Entire families came by bike to the food truck festival. Usually empty, this lawn in Grey Park was transformed into a great community destination.

“If you want to seed a place with activity, put out food. Food attracts people who attract more people.”  William H. Whyte in the Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

People of all ages like food trucks! Flirty Cupcakes sold out within hours.

A Fundraiser to Improve the Park that Improves the Park

Big problems don’t always need big solutions.  The answer may be as simple as cupcakes and empanadas. The community-led Evanston Parks Coalition (EPC) organized a food truck festival to raise money so that PPS could help lead a community-based visioning process. But the fundraiser did far more than just move them toward that goal: it changed the community’s perception of the space by transforming it into a great destination that brought hundreds of neighbors out to enjoy a park they usually just hurry past—all without costly, permanent infrastructure changes.  It’s a great “lighter, quicker, cheaper” way to test out longer-term changes to the park.

“In our case,” explained Belén Ayestarán from EPC, “a key principle is: ‘if there is something in the park to attract a critical mass of other people, the mentally ill will just be part of the crowd and no one will find them intimidating.’ In fact, at the event there were more Albany Care residents than any other day. They didn’t just blend in, they were part of the community.”

The EPC is led by a few “zelous nuts” (our highest praise for a local, dedicated Placemaking leader). Belén is chief among them and she is committed to a vision of a park with “features and activities that are common, that everyone—children, the mentally ill, parents, professionals, etc.—can enjoy.” Right along with her organizing the event were volunteers from The Center for Independent Futures, a non-profit for people with disabilities, and some residents from Albany Care. Belén says “we are big believers in the power of food” to create common ground.

Belén said many people who attended the festival asked, “Why don’t we do this every week?” Many of the vendors recruited for the day quickly sold out and the park was packed with families from the neighborhood. But it wasn’t just about the food: the festival also featured bands, a Spanish/English sing along, and a zumba class—all of which neighbors donated.

Local performers, like Everybody Move, donated their time.

From Food Trucks to a Permanent Kiosk

The event also allowed the group to test out the viability of a permanent food kiosk that they envision could function as a kind of management center for the park. The kiosk could give out games (like bocce or chess) and “provide a sense of that the park is supervised which would alleviate unfounded fears neighbors have of the mentally ill.”

Belén and other organizers see great potential for a food kiosk to turn the park around. In addition to food, Belén, explains, “a kiosk could provide employment for some of the more functional residents of Albany Care. It could man folding café chairs and tables that visitors could move with the shade from the large maples. From the chairs, they could watch children twirling in and out of a large interactive sculpture or wading in a water feature in front of the existing amphitheater.”

Dogs and kids played together during the festival.

Grey Park’s Great Place Potential

The park has a lot of potential to become a great neighborhood gathering place.  It has what PPS calls “good bones:” it’s large, green, and surrounded by a number of important destinations that people visit every day.  Grey Park is right on an important north-south road that’s a main artery for the town and is at the entrance to the business district. Two blocks away are an L and Metra stops, a major transportation hub, and then there are four schools (an elementary school, middle school, catholic school and school for children with disabilities). Charles Grey, who gave the park, bought the land at that location because of its proximity to the schools and downtown.

The park's playground on a typical day. Neighbors say it's usually a “de facto smoking area” with no kids.

The same park during the festival is packed with families enjoying the playground.

Next steps
Already there are plans in the work for another Food Truck Festival next year.   Organizers say they’re thinking of expanding the festival by stationing food trucks in different parks throughout Evanston. Belén also wants to put out bike rentals so people could bike around Evanston. 

When used strategically, putting out affordable, good food can actually create an inclusive, comfortable setting that welcomes many different kinds of people. Evanston shows how food trucks can be a “lighter, quicker, cheaper” strategy to transform a maligned, deserted park into a hub of neighborhood activity that sets the stage for future changes, local investment, and even new friendships.

6 Tips for a Great Food Truck Festival 

Belén shared with PPS some important tips about hosting a great event that can “re-brand” and improve your park:

• Show Solutions: Big problems don’t necessarily need big solutions. Redesign is often thought of as tearing up the park and adding lots of new features. In our case, the park is beautiful. Some programming and some key new features will go a long way.
• Triangulate: Blur the line between playground and kiosk. We wanted to show that it is very easy to supervise children playing as a collective of adults. If all the adults are eating or picnicking, children will just play together in close watch. And children don’t need playgrounds! (Playgrounds are expensive!).
• Observe where people picnic: They’ll choose promising parts of the park! Picnics are a great way to find out the most desirable spots. People will put their blankets down in promising parts of the park. Surprisingly, people laid blankets in close proximity to the tables where the mentally ill always sit––the infamous tables at the heart of the controversy!  People won’t set up camp if they feel uneasy.
• Schedule events throughout the park to test the performance of various existing features. We learned a lot about our amphitheater by observing the way people used it. We had planned to do daytime performances there but it turns out it was way too sunny (even though it was a cool day). Lesson learned: No performances at lunch time, unless there is a tarp. Upside: We discovered the amphitheater would make a great space for water shoots for kids. Adults could sunbathe and children waddle. In the evening, when the water is off, performers could set up shop.
• Park Trucks Strategically: Experiment with Traffic Calming. People generally perceive most of the space in Grey Park as unusable because it is at the intersection of two main streets. We purposely put the trucks close to the busiest streets, to show that the park is so big that the traffic is actually quite far away. It is safe to use those parts of the park, even for children.
• Think Like A Truck. Food trucks have followers on Twitter. Use their social networks to attract large numbers of unprejudiced users to your park. Also make sure your trucks get there early. Otherwise you will have permanent lines. Remember, truck foodies arrive ahead of time!

