Colin Huggins and his piano in October. Photo: Sarah Goodyear

Today that same piano player is featured in a New York Times story about how the parks department is cracking down on performers in Washington Square, in the name of providing some peace and quiet for parkgoers:

[T]he city’s parks department has slapped summonses on … performers who put out hats or buckets, for vending in an unauthorized location — specifically, within 50 feet of a monument.

The department’s rule, one of many put in place a year ago, was intended to control commerce in the busiest parks. Under the city’s definition, vending covers not only those peddling photographs and ankle bracelets, but also performers who solicit donations.

Huggins has gotten nine summonses. His fines add up to $2,250.

The musicians are considering a lawsuit over the matter. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Mass protests against the domination of cars were one factor that led to the superb cycling infrastructure of today's Netherlands.

Given the reputation of the Netherlands as a cyclists’ paradise, you might think that its extensive cycling infrastructure came down from heaven itself, or was perhaps created by the wave of a magic wand. Not so. It was the result of a lot of hard work, including massive street protests and very deliberate political decision-making.

The video below offers vital historical perspective on the way the Netherlands ended up turning away from the autocentric development that arose with postwar prosperity, and chose to go down the cycle path. It lists several key factors, including public outrage over the amount of space given to automobiles; huge protests over traffic deaths, especially those of children, which were referred to by protesters as “child murder”; and governmental response to the oil crisis of the 1970s, which prompted efforts to reduce oil dependence without diminishing quality of life.

The Netherlands is often perceived as an exceptional nation in terms of its transportation policies and infrastructure. And yet there is nothing inherently exceptional about the country’s situation. As the narrator says at the end of the film, “The Netherlands’ problems were and are not unique. Their solutions shouldn’t be that either.”

You can read more on the blog A View from the Cycle Path.

And find out more about what we can learn from the Netherlands in these recent PPS posts:

“What Can We Learn about Road Safety from the Dutch?”

“Where the Sidewalk Doesn’t End: What Shared Space Has to Share”

“Exiting the ‘Forgiving Highway’ for the ‘Self-Explaining Road’”

A smooth ride.

Not all POPS are outdoors. Today we came across a very interesting video of skateboarders and roller skaters using indoor space in an East London shopping mall after hours. From Tim Gill’s intriguing blog Rethinking Childhood:

I’d been tipped off about the spectacle by Eleanor Fawcett at OPLC, who regularly walks through the mall in the evenings. She tells me there can be as many as 20 skaters on some nights: male and female, different ages, and a culturally diverse crowd too (reflecting this part of East London).

Apparently the route through the mall is a 24-hour public right of way. The site security seems relaxed about its nocturnal uses. This may be all to the good. It is certainly Eleanor’s view that they make the place feel safer for her, as someone who often has no choice but to come through the mall late at night on her way home.

Skateboarders are often the people who “activate” underused public spaces in downtowns. A lot of the time, they’re seen as a public nuisance and chased away by security and police, so it’s interesting to see this type of use tolerated in a mall. It’s also telling, given the bad rap that teenagers often get, that the woman who reported the use felt that the skateboarders increased her safety, rather than threatening it.

Photo: Sarah Goodyear

Police were keeping people out of the park after clearing it of occupiers, despite a temporary restraining order requiring that the park be reopened to protesters.

One police officer told me the park had sustained structural damage, but aside from one missing railing on the park’s eastern steps, I couldn’t see any.

The police action here, as well as the actions breaking up other Occupy encampments, will no doubt keep the spotlight on the use of public spaces for political expression. Last week, PPS’s Fred Kent talked about the issue of privately owned public spaces like Zuccotti Park on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show. You can listen to that discussion here.

Photo: Sarah Goodyear

PPS’s Fred Kent joined Brian Lehrer and New York World reporter Yolanne Almanzar for the segment, which you can listen to in its entirety below.

The scene at Zuccotti Park back in October. Photo: Sarah Goodyear

Here’s some of what Fred had to say about the Occupy Wall Street presence in Zuccotti: “We need those places to express ourselves without any hesitation…. We’re moving through an era right now of massive change in a wonderful way. And the feelings that they have are manifested all over the world. It’s a great time. What do we get out of it in the end is what we’re trying to figure out.”

Fred suggested that if the park’s occupation is creating a need for more public space in the area, perhaps nearby streets should be closed to create that.

The founding inspiration behind PPS is the work of William “Holly” Whyte, whose 1980 book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces revolutionized the way people saw the parks and plazas around them. Here’s what Whyte wrote about the public’s right to use those spaces — words that have often been quoted since the Zuccotti occupation began:

The public’s right in urban plazas would seem clear. Not only are plazas used as public spaces, in most cases the owner has been specifically, and richly rewarded for providing them. He has not been given the right to allow only those public activities he happens to approve of. He may assume he has, and some owners have been operating on this basis with impunity. But that is because nobody has challenged them. A stiff, clarifying test is in order.

