Hundreds gathered in Detroit for the first meeting of the Placemaking Leadership Council / Photo: Ara Howrani for PPS

In 1970, I had the opportunity to coordinate New York City’s first Earth Day demonstration. It was an experience that changed my life, and one that continues to impact the work that I do, and the way I see the world, today. The environmental movement has become a very top-down affair in the ensuing years, but the first Earth Day actually was billed as a “national teach-in.” Every community across the country was encouraged to create its own event tackling local issues and concerns under the larger umbrella of environmentalism.

It was that openness that was the day’s greatest strength; the event’s leaders came to New York once to check in, but they let us–the people on the ground, working for change in the city–lead our own initiative. Earth Day came at a unique moment in time, when various forces were converging around the idea of environmentalism. Its distributed, empowering approach was critical to its success in bringing many different interest groups and constituencies together, and still serves as a model for mass organizing.

Today, after decades of wrongheaded development, people are coming to realize that their communities are not set up to support health, happiness, peace, and prosperity. They are seeing, once again, the need for a convergence, a coming-together of myriad interests and constituencies. The Placemaking Leadership Council was created as a direct response to that growing sense of opportunity for transformative change, and after our inaugural meeting on April 11-13 in Detroit [full program here], I can tell you that things are headed in the right direction. I believe that we are at a moment when the Placemaking movement is ready for its Earth Day.

The 300+ Placemakers who gathered in Detroit came from all walks of life, and from all across the world: more than a dozen different countries, and 25 states. The group was made up of government employees, teachers, artists, journalists, developers, community organizers, architects, authors, and activists. Some came from communities of privilege, while others came from neighborhoods where struggle is a daily fact of life. What they all shared was an understanding of the power of place to serve as a connector of people (both to each other and to their environment), and a facilitator for revitalization and renewal.

We are living at a time when people are more disconnected from participating in the shaping of their world than ever before. What the members of the Placemaking Leadership Council have realized–each in their own way–is that this time is also brimming with possibility. It used to be that, when I would go somewhere and talk about ‘turning everything upside down to get it right side up,’ people would respond with trepidation. Today, that same phrase often puts people at ease. They nod in agreement, because they understand that we can only go up from here. The world is ready to change, and it will do so not in one great shift, but in a billion little actions. The pot is boiling over.

Break-out groups focused on “transformative agendas” ranging from Place Capital to Building Multi-Use Destinations / Photo: Ara Howrani for PPS

While we have only just begun sifting through the wealth of ideas generated at the Council’s meeting, there are clear themes that are already emerging. There is no doubt in my mind that a group as dynamic and diverse as the one that gathered in Detroit will continue to evolve, but I wanted to share some of the core beliefs that the Council identified together, as well as several functions that this new group will likely serve:

1.) Everyone has the right to live in a great place. Discussions about the importance of Placemaking came back, time and again, to the need to empower individuals to take charge of their public spaces. Council members are keen to utilize Placemaking to inspire people from many different backgrounds to become “Place Champions” and maximize the potential of public space to connect people and build community.

2.) There is a pressing need for better resources. Multiple break-out groups identified the Council as a potential body for developing and disseminating better data and flexible tools that help make the Placemaking process more accessible, and its benefits more readily understandable, for a broad audience. Visual communication was identified as a priority.

3.) Re-orient policymaking through a place-based approach. Or, as one break-out put it during a report back to the larger group on the meeting’s second day, “we need to decode place so policymakers understand it, and decode policy so Placemakers understand it.” Places are idiosyncratic, and people often get caught up in the particular details of a particular location when discussing Placemaking. We need to re-focus attention on the benefits of the process overall in order to create a common shared language and present a united front when dealing with the bureaucratic systems that currently exist at many levels.

The Placemaking Leadership Council will serve to create a stronger framework for the important efforts already underway in cities all over the world. There is a clear and present need for the movement to find ways to bring more people on-board, and communicate more effectively about why this work is so critical. We need to be able to illustrate, clearly and quickly, how place connects many different disciplines, helping communities to develop more holistic solutions. Personally, I cannot wait to work with this fantastic, energetic group of people to take this on.

More than four decades after the first Earth Day, our planet still faces grave challenges. We are social creatures, and we all need to work together to find solutions to those challenges, working from the neighborhood up. Placemaking, the collaborative re-shaping of public spaces, is a tangible, accessible way for people to participate in that process, and we must all do what we can to push this critical agenda forward. Everyone has the right to live in a great place. More importantly, everyone has the right to contribute to making the place where they already live great.

Houston’s Market Square Park

In September, I was interviewed for a piece in The Atlantic, in which I was able to speak to a wider audience about the power of Placemaking. We at PPS also were part of a big article in New York magazine about imagining a better New York. It was great to be able to get these ideas out for discussion.

