| WHO
WE ARE
Fred Kent
President
Fred Kent is a leading authority on revitalizing
city spaces and one of the foremost thinkers
in livability, smart growth and the future of
the city. As founder and president of Project
for Public Spaces, he is known throughout the
world as a dynamic speaker and prolific ideas
man.
Traveling over 150,000 miles each year, Fred
has undertaken consultancy work and given talks
in 46 states across the U.S and 12 countries.
Each year, he and his staff train 10,000 people
in their placemaking techniques.
Audiences Fred has addressed include Caltrans,
Ford Foundation, New Jersey DOT, New York DOT,
General Services Administration, Princes Foundation,
Smart Growth Network, U.S Forest Service, World
Bank. He has trained over 1,000 transportation
professionals from statewide DOTs, in addition
to many thousands of community and neighborhood
groups across the country.
Fred attended Columbia University's Graduate
and Undergraduate Schools, where he studied
Geography, Economics, Transportation, Planning,
and Anthropology. He studied with Margaret Mead
and worked with William H. Whyte on the Street
Life Project, assisting in observations and
film analysis of corporate plazas, urban streets,
parks and other open spaces in New York City.
The research resulted in the now classic 'The
Social Life of Small Urban Spaces', published
in 1980, which laid out conclusions based on
decades of meticulous observation and documentation
of human behavior in the urban environment.
In 1968, Fred founded the Academy for Black
and Latin Education (ABLE), a street academy
for high school dropouts. He was Program Director
for the Mayor's Council on the Environment in
New York City under Mayor John Lindsay. In 1970,
and again in 1990, Fred was the coordinator
and chairman of New York City's Earth Day.
He has taken over half a million photographs
of public spaces and their users, which have
appeared in exhibits, publications and articles.
Education
Columbia University, Bachelor of Arts in Economics
Columbia University, Graduate Program in Urban
Geography
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