One disturbing finding that has emerged as the result of the reporting done by WNYC and the New York World: it is very difficult to get information about exactly what benefits developers have gotten in return for the public spaces — some of which are not very accessible or pleasant to use. It is as true now as it was more than 30 years ago, when Whyte wrote those words, that “a stiff, clarifying test is in order.”

You can read an in-depth account of what the New York World found in the course of their reporting here. They’re going to keep digging, and we’ll keep you in the loop.

Neighborhood residents had no shortage of suggestions for ways to make this a better place.

PPS knew that engaging the neighborhood in Placemaking would take more than just a workshop. So, with the support of the Kresge Foundation and working with the Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corporation (CDC), we decided to do a fun harvest festival that would demonstrate the neighborhood’s potential. It would also be a way to get more Placemaking ideas from people who would be unlikely to show up a community meeting.

And it worked. On October 29, PPS was thrilled to be part of a very successful harvest festival outside the wonderful neighborhood produce market Peaches & Greens, which is celebrating its third anniversary. Although flanked by vacant lots, Peaches & Greens proved to be the right spot for the festival — and the event showed how this could evolve into an even better place for the neighborhood to come together.

(Check out this great CBS News report about Peaches & Greens’ truck delivery service, which brings produce to the doorsteps of Detroiters who otherwise would have no access to fresh food.)

The rain held off and it turned out to be a great day, filled with games, horse-drawn hay rides, marshmallow roasting, and lots of Placemaking suggestions offered in PPS’s “Placemaking in Detroit” tent.

This is a neighborhood with a lot of basic needs. Many residents are out of work. Many don’t own cars, and the public transit system is utterly inadequate. Safety and security are a major concern — the city can’t even keep up with repairing broken streetlights. A lot of houses are abandoned and occupied by squatters.

The term “food desert” has become well known, but this part of Detroit might also be called a “place desert.” As the city’s population has shrunk, neighborhoods like Central Detroit have lost not just people and homes, but places to come together. Still, a lot of assets remain, including some beautiful housing stock and strong community organizations such as CDC. Importantly, the city has designated this as one of the communities where resources are going to be focused in the future.

The tough conditions faced by local people made the response to the festival even more heartening. People were ready to jump right in and become part of something more meaningful. They provided a lot of practical ideas for activities could be taking place around Peaches & Greens on a more regular basis. One thing we heard from a lot of local residents was that they are eager to see more community-building events in the neighborhood. Lots of people stuck around after the festival was over to help clean up.

One of the day’s high points came when we announced the winner of a bicycle we were able to raffle off. The woman who won it told us that she wasn’t going to keep it herself — she was going to give it to her grandson, who just turned 18, so that he could look for a job.

This is just a pilot for what we hope will be many more events in the neighborhood, along with some “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper” improvements that will make people’s lives better in the short term.

Big thanks to our partners at CDC and Kresge for making it possible.

But Zuccotti Park is just one of dozens of POPS around the city.  Just how public are these places? How accessible and welcoming? How pleasant and well-maintained?

Now The New York World, an online publication just launched by the Columbia School of Journalism, is partnering with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show to do a crowd-sourced map that will look into exactly those questions. Each of the city’s POPS is marked on the map and given a number; citizens are encouraged to visit the places and report back on what they see, noting also what time of day and day of the week they went.

To judge by some early reports, not all of these “public” places are quite as public as they are supposed to be. Here’s what a user named Charles had to say about the Broadway Atrium in Lower Manhattan:

I’ve tried several times to walk through this lobby (to avoid having to detour around it) and have been stopped and instructed to provide ID, which I regard as an inappropriate infringement. I’ve also asked if, in future, I would be permitted to walk through with a bicycle, and have been told No…Do I not have the right to walk through (with or without a bicycle), unimpeded?

And here’s what a user named Julia reported about East Winds, a space on East 80th Street:

Does not appear to be a public space at all. Seems to be simply ingress and egress to the building. I walk by this corner daily (numerous times) for over a decade and had never known it was public at all…There is no seating and no reason to believe it is public.

Other spaces got better marks. Dianne wrote this about the plaza outside the Claridge House apartments on the Upper East Side:

This is a really nice little space that is used and enjoyed by a diverse group of locals — nannies with baby carriages, young people gathering after school, people eating lunch, dogs and their humans. It is kept clean and the Claridge doormen keep an eye on things.

The project runs through November 9. If you’re in New York, get out there, investigate and contribute. It’s easy.

And it’s important, too. If we’ve learned anything from the last few weeks in Zuccotti Park, it’s the power of a truly public POPS.

Cynthia Nikitin surveys the dismal state of a Canadian parking lot.

The video below, from Canada’s Edmonton Journal, catches PPS’s Cynthia Nikitin in action, doing a tough critique of an Edmonton strip mall. Don’t miss the part where she asks a somewhat bemused pizza shop owner if he would consider creating an outdoor seating area to replace the benches near his storefront — because, as she so correctly points out, “It’s just hard to eat pizza on your lap.”

More coverage of Cynthia’s Edmonton visit here.