A new radio show and podcast called “Place Matters,” hosted by Dr. Katherine Loflin, deals with the role of Placemaking “in building next generation cities that are economically successful, talent magnets and destinations where people want to come to live, work and play.” Our work at PPS was featured in the first episode.

There is definitely something brewing out there — a general realization of the importance of place on all sorts of levels, including the impact on the economy and the environment. And the response we’re getting when we go out into the field is phenomenal. We just got back from a trip to Perth, Australia, where a Placemaking approach is completely revolutionizing their cultural center. It was exhilarating to see (and we’ll be telling you more about it in the future).

One of the things we’ve read and appreciated the most in the last couple of months is a terrific article by Chris Turner at Mother Nature Network about Frank Gehry’s new buildings in Düsseldorf, Germany, and the destructive effect that starchitecture can have on streetscape. This is a topic we’ve talked a lot about in the past — Turner references our semi-infamous  ”smackdown with Frank Gehry” from the Aspen Ideas Festival back in 2009, an occurrence that was enlightening for the huge amount of debate and engagement that it engendered.

In his piece, Turner really gets to the heart of why urban designers are losing credibility: Urban design has been taken away from its connection to communities by designers who are imposing their own brand on people and neighborhoods. He doesn’t have anything against Gehry’s buildings per se — he thinks they’re great to look at — but he noticed immediately how dead the space around them was:

Wealthy, ambitious Düsseldorf has surrounded Gehry’s slouching cones and boxes with a showcase of iconic design and outlandish form: everything from a technicolor tower by Will Alsop to a sleek hyper-modern abstraction by David Chipperfeld to a plain old office building scaled by dozens of primary-colored stick figures. It’s stunning in photos, and it’s a fascinating neighborhood to walk around during the day. There’s even a stylish café cantilevered off the side of a pedestrian bridge in the middle of the harbor when you need a rest.

I was in Düsseldorf with a handful of journalists and designers on a tour, and we stopped in at the café for a midafternoon coffee-and-cake break. It was a fine summer day, a weekday, the offices around us full of busy workers. The café was empty. So were the streets and laneways in and around most of the iconic buildings. If you moved a block or two off the harbor, you found a few busy shops and restaurants, but Medienhafen itself was cold in that stage-set way starchitecture often is. It was a collection of exquisite sculptures with some offices inside, a magnificent art gallery and probably not such a bad work address, but it was not a place, not a neighborhood or real urban district.

In contrast, the older streets of Düsseldorf are magnets for people.

Powerful stuff. It speaks to an idea we’ve exploring here at PPS, the “Architecture of Place.” We think the design profession is ready for a new direction, away from the iconic buildings that have had the same deadening effect on streetscape as the Brutalism of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Instead we need an architecture that recognizes that a community’s people are the true urban designers, and what happens where the building meets the street is critically important to the health of our neighborhoods.

Another article that got us talking around the office appeared in The Line, a publication based in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Titled “What’s Working in Cities: Placemaking,” it focuses on Detroit’s enormously successful Campus Martius project. The reporter, Michelle Bruch, talked to me and PPS vice president Ethan Kent about why Placemaking is becoming a new economic development strategy in cities (a trend we’ve seen most recently in Houston, which we named “North America’s Placemaking Capital”).

Here’s an excerpt:

 

Detroit’s Campus Martius Park

The strategy that built Campus Martius is called “placemaking,” and it’s a development approach gaining momentum across the country. The strategy gives local residents and stakeholders a major voice in shaping new development.

In the case of Campus Martius, the locals pressed for a park they could use all year long. They created a park with wireless Internet, 1,500 movable chairs, and more than 200 events per year, such as concerts, film festivals, and bocce ball tournaments…

Detroit’s $20 million park investment has paid huge dividends, according to Gregory, the Campus Martius president.

A software company called Compuware constructed a one-million-square-foot headquarters at the fringe of the park. Several hundred units of new housing went up a block-and-a-half away. Quicken Loans’ new headquarters arrived with 1,700 employees, the Westin renovated a historic vacant hotel, 35 retailers opened near the park, and the Ernst & Young accounting firm anchored the construction of another new 10-story building.

“$750 million in new development has happened around Campus Martius,” Gregory said. “And there is more coming.”

It’s not just Detroit and Houston that are seeing this type of effect. The article also looks at the positive impact Placemaking has had in Pittsburgh and in Bristol, Conn.

As you can see, it’s a great time for Placemaking! We’ll be keeping you up to date on future news and developments.

Photo of Gehry buildings in Düsseldorf: ign11 via Flickr. Photo of Düsseldorf street scene: maccusphoto via Flickr.