For more on efforts to turn Grey Park around:

• Partners Share Vision for South Evanston Park (Evanston Review)

• Food Truck Festival Rolls into Grey Park (The Daily Northwestern)

“State of the Art” Library Opens in Nova Scotia

Visitors say "The People's Place feels like a place to live"

For all those who feared the rise of the Internet would mean the fall of the library here’s a story of hope. Last week, June 26, the city of Antigonish, Canada, celebrated the grand opening of The People’s Place, the product of a community-initiated Placemaking process led by Eric Stackhouse, Chief Librarian of the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library in partnership with local “Zealous Nuts,” PPS’ term for all the enthusiastic community leaders who get things done.

Computer stations at "The People's Place"

On the library’s opening day, organizers estimate about 6,000 people (out of a population of about 18,000!) showed up to celebrate. The vision for the library was guided by PPS’ principles and was designed to serve as a multi-use destination civic center- a place where people can read, learn, enjoy art, and get to know one another.

Stackhouse says “we managed to include every idea the consultations came up with, which resulted in community ownership and the result is a 100% community thumbs up. [The library is] a green building, designed to integrate into Main Street and support the businesses, and flexible. Best thing I ever did was learn the process from PPS.”

The People’s Place is a $5.5 million joint project of the Municipality of the County of Antigonish, the Town of Antigonish, and the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library. Funding was obtained from both Federal and Provincial government sources as well as significant contributions from the community at large and the Friends of the Antigonish Library to make sure that when the library was completed it would be true to the community’s original vision.

Many local non-profits also use the library- making The People's Place a destination for people of all ages.

As well as a modern, welcoming public library, the facility hosts a Community Access Program (CAP) site, the Antigonish County Adult Learning Association (ACALA), and Health Connections. Also, several multi-purpose meeting and gathering spaces are included which can be used at no cost by non-profits. All these agencies and spaces are combined together in order to share resources and provide a single point of access by users.

Public Art is a Major Component
Throughout several visioning sessions, community members agreed that public art should be a major component including over 20 pieces of sculpture, woodworking, visual art, textile, poster art, and more, including a mural by Alan Syliboy titled “The Dream Canoe”.

Libraries can change the world! Resources to make your libraries and civic centers great community places:

• Libraries that Matter
• Library Placemaking in Action
• How to Make Your Library Great
• A Library Instills Community Spirit in Nova Scotia
• Libraries at the Heart of our Communities (a featured article from our partner, the Planning Commissioner’s Journal)
• Public Library Design: Working from the Inside Out and the Outside In (MP3 of seminar) featurung PPS VP Ethan Kent speaking in Melbourne on Libraries as a Catalyst for Placemaking
• Civic Centers in a Paradigm of Place: Reinventing the Courthouse

Get inspired by all the ideas the Antigonish community generated on this page.

• Placemaking and Consultations
• Antigonish Library Site Plan

Plans for the library were sensitive to its context within the rest of the town. Site plan prepared by Archibald and Jones Architects Ltd.

Tell us about your community’s library: how are you making it a great place?

The Square is the Center of City-wide Placemaking Campaign

Mississauga's new Celebration Square opened 5 years to the day after City Council approved PPS' Master Plan

PPS is proud to have helped develop the community’s programmatic vision for Mississauga’s new Celebration Square as part of a city-wide Placemaking campaign and capacity building effort.  Yesterday’s opening was exactly 5 years after the City Council voted to approve PPS’ master plan, “Building Mississauga Around Places:  A Vision for City Centre Park and Open Spaces in the 21st Century.”

Building a Vision for the Heart of Mississauga

From the intense involvement of more than 1500 Mississauga citizens in several rounds of community workshops and visioning sessions, it was clear everyone wanted their new Square to become the heart of the city- a place full of events that give people a reason to come enjoy their downtown. Just months after the initial workshops, citizens and local organizations came together to undertake a series of experiments and short-term actions (that we now call “Lighter, Quicker Cheaper” strategies) to implement many of the ideas that the community came up with. They created an ambitious summer schedule of programs and events that ranged from Farmers markets to Vintage Car Club Thursdays- and put public seating and tables out in the square right away.

