrated Long Meadow–a rolling stretch of grass and paths winding from one end of the park to the other. This feature alone simultaneously hosts picnickers, kite-flyers, dog walkers, little leaguers, strolling observers, cricketers, Frisbee tossers, and huge, informal soccer matches. Even in the middle of winter you’ll find people out walking or cross-country skiing. In other areas of the park, volleyball games and drummers circles share space with family barbecues and outdoor markets, and this only scratches the surface of the activities fostered by Prospect Park. It truly offers something for everyone.

Prospect Park's landscape is flexible enough to accommodate a variety of uses, including its well known drummers circle.

Plaza Hidalgo (Mexico City)

Flexible design enables a wide assortment of amenities to act as focal points throughout the park.

Adjacent to the Iglesia San Juan Bautista, this park is an important center of community life in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City. The church is an oft-visited site for both residents and tourists, but the park is the real glue that holds the area together. Although the design consists of a formal set of linear paths, Plaza Hidalgo functions quite flexibly, allowing visitors to circulate freely between different sections of the park. On a typical day, one side of the park throngs with people at market stalls; in another area, they congregate around some benches and a small fountain under the shade of trees; and elsewhere, vendors sell fresh lemonade and ices. These artfully placed amenities act as focal points, which create activity throughout the park. Rather than dictating where people can go, these linear paths act as connections between the various amenities.

The crowd at Plaza Hidalgo is enthralled by a performance.

Boston Public Garden (Boston, MA)

Excellent attractions provide a strong identity for the city.

The signature attractions of the Boston Public Garden provide a compelling identity that is not only associated with the park but with Boston itself. Located in the heart of the city, each path in the Public Garden appears to lead to the central lake, where people of all ages climb into the famed Swan Boats for a ride. And the “Make Way for Ducklings” sculpture, which honors children’s author Robert McCloskey, leaves an indelible mark in the memories of children and families. In fact, we’ve heard stories from parents who make a habit of taking their children to the Garden every day so they can greet each duckling by name. These two attractions form the core of a well-known image that draws people like a magnet, a key to the overall success of the Garden as a public space.

The swan boats are a beloved and easily recognized asset of Boston Public Garden.

Strategies for Achieving Great Parks

Through nearly 30 years of observation and analysis, PPS has identified nine strategies that help parks achieve their full potential as active public spaces that enhance neighborhoods and catalyze economic development. The parks profiled in this article provide excellent examples of these strategies in practice.

Categories: Articles, Newsletter, Parks, Urban Parks Institute



Transit Oriented Development for the Tappan Zee Bridge Corridor

Rockland and Westchester Counties, New York (2009-Present)

Client: New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT)

One of the most vital transportation links in the New York metropolitan region, the Tappan Zee Bridge is due for a major upgrade to satisfy growing travel demands. New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), New York State Thruway Authority and MTA Metro-North Railroad are working together to plan a new bridge that includes exciting possibilities for transit that will better meet the needs of Rockland and Westchester County communities along the I-287/I-87 corridor.

PPS was hired by NYSDOT, along with the Regional Plan Association and Reconnecting America, to conduct workshops with communities along the corridor to leverage the state’s transit investment and explore opportunities for transit oriented development. The goal is to empower municipalities at the local level to take advantage of existing and planned transit in the corridor.  This technical assistance will serve as a useful baseline tool for facilitating local long-range planning, as well as in the future as transit investments take shape both locally and at the state level.

The program began in 2009 and will continue through the spring of 2010.  PPS and the project team are currently conducting county-wide workshops in both Rockland and Westchester Counties and town-specific workshops in eight communities. These capacity building and visioning sessions will cover such topics as community appropriate TOD; quality community design; multi-modal transportation choices; sustainability; property value preservation; and project financing.