Fred in 1970

40 years ago this week, I coordinated the first Earth Day celebration in New York City. The city had never seen anything like it.

We were laying the groundwork for a new way of looking at the world—expanding the public’s thinking beyond the limited vision that characterized fields like industry, economics, science and politics to embrace a much larger view of the whole planet.

Earth Day transformed New York—literally. To draw attention to protecting the environment in cities, we turned Fifth Avenue into a “place” by eliminating traffic from 59^th Street to Union Square.  People poured out of offices and apartments to walk down the middle of the most important street in New York on a beautiful spring day. (This was five years before I founded Project for Public Spaces, but you can see the idea was already germinating.)

It was a lot of fun for everyone, but also a potent symbol that this new movement could bring great, positive changes to our lives.  And ideas born on the first Earth Day are beginning to come to fruition today, with the closing of portions of Broadway and the New York City Summer Streets Program which PPS helped bring about.

Union Square Park was the site of the main Earth Day celebration with an enormous stage set up for speakers, prayers and music. Booths promoting ecological awareness spread throughout the park. Bliss and the promise of a better world were in the air, along with whiffs of pot in a few isolated corners.

The Whole World is Watching

The original Earth Day offered something for everyone and almost everyone showed up. We had 400 volunteers—including John Reed, future CEO of Citibank, and a contingent of hippies from San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury— working around the clock to make it the biggest Earth Day event in the country. It was featured on TV newscasts and the front pages of newspapers around the world.

Earth Day, 1990, Central Park

It was a transformative event in an era of great social change. The Civil Rights movement, anti-war protests, the Women’s Movement and Earth Day set up the possibility for change.

Those of us taking part in these movements remember our experiences as good times, but there was also a deep sense of malaise all around. War. Racism. Poverty. Violence. Cities, particularly, were in deep trouble. New York was going bankrupt, and politicians in Washington told the city to “drop dead” in response to requests for a bailout. Anti-urban sentiments were growing everywhere. Cities, still struggling to recover from the riots of the 1960s, were hit with the “white flight” stampede to “greener, safer” suburbs. Even many environmentalists compared big cities to rat mazes, condemning them for being cut off from nature.

Urban Innovations Increase

But even problems this big did not squelch widespread desire for a better world and the willingness to look at problems in fresh ways. Breakthrough legislation was passed, innovative organizations were formed and many people inspired by the new spirit of the times pushed for change. Ever since, we have seen small but steady progress on many fronts—even in cities, which were once written-off as a hopeless cause.

At first, urban revival efforts were focused on downtowns but gradually dedicated citizens around the world began to transform their neighborhoods, too. Local activists have pioneered successful new approaches in fighting crime, building affordable housing, fighting traffic, and improving their sense of community—usually without the help of experts, and sometimes in direct confrontation with them.  In cities from Tokyo to Toronto to Turin, neighborhoods are where the action is.  Even New York, world-famous for its Midtown skyscrapers and cultural institutions, has become a city of neighborhoods.

A Better World is Possible

Today, 40 years after the first Earth Day, the desire for transformative change is once again intensifying. More than in the 1970s, people know where they want to end up and what it takes to get there. Change won’t happen with massive demonstrations or an outpouring of angst; what’s needed now is a broad, collective, deep-seated commitment to improve life for people everywhere.

A key element of this reenergized push for social change is a new movement dedicated to making great places in our communities. Although still under the radar, the ideas of Placemaking are emerging as a key component of the Sustainability Movement (as the cutting edge of the environmental movement is known today). Both the Sustainability and Placemaking movements urge us to live more lightly on the Earth. Along with protecting air, water and land, people want places in their neighborhoods where they feel comfortable and connected to others.

Placemaking is a core value of sustainability. Maintaining livable urban environments is essential to protecting natural resources and the landscape from further destruction.

While the Placemaking movement is new, the idea is as old as homo sapiens. People everywhere want to get back to a way of life that better connects them to their natural surroundings and to each other.

A Surge of Fresh Thinking

It’s time for a new round of holistic thinking that can help us bust out of the narrow perspective imposed by today’s experts and authorities, just as during the rise of numerous social movements in the 1960s and 1970s. And cities are a prime place to start.

It won’t be easy.  Many powerful forces oppose any sort of change. But things looked equally tough at the time of the first Earth Day.  The problems then were seemingly insurmountable—people had always polluted the Earth, we were told, and that was not going to change.  But the desire to transform society expressed at Earth Day could not be contained, and we’ve seen real progress on many environmental issues over the last 40 years.

I see similar signs of hope for the campaign to transform our communities, which is picking up steam all over the planet.  It reminds me of a slogan that I saw on California license plates forty years ago: “If the People Lead the Leaders Follow”.