That vision has really translated into the Square’s current programming:  check out this calendar of amazing events coming up this summer in Celebration Square.  The Mississauga City Council has even started to hold its meetings in the square!  And there are big plans for Canada Day 2011: this year’s festivities in Celebration Square include performances by These Kids Wear Crowns, pop artist Fefe Dobson and the chart-topping Shawn Desman. The square will also feature fireworks, an aerial cirque show and and unique art, dance and music fusion performances in the amphitheater.

Right after the initial visioning process, Mississauga tested lighter, quicker, cheaper programming like this Canada Day celebration to inform the current design.

The plans for Celebration Square were just one part of a comprehensive City of the Future Campaign, where we led training sessions for city staff, a Power of 10 plan for the whole city and a detailed concept plan for the city center.  Many of the ideas that emerged from these processes are reflected in Mississauga’s comprehensive Downtown 21 Plan.

How the Placemaking Process Created a New Square for Mississauga

As the City of Mississauga explains, Celebration Square came about as a “… result of extensive public engagement conducted in 2005 and 2006 by the City’s Community Services department, in collaboration with Project for Public Spaces (PPS) of New York City, using the principles of “Placemaking” — turning public spaces into vital community places. Community stakeholders, including citizens, arts and sports groups and businesses were consulted to develop a Vision Concept Plan for public space surrounding the Civic Centre. As a result of public meetings, workshops and web-based reviews of draft plans, the final document, “Building Mississauga around Places: A Vision for City Centre Parks and Open Spaces in the 21st Century,” was completed in January 2007.”

Placemaking has Paid Off in Mississauga’s Celebration Square

Bruce Carr, Director, Strategic Community Initiatives for the City of Mississauga wrote to PPS to update us about the positive changes that the Placemaking process brought to Celebration Square- and the new investments the square has catalyzed:

“The excitement [PPS] helped create in the community resulted in the Federal and Provincial governments partnering with us to invest $43 million in the complete reconstruction of the Square… It is spectacular. Don’t worry we have taken your advice and have also invested substantial dollars into the programming of Celebration Square. As you recommended it is being operated as an outdoor community centre.

I am totally amazed at how the seeds (and petunias) we planted, with your help, just a few years ago have grown into what in just a few short years will be something that will be cherished and enjoyed for generations to come.

Without PPS’s help and guidance we would not have had our new and beautiful Celebration Square. The people and especially the children of Mississauga will forever be in your debt. The events planned for this summer are going to be out of this world. I can hardly wait!”

As the Globe and Mail reports, “the centrepiece of the square is a stage flanked by JumboTrons, to be used for concerts and other events. A long trellis on one side will provide shade for vendors during festivals and markets. On the upper level, closer to City Hall, is a shallow reflecting pool with water jets. In the winter, it will serve as a skating rink.”

By Gary Toth

Gary Toth

What’s significant about the SHRP 2 is that it represents a benchmark moment in the evolution of the transportation establishment. The often slow and inconsistent movement toward livable transportation solutions is now getting a significant impetus from the industry’s research/innovation wing.

This spring I participated in a meeting of the second Strategic Highway Research Program in Washington, DC as part of my role as a member of the program’s Technical Coordinating Committee (TCC) in the area of Capacity.

Here are some valuable resources and new research that emerged from SHRP 2 and some information about the innovative aspects of the program.

Not Your Mom’s Highway Research Program

SHRP 2 is moving toward holistic transportation solutions, which might include some of these alterations to make the street more livable. Image from Dan Burden.

This second SHRP program has “an intense, large-scale focus, integrates multiple fields of research and technology and is fundamentally different from the broad, mission-oriented, discipline-based research programs that have been the mainstay of highway research for half a century.”

SHRP 2 takes a “customer-oriented view of highway needs, addressing them from a system perspective,” and is “open to research in non-traditional highway-related areas…”  

The Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) was established by Congress in 2006 to improve the safety, reliability and performance of the nation’s highway system.   Since this is the second time in history that Congress has authorized a SHRP, the ongoing program is known as SHRP 2.

There are four focus areas under SHRP 2:

• Safety: Prevent or reduce the severity of highway crashes by understanding driver behavior.
• Renewal: Address the aging infrastructure through rapid design and construction methods that cause minimal disruption and produce long-lived facilities
• Reliability: Reduce congestion and improve travel time reliability through incident management, response, and mitigation.
• Capacity: Integrate mobility, economic, environmental, and community needs into the planning and design of new transportation capacity.

The focus of the Capacity program- the program I’m a part of shaping- is itself encouraging: “to develop approaches and tools for systematically integrating environmental, economic, and community requirements into the analysis, planning, and design of new highway capacity.” 

This is the kind of holistic thinking that is the first step toward creating more livable and sustainable places. So what’s involved in actually getting there?