Categories: Featured, Projects, Transportation



Retrofiting Suburbia with Neighborhood Hubs

McKinney, TX (2008-Present)

Client: SALVO

In 2008, the Dallas-based development company, SALVO, came to PPS with an idea for a new multi-use destination concept intended to provide much-needed gathering spaces and neighborhood services in the sprawling Dallas suburbs, where people are often driving 30 minutes to buy basics. These small activity hubs, to be built on commercial corners in the midst of typical suburban neighborhoods, are designed to self-sustain through the incorporation of concealed self-storage. The building’s outer perimeters and second floor are designed to act as incubator space for local businesses and entrepreneurs, to offer locally-owned restaurants and convenience shops, and to provide vital indoor and outdoor gathering places for community events and social occasions.

SALVO hired PPS to help frame the broader concept and to help identify potential public uses for a pilot “Appleseed Project” in the outskirts of McKinney, Texas, a rapidly-growing area with little to no mixed use development, and already well-provided with strip malls and big box stores. PPS facilitated a community visioning workshop with members of the McKinney community, helping them focus on the Power of 10 – the need to have 10 places and 10 things to do in each place to create a destination that brings people together.

Based on participant feedback, PPS developed a report detailing suggested activities for the development, as well as a recommendation to provide work opportunities for teenagers, space for local artists to display their work and places for the community to gather for special events. PPS also recommended sidewalk and street crossing improvements, and ways to optimize public transit surrounding the development, to provide access to children, seniors and caregivers without cars, as well as flexible parking that can be used for temporary events like farmers markets and concerts. PPS also worked with the project designers to ensure that the public spaces are flexible and complementary to a wide variety of uses and activities.

Once close to completion, PPS will hold community visioning workshops on-site as well as design a series of public management teams to help program and manage this and future complexes.

Categories: Multi-Use, Projects, Squares, Transportation



Rippowam Mill River Watershed Restoration

Stamford, CT (2008-Present)

Client: CDM

In 2008, the Connecticut State Water Pollution Control Authority began to evaluate the condition of the Rippowam / Mill River, which runs through the entire length of the city of Stamford. Concerned about water quality and outflow, the Authority hired environmental engineer CDM to study existing conditions and help restore the river to its natural flood plain downtown. CDM enlisted PPS to improve public access to the river, as well as develop public spaces along the water that better integrate the waterway into the community.

PPS worked to determine existing points of access along the river, and conducted public workshops at five points along the water, including on the site of a new waterfront park under development by the city. Workshops were used to elicit ideas for appropriate uses and activities along the river, helping the community envision what the river has the potential to become.

PPS will also conduct public workshops educating the community about their behavior and preservation efforts, explaining links between pesticides, fertilizers and unsustainable land use to erosion and water pollution. Additionally, public / private uses will be explored with stakeholders.

PPS will continue to work on developing a plan for the river that allows for benign human use and interaction, connecting the community with the water while retaining water quality and the natural environment.

Categories: Projects, Waterfronts



Meredith US 3/NH 25 Improvements Transportation Planning Study

Meredith, New Hampshire (2005 – present)

Client: NH Department of Transportation

Meredith is a busy waterfront community of some 6,500 residents located on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. It is a gateway to northern New Hampshire’s White Mountain region, in addition to being a Lakes Region tourist destination in itself. Meredith is located at the crossroads of Routes 3 and 25, two very busy state highways during peak tourist season. In addition to seasonal gridlock, these roadways also fail to reflect the small-scale and pedestrian-oriented character of downtown Meredith. Instead, the roads create a physical and psychological barrier between downtown Meredith and its beautiful waterfront.

Route 3/25 does not reflect the village character of downtown Meredith. PPS is helping the community and NHDOT re-think the purpose and design of the road.

New Hampshire Department of Transportation hired Project for Public Spaces, along with the transportation engineering firm McFarland-Johnson, to help the agency and a diverse steering committee analyze how to improve Routes 3 and 25. Together, the team is following a comprehensive Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) planning model. PPS’ role is to act as a mediator between NHDOT, the engineering consultants and the community. Thanks to PPS’ reputation as being open-minded and impartial, we are helping all the parties involved to trust each other and work toward a shared vision and plan.

The Steering Committee has, so far, defined the problem and vision statements. We are now working toward agreeing on certain evaluation criteria for the different project alternatives to be developed in the winter.

Categories: Projects, Transportation