Placemaking Takes Off from Abu Dhabi to Buenos Aires

At PPS, we see growing evidence of Placemaking’s central role in transformative change in cities throughout the world.  Recently, we have heard from:

• The Minister of Public Spaces in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who invited PPS to give a presentation for the staff of the city’s “Ambiente y Espacio Publico” department
• The Norwegian Government, which is including a public space component in a national initiative to improve the sustainability of thirteen cities around the country
• A new book, “Human Cities: Celebrating Public Spaces,” published by Stichting Kunstboek Publishers, Belgium,  is incorporating an introduction by PPS on Placemaking into a review of current practices, methodologies and tools related to public space conception and design
• A leader from a community organization in Bayelsa State, Nigeria, who would like to organize a Placemaking training session in South Africa

In addition, teams from PPS are using Placemaking in their projects around the world. Together with local communities we’re hard at work:

• Re-visioning a library in Ft. Myers, Florida as a green, sustainable community center
• Applying Placemaking to the creation of a new master plan for a waterfront in Abu Dhabi, The United Arab Emirates
• Discovering opportunities to connect farmers markets with federal buildings in San Juan, Puerto Rico
• Developing a program for the public spaces around the new business school at Stanford University

All of these thinkers, authors, organizations and leaders around the world are trying to use a Placemaking process as a way to define the future of their cities and communities.

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.

Yet one of iconic architecture’s greatest strengths—the eye-catching quality of these new and sometimes beautiful buildings—also becomes its greatest weakness in the hands of designers, clients and architecture boosters solely interested in creating monuments with “curb appeal.” Too little thought is given on how to continue attracting people to these places after their first visit.  Since many of these buildings are cultural institutions, whose success depends on instilling a sense of community and connection among their visitors, this is a particularly short-sighted strategy.  One-time tourists won’t pay the bills of these expensive-to-maintain buildings.

Gehry’s iconic cityscape in Dusseldorf, Germany, with few signs of human life

The Problem with “Starchitecture”

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

Cities as envisioned by iconic “starchitects” and their supporting cast of patrons and admiring journalists are worlds apart from the aspirations ordinary citizens have for their communities. That helps explain why designers today are deeply afraid of being judged by anyone other than their own kind.

I was forcefully reminded of this at the Aspen Ideas Festival this summer when I asked Frank Gehry a respectful but direct question about why great iconic architecture rarely fosters great public spaces. He declined to answer the question, and waved his hand to dismiss me, a haughty display that eminent journalist James Fallows compared to Louis XIV. The session’s moderator Thomas Pritzker, chairman of the Pritzker Prize jury, also avoided the question. Their response (or lack, thereof) set off a furor in the design-world blogosphere.

I believe this simple question ought to be asked of every designer and every client on every project: “What will we do to ensure that design creates good public spaces for people to use and enjoy?” For a designer to duck that question does a huge disservice to the profession and society as a whole.  Good design involves much more than making “bold” and “innovative” aesthetic expressions; design should help us achieve solutions to the major urban issues confronting our world today, from environmental destruction to economic decline to social alienation. Architecture falls far short of its potential when designers focus all of their talent on what shapes and facades to use in making their latest artistic statement.

Traveling around the world to work on public space projects, I’m always excited to see the latest trends in design. But I have to say that when I examine them in the context of their settings, they usually are failures. What looks sensational on the pages of an architectural magazine or website too often falls flat when experienced up close.

The idea of great places as espoused by the iconic architecture movement is very different than that of almost everyone else. All of us at PPS are amazed when we ask stakeholders and residents in a given city to evaluate a public space or building that is highly praised in the media and among the design community. They are often ruthless in their assessment. Not impressed by design awards or lavish praise in architectural journals, local citizens are focused how well a space works for people.

This raises issues about the elite nature of many of these iconic buildings—contemporary art museums, opera halls, university buildings etc.—that occupy prime settings in the heart of a community and are subsidized by public funding (if not in the actual construction,  then in public infrastructure and upkeep for the surrounding area).  There is a moral obligation that these landmarks serve a wider audience than just contemporary architecture buffs in order to justify the investment of public and tax-free charitable money that goes into them.  The best way to do this is to create a convivial setting—outdoors as well as indoors– that the whole community will see as an asset.

This issue is being addressed in Perth, Australia, which has one of the most unique combinations of cultural institutions anywhere in the world. The State Library, a museum focusing on the natural history of Western Australia, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and adjoining public spaces sit next to the central railway station and downtown, offering wonderful potential for a major destination in Perth that is more than the sum of its parts.  However, until recently there has been little focus on nurturing the rich public life these cultural institutions could cultivate. PPS is working with the East Perth Redevelopment Authority (EPRA) on a short term physical improvement program and management strategy intended to enliven the Cultural Centre at all times of day and in all seasons. Our plan is to create a great place that offers people 100 reasons to visit, which will drive greater attendance to the cultural facilities.