Identifying a New Problem to Solve

The Capacity TCC acknowledges that our country will need new transportation capacity in the 21st Century: 140 million more people are expected to live in America by the year 2050. However, the TCC has redefined the problem statement for transportation from one of simply moving cars from point A to point B, to providing the mobility that America needs in ways that simultaneously support all other societal needs.

Simply put: we’re moving toward new customer behavior and a new planning philosophy.  We’re realizing now that people should drive not just to drive but to connect with people, work, recreation and purchase goods and services. This perspective on the purpose of driving has direct impact on the kind of communities we build (on land use).  If we keep emphasizing high speed automobile travel, then we’ll continue to end up with spread out development (sprawl). This is a significant shift in thinking: we’re moving away from a narrow obsession over speed- we’re moving away from a mitigation paradigm- and moving towards ways to build community through transportation.

Speer Boulevard in Denver

SHRP 2: A Significant Move toward Building Communities through Transportation 

In essence, SHRP 2 acknowledges that transportation is about building strong communities, fostering great places and making America sustainable.  Failure to understand this fundamental principle led to major conflicts in the 20th Century, delaying scores of projects for decades and leading to hundreds of millions of dollars wasted in conflict resolution, redesigning and reprogramming investments, inflation, and lost opportunity delays.

As such, the 20 research products selected by Capacity TCC’s emphasize collaborative decision-making, societal based performance measures, and the role of both in helping to expedite transportation investment.

But to say that ‘research’ was the only product of this program is to understate its impact: the $21.5M budget for these twenty projects resulted not only in new knowledge but also in hands on tools that can be immediately applied to help improve transportation over the upcoming decades.

Implementing SHRP 2: Tools for Meaningful, Shared Decision-Making in Transportation Planning

This “applied research” concept is typified by the cornerstone of the Capacity program: the development of a collaborative decision-making model.   This model is web based and advocates for meaningful shared decision-making with a wide range of stakeholders throughout the transportation process.  SHRP 2 is committed to implementing great new ideas and has put together a number of resources.  Here are just a few of them:

• Case Studies in Collaboration
• Collaborative decision making tools from TRB
• Tools (Web tools such as TCAPP and guides)
• Reports (case studies, research reports)
• Webinars
• Project Briefs
• Background Material
• Links to Other Capacity Product Pages
• Implementation of SHRP II: Key Strategies
• How Agencies can work with Host Communities (based on a research statement by PPS)

Advocating for shared decision-making may sound like a “no-brainer,” but having spent a career inside the transportation establishment, I can’t begin to tell you how difficult it has been for transportation professionals to become comfortable with the idea of shared decision-making.

I can still recall a meeting early in my career, where a visiting engineer from Yugoslavia – then a totalitarian country – whispered into my ear:  “I don’t understand, it is much more democratic in Yugoslavia!”

A project that I directly oversaw as Chairman of its Expert Task Group, was the research and identification of techniques and strategies that could help transportation agencies free themselves from the decades long confrontational processes for delivering transportation.   Not surprisingly, many of these strategies involved taking more time up front to engage stakeholders and frame the correct project goals.   Grassroots involvement has long been a PPS principle – “the community is the expert” – yet has been counter-intuitive to transportation agencies subject to intense pressure from the political process to move things along faster.

For Lasting Change, We Need New Process AND New Problem-Statement

Sharing decision-making is great, but if the problem is still defined as moving cars from point A to point B, then products of transportation can still remain in conflict with communities and resource agencies. In other words, its not enough to have a democratic, inclusive decision-making process-  for transformative change, in order for transportation to really build great communities, we need to redefine the problem we’re trying to solve.

In that spirit, the second project authorized by the Capacity TCC sought to deal with this by investing almost one million dollars in creating a balanced series of performance measures to evaluate transportation investment.

New Performance Measures:
Traditional measures of mobility, reliability, and safety are now joined by environmental, economic and community

This web based performance measure framework is so balanced that the Director of the Colorado Springs area Metropolitan Planning Organization reported that in a recent pilot test that transportation professionals were grumbling that there were more non-transportation performance measures being applied than transportation!

Have you put shared-decision making for transportation planning into practice in your community?   Have you used some of these new tools? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Meg MacIver contributed to this post.

PPS is thrilled to announce that we’ve been awarded a grant from the Kresge Foundation for our program, “Rebuilding Detroit Neighborhoods through Placemaking and the Power of 10.”

PPS hopes this new project will lead to more markets like Detroit’s Eastern Market, which has become a community center as well as a hub for fresh, healthy food.

The program will be piloted in two neighborhoods this year, and hopefully expanded to other neighborhoods in the future.   The planning process with each community will support a broader city-visioning process funded by the Kresge Foundation called “Detroit Works.”

Place-based Governance in Michigan
This work will continue to advance Michigan’s groundbreaking commitment to Place-based Governance, established by the state’s new governor, Rick Snyder, through his first Special Message to the State Legislature which established Placemaking as a state-wide economic development strategy.

