Ethan Kent

Vice President
ekent@pps.org

Ethan Kent is an authority in the practice of Placemaking, working to support Placemaking projects and organizations around the world. During 12 years at PPS, Ethan has learned from and photographed public spaces in over 700 cities and 50 countries. Ethan has been integral to the development of Placemaking as a transformative approach to community development, planning and urban design.

Having worked on over 200 PPS projects, Ethan has led a broad spectrum of Placemaking efforts, providing comprehensive public engagement, planning and visioning for many important public spaces.  Recent highlights have included Portland Oregon’s Pioneer Courthouse Square, Times Square in New York, Kennedy Plaza in Providence, RI, Garden Place in Hamilton, New Zealand, and Sub Centro Las Condes in Santiago, Chile.

Utilizing lessons learned through his project work, Ethan has created and conducted Placemaking training courses for professionals of various disciplines from city planning staff in Vancouver, BC, to community development corporations in Detroit; from public housing developers in Sweden to traffic engineers in New Jersey.  He has also trained hundreds of professionals across Australia and New Zealand, through leading more than 25 training workshops.

In order to begin to institutionalize Placemaking in cities, Ethan has initiated and led local partnerships with agency and advocacy leaders to build capacity on all levels, implement demonstration projects and develop local campaigns for Placemaking. This strategy has been successfully employed in a wide range of cities including Chicago, IL, Indianapolis, IN, San Francisco, CA, Brunswick, ME, Bellingham, WA, Flint, MI, Melbourne, Australia and Mississauga, Canada.

This approach has had the most tangible effect in NYC where, Ethan leads PPS efforts. He co-founded the NYC Streets Renaissance Campaign, as an effort to challenge auto-centric transportation policy and inspire a new public vision of streets as dynamic destinations. To launch the campaign, he directed an educational exhibit called Livable Streets: A New Vision for New York, that has appeared at the Municipal Arts Society, the Conde Nast building and the Brooklyn Public Library. Ethan then initiated and helped manage demonstration Placemaking processes with local stakeholders in some of NYC’s most important yet auto-dominated areas including Times Square, 9th Avenue in Hells Kitchen, the Meatpacking District, Myrtle Avenue, Columbus Avenue and Grand Army Plaza. The campaign and its demonstration projects have lead to the creation of bold shift in NYC transportation policy including a Public Plaza Program that is reclaiming street space for dynamic new public spaces throughout the city.

Education

Ethan studied sociology, environmental studies and economics as an undergraduate at Bowdoin College. He explored local development issues in the context of globalization during a year of travel around the world as a participant in the International Honors Program. Ethan did his graduate work at Antioch University Seattle’s Center for Creative Change in Environment and Community. He attributes much of his Placemaking education to the communities he has worked with, and to his father who founded PPS.

Writing and Photography

Ethan’s writing has appeared broadly, being featured in NewStart Magazine, Streetsblog, Landscape Architecture Magazine, Downtown Idea Exchange, Planetizen, and on Prime Time Radio on NPR. His photography from around the world makes up the bulk of the images in PPS publications and appears in a broad range of media.

Presentations

An inspiring and persuasive speaker, Ethan has brought PPS’ Placemaking message to many groups around the world. Ethan has recently given keynote presentations at conferences of:

  • Smart Start, Adelaide, Australia
  • “Inclusive Spaces for a Sustainable City”, Training Workshop, Ministry of Social DevelopmentPublic Space Recovery Program and UN Habitat, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
  • COM:PLOT 2011:

    Código:Ciudadano, Guadalajara, Mexico

  • Ruas que constroem comunidades, Workshop Inserção do Transporte Sustentável no Morar Carioca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Villes et territoires en mutation, L’Ordre des urbanistes du Québec, Montreal, Canada
  • Pavement Politics: Times Square and the Changing Face of New York’s Streets, Urban Design Week, TImes Square Alliance, New York, NY
  • NextGen Pre-conference, Congress for New Urbanism, Madison, WI
  • America’s Cities: The Burden of the Past, or the Promise of the Future?, NYU Law F0rum, New York, NY
  • Retrofiting and Planning Sustainable Suburbs, Toronto, Canada;
  • Libraries as Catalysts for Placemaking, Melbourne, Australia;
  • What if We Built Sydney’s Waterfront Around Places?, Sydney, Australia;
  • Destination Downtown, New Iberia, LA;
  • Rural Community Development, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Oneida County, NY;
  • Placemaking and Preservation, Annual Meeting of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington, DC;
  • Urban Land Institute and Kamehameha Schools, Honolulu, HI;
  • Spirit and Place Festival, Indianapolis, IN;
  • Mayoral Conversations, Hamilton, New Zealand;
  • Arlington Street Infrastructure Forum: Envisioning the Future of Arlington’s Streets Y2100, Arlington, VA
  • Investing In Our Existing Neighbourhoods, Prince Albert, SK, Canada;
  • What if We Built Melbourne Around Places?, Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia
  • Public Spaces Seminar: Equity and Social Integration, Chilean Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and UNDP, Santiago, Chile;
  • Sustainability Series, Bismarck, ND;
  • International Cities, Town Centers and Communities Society, Auckland, NZ;
  • Moving the Economy, Toronto, ON;
  • International Forum on Public Spaces and Sustainability, Bogotá, Colombia
  • The Sustainable Tourism Planning and Development Laboratory, Providence, RI;
  • Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation, Brooklyn, NY;
  • NY State Chambers Alliance, Albany, NY
  • Strategic Thinking Forum – City Safety Commission, Melbourne, Australia
  • Neighborhood Summit, “Great People, Great Places, Great City”, Garland, TX
  • Foro Internacional de Parques, Bogotá, Colombia

He also has given presentations at conferences of the Urban Land Institute, Local Initiative Support Corp., Civic Tourism, Placematters, NeighborWorks, CAPACD, Bronx Parks Speak-up, Planners Network, Eco Metropolis, Car Free Cities, NYS Planning Federation and the World Social Forum and to many university audiences including Cornell, Yale, Columbia, Reed, NYU, Bowdoin, New School, Pratt, Hunter, University of Toronto, University of Washington and Harvard.

Board Affiliations

Board Member, Congress for New Urbanism New York Chapter
International Advisory Board Member, 8-80 Cities
Board Member (06-09), Make Music New York