My question to both Gehry and Thomas Pritzker was a plea for help and a call for action. I was seeking their advice on how to assist the design professions in forging a place-based architecture that can address the enormous challenges facing us today. Creating “iconic for iconic sake” buildings is no longer enough—architects must become more inventive in creating new design strategies that can sustain the environment and improve daily life for the one-half of the world’s population that now live in cities.

The current development slowdown caused by the real estate crash and global economic crisis gives us time to reflect and re-orient our focus. We can emerge from this slump armed with bold design innovations that will strengthen local communities and economies, protect the earth and establish a new kind of architecture rooted in a sense of place and a mission to improve people’s lives.

It’s not clear yet what shape this “New Architecture of Place” might take, but we know that today’s current trends in design show little promise in addressing either the problems or opportunities confronting us today.

Great Examples of Iconic Architecture that Create Great Places

“We shape our buildings, and thereafter our buildings shape us.” –Winston Churchill

The problem is not with the idea of iconic architecture, as some architectural traditionalists charge, but with the constricted approach that too many iconic designers embrace. Here are two recent examples of iconic projects that create a marvelous sense of place, thus treating the public to both cutting-edge design and a great destination to admire, use and enjoy.

1.    Oslo Opera House (Oslo, Norway)

Purely Iconic in its design, the new opera house in Oslo, Norway by the Snohetta firm (based in both Oslo and New York) takes contemporary architecture beyond just the building to create an amazing public space where the public may literally use the entire site as a playground. In fact, Snohetta has explained that for this project, nature defines form and not function. The building itself is wonderful, featuring a dynamic design that allows for creative uses and opportunities for exploration. It is a masterpiece of form, function and nature, and thrives despite its isolation from the rest of the cityscape. To remain vital for the future, the building must grow into a larger mixed-use destination for year-around activity.

Iconic Architecture at its Best: The Oslo Opera House attracts crowds of people despite an isolated location.

2.    Council House 2 (Melbourne, Australia)

Melbourne, a city that is reaching for the best in urbanism on many fronts, sports an impressive “green” municipal office building that  richly enhances the surrounding neighborhood. This is a boldly beautiful accomplishment, which fosters street life and  creates a good sense of place by connecting with what’s nearby. It has earned Australia’s six-star Green Star rating.

Triple Crown: Council House 2 in Melbourne, Australia, shows that a beautiful iconic building can spark lively streetlife and fit in its surroundings. It has also won green architecture awards

Three Ways to Make Great Places in Our Communities

“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”  -novelist Wallace Stegner

So how do we move beyond the era of narrow architecture to incorporate community, environmental stewardship and a sense of place into the evolving architecture of the 21st Century?   Here are three ways to start:

1.    The design professions must move away from iconic-only solutions and toward a larger vision of “Architecture of Place.” A big step in this direction could be taken by the officials of the Pritzker Prize, the “Nobel Prize” of Architecture, in changing the criteria for the selection of their award. They could also add other categories to the prize that would broaden the idea of how design can be an integral part of making great cities. (The Driehaus Prize, equal in dollars to the Pritzker, already does this with its prize for classical architecture and urbanism.)

2.    Going deeper, we need to establish an entirely new field that encompasses design but is not defined exclusively by it. This field would be wider than architecture, urban planning or community development, putting a special emphasis on the skills needed to work with communities in creating streets, community institutions and public spaces that improve people’s lives. Within this context, iconic architecture could be a very valuable asset but not the exclusive focus.

3.    Before the first sketch is made on any project large or small, designers, clients and the community as a whole need to ask basic questions about its impact:

• How will it generate vibrant public life?

• How will it honor its context in the community?

• How will it create a community place and draw on local assets? (Cultural, ecological, historical, social, and economic)

• How will it delight people, bring them together and enhance their lives?

The challenge in creating great cities for the future is enormous, yet critically important. Our attention needs to be focused on many levels of urban life:  livability, local economies, community health, sustainability, civic engagement, and local self reliance. Good architecture and design, broadly defined, must be at the heart of all these efforts. When all of these goals are aligned, we’ll see a world-changing movement to repair the environment and improve living conditions for everyone living upon it.

We’ve seen a dramatic change recently in the way communities grow and improve themselves. You won’t hear much about it in the media or from the upper echelons of the design profession, but evidence of this new approach can be found almost everywhere else. Many towns and cities have transformed parks, downtowns and other crucial public spaces from derelict eyesores to lively gathering places beloved by local citizens. This is not the product of visionary planners, innovative developers or powerful politicians (although they helped) but by a new breed of engaged citizen we at PPS fondly call “zealous nuts.”