Movable seating in Campus Martius, Detroit

About The Kresge Foundation
Headquartered in metro Detroit, The Kresge Foundation is a $3.1 billion private, national foundation that seeks to influence the quality of life for future generations through its support of nonprofit organizations in six fields of interest including arts and culture, community development, education, the environment, health, and human services.

The Kresge Foundation’s commitment to its Detroit Program reflects the organization’s deep roots in the city.  Since its founding in 1924, Kresge Foundation has provided continuous philanthropic support to the area’s nonprofit organizations and community initiatives. In the 1990s and early 2000s, this support was coordinated by our Detroit Initiative, which focused primarily on strengthening civic institutions and building new public gathering spaces, such as the RiverWalk and Campus Martius Park, a project for which PPS worked with the community to develop a vision for a park that would become, in the Mayor’s words, “the best public space in the world.” PPS’ design suggestions envisioned an entire district of public uses to tie the park into a larger, city-wide revitalization.

A cafe at Detroit's Eastern Market

For almost eight years, PPS worked with the city of Detroit and stakeholders at the city’s renowned Eastern Market on revitalization strategy.  The Kresge Foundation has been a leading supporter in the renovation of the market’s historic sheds and of the market’s ongoing community programming.   Today the Eastern Market is once again one of the largest and most vibrant market districts in the US.

Kresge uses a values-criteria to guide their grantmaking, which aims to create access and advance opportunity for marginalized populations, promote community impact in ways most needed by residents, cultivate innovation and risk taking, support interdisciplinary solutions, reach under-served locales, foster environmental sustainability, and encourage nonprofit boards and their staffs to reflect the racial, ethnic and gender diversity of the people they serve. PPS is honored to have been selected.

For more information about this project feel free to contact Steve Davies at sdavies@pps.org.

Are you in Detroit? Tell us about how to improve your local markets in the comments below.

A market in Hong Kong confers many benefits to its neighborhood.

New research on public marketplaces and their potential to spur local economic, social and political development cites many PPS studies and is closely in line with PPS’ approach to markets, which emphasizes that successful public markets achieve these three goals:

• they’re great community gathering places
• they’re economically sustainable
• they have a  broad impact on their community’s development.

This convergence is what makes successful public markets not only good for vendors and customers but also for good the market’s surrounding community.

Marketplaces as Tools for Planning and Public Policy
The report, Marketplaces: Prospects for Economic, Social and Political Development (free PDF, registration required for download) by Alfonso Morales of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “shows how marketplaces were once tools of nascent planning and public policy, describes the reasons they should be again, and shows how planners and policy makers can advance public purposes through markets.”  For Morales, “…the marketplace represents one route to community redevelopment in the broadest sense.”

The research cites PPS studies throughout, including:

• Public Markets as a Vehicle for Social Integration and Upward Mobility, prepared with Partners for Livable Communities for the Ford Foundation, 2003

• Public Markets and Community-Based Food Systems: Making them Work in Lower Income Communities, prepared with Partners for Livable Communities for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2003.

• Public Markets and Community Revitalization, published jointly with the Urban Land Institute and PPS, 1995.

Markets Can Release a Community’s Creativity
The report focuses on the many, varied impacts marketplaces can have on the public realm and explains that “markets release the creative, recreational, civic, and economic energies between the community and the individuals who compose it…. Markets connect the natural world to the urban environment, and the two-way connection raises hopes in both that communities will develop economically, that farmland and food systems will be protected, that individual health will be improved, and that the natural and local will supplement the engineered and global urban environment.

…The market provides a ‘halo effect’ in a community, and a vibrant market is auto-catalytic, producing positive feedback loops in civic, economic, and social life. Although the market represents the community, its connections, and its aspirations, it takes relationships between outsiders and insiders to catalyze these aspects of community and to make operational symbolic hopes individuals have for themselves and their community.”

Want to learn more?
PPS has a number of resources on markets that can help you get started creating a great community place- in addition to a number of useful books and publications like SNAP/EBT at your Farmers Market: 7 Steps to Success.

Attend our next training course!
How to Create Successful Markets in New York City this month (May 20 and 21).

Jane Jacobs

“No one can find what will work for our cities by … manipulating scale models, or inventing dream cities….You’ve got to get out and walk.” -Jane Jacobs

Jane’s Walk as a Way to Catalyze Change

Events like this are a great chance to come together to think critically about the public spaces you encounter every day- and imagine how small scale changes can make them extraordinary.

More than a nice way to spend an afternoon, events like these can actually help forge the personal connections and networks that are the foundation that makes community-led, lighter, quicker, cheaper projects possible. This year’s walks will occur throughout the U.S. on May 7th and 8th.

Sign up here to host a Jane’s Walks in your neighborhood!