Years ago, when we began advising key decision makers, clients, and anyone else who would listen that they should entrust public spaces to zealous nuts-meaning people who were passionate about their communities-we were greeted with incredulous skepticism. There was great hesitation to empower people who seemed to care a little too much, and who may have had minimal expertise in planning, business or government. Why hand over authority to people who are not experts? That’s what local leaders wondered. They would probably just gum up the works with impractical ideas.

But that’s not how its works out in practice. “Zealous nuts” know more about the places where they live and work than anyone else, and therefore their ideas turn out to be most practical and valuable. They naturally engage in what PPS calls “Placemaking”–a new way of looking at public spaces that takes into account all the factors that make a successful place.

More and more developers, designers and leaders are now realizing that the success of a public project depends on the participation of the public itself. That seems obvious, but it took a long time for many decision makers to figure that out. We first began to notice this change of thinking here in PPS’s hometown, New York. An early sign was the successful turnaround of Central Park in the 1980s, spearheaded by Betsy Barlow Rogers. Her amazing work showed many leaders the importance of concerned citizens, who have the passion and persistence to ensure that promising initiatives are not undermined by bureaucratic red tape and the often misguided opinions of so-called experts. Betsy always talks about the importance of the “zealous nut” and made the phrase a badge of honor. In fact, she is a pioneering zealous nut herself.

The increase in the number and tenaciousness of zealous nuts all around the world over the past thirty years has greatly improved the way institutions make decisions regarding vital public places. More and more, public leaders are acknowledging and following the wisdom of non-experts. In fact, we are witnessing a true blurring of boundaries. Years ago there was often a clash between community-based efforts and local institutions, who often stood in the way of creativity and public participation. Today, however, many public officials, foundation leaders, and private businesspeople display all the qualities of zealous nuts themselves. Here are a few examples of how this change in thinking is making a difference all over the world. I think you’ll agree there’s never been a better time to be a zealous nut.

The Great Suburban Dream

Tomorrow’s suburbs will not resemble the sterile subdivisions we are familiar with today. We are now beginning to see the rebirth of many suburbs as genuine places with the pizzazz and congeniality we associate with the best urban neighborhoods. That’s because as they mature, suburban communities are more open to the zealous nuts in their midst. Look at Mississauga, Ontario, a city of 700,000 adjacent to Toronto, where a vital civic center is being created where previously a shopping mall had been the main attraction. The transformation of Mississauga’s City Hall and Central Library into a bustling “outdoor community center” was spearheaded with the ardent support of a core team of senior city staff who attended a PPS training workshop in New York, and who have since become advocates for community-based planning. In less than a year, 1000 city staff and local citizens have been trained in Placemaking. Mississauga has even established a new initiative called the “City for the 21st Century” that is managing a new program of events and activities in the civic center. More projects are being implemented with the intention of developing Mississauga as a city of great destinations, from the downtown center to its many diverse neighborhoods.

The Boom in Public Markets

We’re seeing an explosion of public markets in communities large and small. PPS announced a new round of grants in its influential Public Markets Program last May to help organizers increase their markets’ capacity to serve communities with fresh food and lively gathering places. This round of grants was awarded to farmers market networks and associations, a reflection of market operators’ growing sophistication and their ability to make change on a larger scale. What’s remarkable is the passionate belief in farmers markets as vehicles for broad-based social change expressed by all the grant applicants (both those who were awarded funds and those who weren’t). These people are transforming their communities. They are zealously pursuing new visions by forging partnerships with health organizations, community development groups, schools, and land trusts and reaching out to poor, immigrant and minority communities.

The Old College Try

Alumni, staff, students and community residents are now voicing their enthusiasm about making college campuses better public places. In a striking example of the new approach to campus-planning, Harvard University is working to use public spaces to bridge the town-gown divide. The school is actively partnering with residents of Allston, Massachusetts, as they undertake a major campus expansion in that community with new public spaces to be used by students and local residents alike.

Street Prophets

Australian gadfly and visionary David Engwicht is pioneering a new method to calm traffic that emphasizes the importance of reclaiming streets as social places with a wide range of community purposes beyond moving and storing cars. His most recent book, Mental Speed Bumps: The Smarter Way to Tame Traffic (for sale at PPS.org), describes how anyone-even children-can make streets more livable by introducing “intrigue, uncertainty, and humor” through practical actions like hosting a block party without closing the street to cars. These actions reverse people’s psychological retreat from the street as a place for social activity as well as reduce vehicle speeds.

Hans Monderman, a traffic engineer from the Netherlands, also believes in social streets: places where traffic is secondary to the community life that takes place between buildings. Monderman advocates the removal of traffic control devices like stop signs and lane stripes — even sidewalks — because to him, these devices tell drivers that they are free to move as quickly as possible through a place. Without these devices, drivers slow down, make eye contact with pedestrians, and pick up other cues as to how to proceed. Although the method may seem counter-intuitive to those who have been steeped in traditional traffic engineering methods, several studies have now shown that Monderman’s approach results in slower traffic and safer streets, even compared to conventional traffic calming measures. Engwicht and Monderman are winning over zealous converts every day to this “second-generation” traffic calming, a movement that PPS will continue to track and promote through our Transportation Program.

Community-Conscious Development

Private developers are starting to give greater consideration to the needs of the larger communities they serve. We are seeing signs of this in North America, but the change is most evident in places like Hong Kong. Last month I traveled there to address the Creating Valuable Cities Conference–organized by the Urban Land Institute (ULI), The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), and the Business Environment Council (BEC)–where major developers from around the region gathered to discuss the lack of public spaces. With very few usable gathering spots in the hyper-dense city, Hong Kong’s builders realize they have backed themselves into a corner. Seeing how isolated their projects have become, they are now eager to work with the admirably zealous staff of local nonprofits (NGOs) to change the situation. One of the first steps in this significant shift is to open up Hong Kong’s spectacular waterfront to public use.

Foundations of Support

Foundations, too, are committing more resources to small-scale initiatives led by impassioned citizens. PPS is now working with community foundations and locally-oriented family foundations in several cities who now want to focus their grants on Placemaking. In Flint, Michigan, for instance, foundations are playing a large role in keeping the city alive now that it has been largely abandoned by General Motors. One of them, the Ruth Mott Foundation, is broadening its past attempts at “beautification” by investing in community-led Placemaking efforts. Instead of building bloated projects, the new focus on place will build momentum gradually and connect many areas of concern, such as broadening access to local foods, improving neighborhood health, and creating true destinations across the city that people will want to visit.

The Politics of Placemaking

We are witnessing the emergence of a new generation of politicians who understand that successful Placemaking requires many partners. In other words, they welcome the chance to work side by side with zealous nuts.

Bellingham, Washington: One of these energetic and effective public servants is Mark Asmundson, a.k.a. “Mayor Mark,” of Bellingham, Washington. Since 1995, he has led the transformation of downtown Bellingham from a largely vacant area to one with dozens of locally-owned stores, thriving community facilities, brand new residential and mixed-use development, and better transportation choices. After attending PPS’s “How to Turn a Place Around” training course this May, he is now getting his staff and constituents ready for Bellingham’s next huge Placemaking opportunity: the redevelopment of a 137-acre site along the waterfront. Mayor Mark is committed to an open planning process of public-private partnerships, broad community participation, and a focus on what Bellingham residents need in such a strategic location. “Citizens and communities will choose how to reshape the space they already have into great places,” he says. “The community is the expert – not an architect or consultant.”

Midland, Michigan: Bill Schute of Midland, Michigan is another politician with the heart of a zealous nut. Bill is a former congressman (now a state judge) in this small city of 55,000, which is home to two major international corporations, Dow Chemical and Dow Corning. He recently coordinated a two-day Placemaking training with the city leadership, local foundations and philanthropists, and executives from the two corporations. Their primary goal was to think of ways to draw more people from around the world to live in Midland by making it attractive to a diverse population. Midland already has impressive public facilities–including a performing arts center and an attractive farmers market–but they have yet to create public space destinations that draw people together. Bill Schute has pledged to help the city do just that. To demonstrate his commitment, he proposed creating pins for all 70 trainees that read: “I am a Zealous Nut for Midland.”

Lindsay, California: The town of Lindsay, California, a predominantly Latino community of 11,000 residents, merits special mention for making a political commitment to Placemaking with a real can-do attitude. Lindsay has been on the right track since the 2004 launch of a public market that draws thousands of people downtown on Friday nights. Then last May the mayor, the entire city council, and other city staff attended a PPS training course. They have since applied the lessons to their downtown, even creating a Department of Special Projects to conceptualize and directly implement new Placemaking initiatives. They recently broke ground on an outdoor courtyard for the town library, saving nearly $1 million compared to estimates from outside contractors. Other projects in the pipeline include the re-use of an abandoned packing house as a recreation center, and the revitalization of an empty downtown building as an indoor market space for local craftsmen and vendors.

These remarkable stories are just a few of the many wonderful transformations going on all over the world. I believe we are now waking up to the fact that the world is fundamentally changing, in a subtle but powerful way. The era of narrowly-defined professional disciplines and heavy-handed developers dictating the future of cities is thankfully ending. Placemaking transforms the roles of professionals and developers, enabling them to act as resources for citizens, who in turn are elevated to the role of respected experts who know their community best. This transition has far-ranging implications: Governmental structure and professional training will need to evolve drastically just to keep up. It never ceases to amaze how quickly such changes happen; if you don’t know what to look for, you might miss it. But those who are attuned to Placemaking will help it take hold.