Jane’sWalkUSA, a program of The Center for the Living City , is dedicated to honoring the legacy and ideas of urban activist and writer Jane Jacobs by facilitating free walking tours in neighborhoods throughout the country, in cities from Los Angeles to Brooklyn.

Grand Avenue in L.A.: the new Model Street Manual aims to make streets more welcoming for people

L.A. County has begun to rewrite the “DNA” of its streets with a new Model Streets Manual that will set guidelines to support improved safety, livability and active transportation options.

This effort was supported through a grant from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, through its RENEW initiative. RENEW stands for “Renewing Environments for Nutrition, Exercise and Wellness.” It’s inspiring to see a health-focused organization embrace a leadership role in Placemaking by broadening the scope of its concern to include planning for the built environment.

There is a growing understanding that streets configured to support an active lifestyle can lead to positive community health outcomes.

As Streetsblog reports, team lead Ryan Snyder of Ryan Snyder Associates has said the manual is like “the DNA of our streets, and it defines everything from where to place bike lanes to how wide a roundabout should be.”

Our Gary Toth and Pippa Brashear joined a team of local and national experts to contribute to this a new Model Streets Manual and each led a chapter in the manual, in addition to contributing to other chapters.

Please Plagiarize
While the guide is primarily targeted to the 88 cities that comprise L.A. County, the team hopes the information about making streets for people will reach as many communities as possible: in Snyder’s words, cities can “use it, adopt it, steal it, and plagiarize it.”  Toth said the guide was written in such a way that it can provide a base of valuable information that each city can adapt to suit its specific context.

By summer 2011, it will be available for free download on L.A. County’s website.

Downtown L.A.

The Manual has 12 Chapters (here’s a list of them from Streetsblog):

The manual covers a broad range of street design elements at many scales, from land-use to textured surfaces and raised pedestrian crossings.  Pippa led the development of the “Re-Placing Streets” chapter and Gary led the development of the Transit Accommodations Chapter.

• Street Network Design: In terms of safety and livability, networks with numerous short blocks in a grid achieve much better outcomes than street networks with long blocks and numerous cul-de-sacs.
• Traveled Way and Intersection Design: Bike lanes and narrower car lanes can improve safety and “modern roundabouts” improve the comfort of intersections. Streets should be physically designed for slower speeds.
• Universal Pedestrian Access: Without precise design guidelines, obstacles to mobility, like utility boxes, start to crop up. A four-zone system — representing the curb zone, furniture zone, pedestrian zone, and frontage zone — can ensure that there’s always a passable sidewalk.
• Pedestrian Crossings: Simply put, pedestrians must have the ability to safely cross the street. Real and perceived safety is important and is not well reflected by crash data, i.e. “maybe no body gets killed here, because no one feels safe enough to cross.” Planners should use treatments that are proven to reduce crashes. Transit stops should always have good crossings, because trips typically begin and end on opposite sides of the street. Above all, evaluate the success of new crossings using performance measures.
• Bikeway Design: All streets are bicycle streets, and so all should be safe for bicyclists. Existing manuals tell us how to design roads for cars; this one will accommodate all users.
• Traffic Calming: “Design streets that self-enforce the behaviors that you’re looking to enforce.” Some of the physical measures that can achieve “self-enforcement” include: lane reductions, medians, refuges for pedestrians, bulbouts, curbless flush streets, flush medians, streets trees, lateral shifts, shared spaces, bike lanes, textured surfaces, back-in angled parking, valley gutters, roundabouts, mini-roundabouts, impellers, chicanes, medians, yield streets, pinch points, raised intersections, raised pedestrian crossing, and speed humps.
• Transit Accommodations: Planners should think beyond the station as merely being a portal to the service. Rather, transit should be integrated further into the community, using stops to anchor local activity. Use street treatments to enhance access to transit vehicles and provide accommodations for everyone arriving at stations. When it comes to travel lanes, think beyond the car to bus lanes, BRT, and streetcars.
• Streetscape Ecosystem: Utilize street features to help irrigate landscaping. Make irrigation equipment highly visible to educate everyone about the relationships between all the parts of the ecosystem.
• Re-placing Streets: Streets should be more than just a conduit for goods and people. Designs should “support activities and destinations in the streets” with design elements built at the human scale; provide a feeling of safety; invite activities on both sides of the street; and reward slow movement by lowering speeds.
• Land Use & Urban Design: Land use is “the great definer of street character and influences travel patterns.” Key design elements should focus on things like setbacks and ways that land uses can complete the public space — ground floor uses.
• Retrofitting Suburbia: The goal of retrofitting suburbia is to “suggest ways that existing cities can think about getting ready for a different economic and demographic future.” In neighborhoods with poor connectivity, break open sound walls and cul-de-sacs so that pedestrians can move more freely. Break through long blocks with additional and safe crosswalks. Above all, “high quality economic development comes to high quality streets.”
• Getting It Built: First, the public engagement process should become an authentic two-way process, in which the public are experts.