Ethan Kent went back to Melbourne for two weeks, and I went to Perth, Stirling, Fremantle, Melbourne, The Gold Coast and Brisbane.  Between the two of us, we gave keynote speeches, presentations, and workshops, and became acutely aware of the key issues facing each community we visited.

Some general observations:
•    Every place we visited and every person we met with was extremely eager to learn how we understand and apply “Placemaking.” People were, without a doubt, the most receptive of anywhere.
•    Each region and city we visited has both strong public and private leadership, but noticeably lacks strong, visionary non-profits with citywide agendas.
•    The key issue in almost every community was the lack of great destinations.  Perth by its own account did not have any destinations within its downtown, but has great opportunities. Melbourne has four (Federation Square, the Queen Victoria Market, The Block Arcade and the Laneways), and Brisbane has their pedestrian mall and South Bank.
•    All of the major cities were dealing with waterfront development. None were satisfied with their progress so far.
•    Urban design, architecture, and landscape architecture firms are grappling with the idea of place and placemaking, but many think that it is just more thoughtful design. Urban designers are particularly sensitive and many feel they already do Placemaking. Design, like everywhere else, is overrated and underperforming when applied to important destinations.
•    The most difficult part of placemaking is dealing effectively with community participation. One government official in Perth realized after the presentation that “government could not do placemaking…only the community could.” Their role should be to set it up effectively for community participation.

Perth, Stirling, and Fremantle. Doing a workshop with the Committee of Perth, we had them do a “Power of 10” exercise.  Before the meeting, they listed their five best destinations, five worst, and five with the most potential. They then placed different colored dots for each category. Since I had only been there 10 hours, I had no comment. They were quick to assess their work by noting that there were no destinations built after 1950 and the suburbs developed after that point in time had very few potential dots. Downtown Perth had many exceptional opportunities. Fremantle, which is supposedly a waterfront city, has very little presence on the waterfront because a Port Authority controls it and does not consider the potential for a broad set of uses, defined by destinations, to be a priority. Instead they have proposed a shopping center with no local character as their contribution.

Melbourne. Without question, Melbourne has been the most active in seeking and realizing the vast potential of their terrific city. Their Federation Square is the best new square in the world and has extraordinarily broken through the glass ceiling of contemporary architecture where designers are more interested in defining their work as an object rather than as an active destination. This is primarily achieved by a strong professional management organization, but the design allows for the flexibility required for great destinations. However, like everywhere else, Melbourne does not have an effective way of drawing out their population, and many of their newest efforts are developed by designers with limited to poor results. Their waterfront is very weak and does not reach the high standards one would expect from such a great city. Lendlease is creating a private mixed use development on the Docklands with limited broader public appeal on the waterfront. Both Lendlease and the city will lose.

Gold Coast. The Gold Coast is one of the fastest growing parts of Australia and even has cities named Miami and Palm Beach, picking up on a similar subtropical setting on Florida’s east coast. They are undertaking a seminal project with light rail that would be the envy of coastal settings everywhere. Their sensitivity was evidenced by their eagerness to do a Placemaking exercise at one of their most prominent destinations. Like most transportation developments, they were focused on transportation oriented development but overlooked the context where each stop would be located. The opportunities revealed during the Placemaking exercised showed the importance of the integration. Creating a great destination, rather than just placing a transit building to identify a stop, was very exciting to the leadership group participating in the Placemaking workshop.

Brisbane. Brisbane has two “best in the world” examples of great destinations. Their pedestrian mall and the South Bank Development are world class examples of how to create great places. But Brisbane also has the worst traffic of any city in Australia and no vision on how to change it. They are on a fast track to stagnation unless they deal expeditiously with a different agenda than building themselves out with more road capacity. I thought that that era has long since passed. On the other hand, Brisbane has some wonderful examples of subtropical architecture that, when done effectively, best exemplifies our initiative of an “Architecture of Place.” The state library and many of the developments within the South Bank are wonderful examples of open architecture where the buildings are also public space integrated with the exterior environment. The only problem is that when you get to the outside of public spaces, over zealous design replaces the flexibility within the buildings.

The highlight of the trip was working with the design leader for Delfin Lendlease.

Five world class destinations
•    Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia
•    The Block Arcade, Melbourne
•    The Laneways, Melbourne
•    The Pedestrian Mall, Brisbane, Australia
•    South Bank Development, Brisbane, Australia
Others: Queen Victoria market Melbourne, State Library in Brisborne, Park in Perth