Cleveland’s historic West Side Market is an incubator for over 100 locally-owned food businesses

We’re excited to announce that Cleveland has been selected to host the 8th International Public Markets Conference.

The 3-day event, planned for September or October of 2012, will bring together over 300 participants including noted planners and designers, accomplished market managers, and visionary leaders in a unique opportunity to focus together on the past, present and future of markets worldwide.

Exact dates and locations will be announced this autumn. For more information, please contact Kelly Verel at kverel@pps.org.

One of 20 cities to compete for the chance to host the conference, Cleveland has been selected from a group of five finalists including London, England; Toronto, Ontario; Seattle, Washington and Charleston, South Carolina.

The conference will align with the City’s celebration of the centennial year of the historic West Side Market. “Cleveland should be proud of the longevity of the West Side Market – one of the few remaining historic public markets in the U.S,” says PPS Senior Vice President Steve Davies, “and conference participants will also learn a great deal from the region’s expanding farmers markets which are sparking revitalization, job growth and healthy living.”

Cleveland and the Market were singled out by the Travel Channel as the best culinary secret in America, and the West Side Market was named by the Food Network  as the “Best Food Lover’s Market”  in the country in September of 2010. Even Travel and Leisure Magazine says “Cleveland shines brightly on the map of new American food destinations” and highlights the Market as a must-see destination.  The American Planning Association designated the market as one of America’s “10 Great Public Spaces,” and it is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The exterior of Cleveland’s historic West Side Market, circa 1912

City leaders in Cleveland have become known as champions for local food, urban agriculture and healthy living, passing legislation to allow backyard chickens and bees, leading the country in vacant land reuse and urban agriculture. As recently as this month, they joined forces with local hospitals to tackle city-wide health through healthy eating.

PPS will co-host the conference with the Ohio City Near West Development Corporation as the organization dedicated to developing, preserving, and promoting Ohio City, the neighborhood anchored by the West Side Market.

Cleveland’s local press has enthusiastic coverage of the announcement:

• Cleveland to Host 8th International Public Markets Conference in 2012
• Cleveland Picked for Public Markets Conference
• Cleveland, West Side Market, Tapped to Host International Public Markets Conference in 2012
• Cleveland Beats out National and International Competition to Host the 2012 PPS Conference
• West Side Market Cleveland to Host International Public Markets Conference

Gary Toth in NYC

In this new StreetFilm, PPS’ Senior Director of Transportation Initiatives, Gary Toth explains Floating Parking and Bike Buffer Zones.  This new, contested street feature confers many benefits- and not just for cyclists.

In fact, floating parking and bike lanes can actually change the way a street is experienced. They slow traffic and make the sidewalk more livable.  And floating parking does this in a way that doesn’t involve a lot of tax payer dollars to build infrastructure. These are low-cost interventions that can turn a street into a community place.

“Floating Parking” & Bike Buffer Zone in Separated Bike Lanes from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

"How to Turn a Place Around" now in Albanian

We’re thrilled to announce the release of PPS’ book “How to Turn A Place Around” in Albanian. Making this important Placemaking guide available to an Albanian audience builds on PPS’ work in the Eastern European Region, including “Community Development through Public Space Improvements,” a Placemaking training and pilot program conducted in Kosovo with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

This week, PPS’ Elena Madison travels to Pristina, Kosovo to join Eliza Hoxha (architect, urban designer, and Founder of Urbaniac) in hosting the book’s launch on March 1 at 6pm at the Modelarium of the Civil Engineering and Architecture Department of the University of Prishtina.

At the event, Elena will speak about the principles and practice of Placemaking in the context of Eastern Europe and about PPS projects in Kosovo, Serbia, and Croatia.

To get an English copy of “How to Turn a Place Around,” visit the PPS bookstore.

Buffalo Waterfront Flickr Image by Rho-bin

Building a Vision for Buffalo’s Waterfront:

“This is not your typical policy meeting. This is about inspiration”

“If you can create a process that’s democratic and inclusive, the product will be one that will be lasting- and that all people will buy into…” -Mark Goldman.

We’re inspired by the work of this highly-motivated group of people in Buffalo, NY who insist on moving away from big, “look-at-me” designs and toward lower-cost, creative interventions that will bring immediate improvements to their under-used waterfront.

Mark Goldman, one of Buffalo’s biggest zealous nuts, along with a creative team of unlikely partners, hosted a 2-day Forum in November 2010 called “Aspirations and Inspirations” to kick-off a visioning process to re-invent Buffalo’s former industrial waterfront as a multi-use public destination sustained by local artists and businesses.

IMAGINING BUFFALO’S WATERFRONT from nathan m peracciny on Vimeo.

To us, events like these signal a shift away from the traditional master planning process and towards a new, place-based agenda to transform our cities. Instead of a standard design charrette, Buffalo kicked things off with a festival meant to send a message “to the decision makers that there are other ways to think about planning our waterfront.”

Three local artists were each commissioned to create a piece for the occasion, including a waterfront soundscape created by Bryan Wanzer, a metaphorical mime and puppet show by Michele Costa, and sculptural work by Dennis Maher.  Every aspect of the event, as Mark Goldman explained, was intended to bring “more creative thinking, more imaginative, more artistic point of view to the way we think about the waterfront.”

Aspirations and Inspirations united a diverse group of local stake holders, including artists, curators, teachers, librarians, business people; in short, “the whole range of men and women who are active in this community.” Involving creative people at the outset of planning discussions, before moving onto policy debates, can set a new course for all aspects of future development.

PPS’ Fred Kent was there to contribute his expertise and encourage Buffalo to seek “lighter, quicker, cheaper” solutions.

Tony Goldman, Mark’s brother and CEO of Goldman Properties, toured the waterfront site and joined Fred in offering his expertise on ways to recognize the potential of under-performing urban areas and transform them into some of a city’s most frequented and beloved destinations.  The National Trust recognized Tony’s work with the Crownshield Award for his historic preservation efforts.

Some interventions will be put in place as early as this summer

As Buffalo’s Business First reports, ideas for short-term improvements that emerged from these sessions were recently aired by directors of the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation (ECHDC) and plans are already in the works to get them off the ground, and fast.  Here are just a few of the lighter, quicker, cheaper interventions Buffalo is considering:

• open a cafe in the ground floor of the Buffalo and Erie County Naval Museum
• extend the bike path to connect the Central Wharf with the Buffalo River
• create a beach volleyball area along the Outer Harbor
• build a permanent pond hockey venue
• host a series of “drive-in” movies
• light up the grain mills along the river
• transform the Green Belt pathway into a cross country skiing and snowshoeing track

Buffalo’s Mayor, Byron Brown, who sits on the ECHDC board, emphasized the city is looking for quick wins that will build a great destination over the long term. “These are all part of a great process that really engaged the public,” said Brown. “What we have to do is to see which ideas will work the best and which ones we can bring together in the quickest manner to give us a vibrant waterfront.”

We think Buffalo is leading the way in getting away from behind-closed-doors discussion among officials and policy-makers and towards an inclusive, imaginative, and democratic process for creating great places.

We want to hear from you: tell us about the creative, citizen-led campaigns that are transforming your city!

Insights from this study relate to Donald Appleyard‘s findings in his seminal book “Livable Streets.” Recently, Streetsblog explored three studies in Appleyard’s book that measured, for the first time, the effect of traffic on our social interactions and how we perceive our homes and neighborhoods.

A pedestrian-friendly district in Curitiba, Brazil

We can reinvent our towns and cities to be more livable places.  None of this is ‘rocket science”-we have a context of countless traditions and innovations that can create a foundation for a better future.  PPS’ Building Community through Transportation program is helping bring about a transformation that sets transportation solutions within the context of achieving community outcomes and sustainable development. PPS helps agencies and communities come together around solutions that communities want, including more livable and walkable communities.

What do you think of the report’s findings?

The 2010 recipient of the award was Campus Martius Park in Detroit. Images Courtesy of Bob Gregory.

The prize is intended to celebrate and promote vibrant, well-used urban open spaces. The 2010 recipient of the award was Campus Martius Park in Detroit, a 2.5-acre thriving green space created from a desolate downtown parcel. Known as “Detroit’s Official Gathering Place,” Campus Martius Park is a lively central square that has become the heart of the city’s downtown redevelopment initiative. Learn more about the elements of Campus Martius’ success in PPS’ case study.

Because of our familiarity with urban spaces throughout the country, we were asked to encourage people who we know care about public spaces to apply for this award. In addition to the cash prize, the winning project will receive a commemorative statuette and be recognized in an awards ceremony held in conjunction with ULIs Spring Council Forum, as well as showcased in ULIs publications and conferences.

Here are the special qualities the award seeks to recognize:

• Be located in an urbanized area in North America
• Cover at least 10,000 square feet
• Have been open to the public at least one year and no more than 10 years
• Be outdoors and inviting to the public, regardless of ownership
• Be a central, dynamic civic place, providing abundant and varied seating, sun and shade, trees and plantings with attractions and features that offer many different ways for visitors to enjoy the space
• Be used intensively on a daily basis, and act as a magnet for a broad spectrum of users
• Be a lively, central gathering space, serving as a public destination throughout the year
• Have catalyzed private investment and urban regeneration in the surrounding community
• Represent a sound investment of public funds, if public funds are involved
• Be worthy of emulation

We are thrilled that this prize has recognized the above criteria as qualities of public spaces that should be rewarded. It presents a special chance for teams of designers, local governments and community groups to showcase their work and contribute to raising the profile of great public open spaces across the country.

You can learn more about the prize and download the application here.