Nathaniel M. Hood writes about how at one Minnesota school, out of 620 students, not a single one walks to school. That includes kids who live just a block away.

This shouldn't be a rare sight. Photo: D Sharon Pruitt via Flickr.

Here’s how Hood breaks down the problem:

This sounds startling, but if you look at the map you quickly understand that it’s reasonable for parents to not let their kids walk to school; the building is set back a great distance from the intersection of a busy collector road and a county highway and the nearby neighborhoods lack safe sidewalks. And while the intersection connecting Bailey to its nearby neighborhoods has a crosswalk, it has no stop lights despite four lanes of 55 mph traffic [Walk Score: 17].

Even if more sidewalks and safer crossings were added to the equation, we would still be ignoring the predicament of distance.  We’ve arranged our neighborhoods in a way that they are very far away from everyday places. This costs us a great deal of time and money: parents need to drive their children to school before they head off to work (time) and use up gas in the process (money).

If Bailey added all the recommended changes, it would still be an impossible two- to five-mile hike for the average 10-year-old. This systemic problem is obvious, yet we’re painfully clueless.

It’s widely accepted that many schools built in the last 20 years were deliberately designed to discourage walking. What’s puzzling to me is that more people weren’t concerned about this.

He goes on to say this:

We don’t want to walk because, at a conscious or unconscious level, we realize that the stuff we’ve built isn’t worth walking by.

You all know what he’s talking about — the miles and miles of American streets and roads that are not real places that engage human beings, but merely conduits for cars to move ever faster.

Head over and read the post in full. It’s well worth it.

Of course, things don’t have to be like this. Streets can be wonderful public places, and a community’s transportation network can bring people together rather than isolating them.

We explore ways that can happen in our “Streets as Places” training, which is coming up in New York this November 10-11. There’s still time to register.

And stay tuned. We’ll be writing a lot more about these issues in the weeks and months to come.

What makes it so great? Well, among many, many other things, there’s this cat:

A perfect day for a piano in Washington Square Park. Photo: Sarah Goodyear

His name is Colin Huggins, a.k.a. the Crazy Piano Guy. He’s not crazy, unless you think playing a piano in a New York park is crazy, which it isn’t. He’s a classically trained pianist who hauls his baby grand around the city “making people obnoxiously happy,” according to his Kickstarter page, where earlier this year he successfully raised the cash to buy a new set of keys. And one of his regular venues is Washington Square.

Today being a beautiful, sunny fall Friday, the park was packed when I went there to eat my lunch. Colin played a few numbers to an appreciative crowd before taking a break. While he was tuning a couple of errant strings, a middle-aged guy with bright blue hair came up to him and said, “So, you got the baby grand, hunh? Now you’ve hit the big time.” Colin just smiled.

Yeah, Washington Square Park. It’s the big time, all right.

American streets don't have to look like this. Photo: waltarrrr via Flickr.

What about starting in the city that has come over time to symbolize the worst excesses of American car culture? What about starting in Los Angeles?

Well, today the Department of Health of the County of Los Angeles released a “Model Design Manual for Living Streets,” a resource for cities that want to make their streets into places where people can lead healthy, active lives:

This manual focuses on all users and all modes, seeking to achieve balanced street design that accommodates cars while ensuring that pedestrians, cyclists and transit users can travel safely and comfortably. This manual also incorporates features to make streets lively, beautiful, economically vibrant as well as environmentally sustainable.

We’re pleased to say that two members of the PPS team — Gary Toth, senior director of transportation initiatives, and project manager Pippa Brashear — contributed to the manual, along with a diverse group of people from around the country who care about making our streets more livable.

Problematic streets can be found everywhere in the country, and this manual is by no means just about Los Angeles. It’s is available at no cost to any municipality that wants to use it, and can be adapted to pretty much any situation:

Cities may use this manual in any way that helps them update their current practices, including adopting the entire manual, adopting certain chapters in full or part, modifying or customizing chapters to suit each city’s needs….

Since many municipalities lack the resources to undertake a major revision of their manuals, this model manual offers a template for local jurisdictions to tailor to meet their specific needs. Additionally, to lower the cost-burden to cities, the manual there are recommendations to maximize benefits and minimize costs associated with street design. Vital streets, innovative parking policies, and desirable neighborhoods resulting from living streets can increase revenues for the cities above current levels. Research finds that cities often experience increased economic development after adopting elements of living streets.

Sound good? Start downloading.

Photo: waltarrrr via Flickr.

Charisma usually requires a sense of humor: A Long Beach bike rack. Photo: waltarrrr via Flickr.

And he talks about how Long Beach has added to its own natural assets of good weather and relaxed Southern California attitude by investing in high-quality bicycle infrastructure and encouraging bike-related businesses.

It’s a strategy that, as we told you yesterday, makes it the perfect place for the 2012 Pro Walk/Pro Bike Conference, organized by the National Center for Bicycling and Walking (NCBW).

Watch Gandy’s talk and ask yourself, how could your city add to its charisma?

Photo: waltarrrr via Flickr.

What a difference a lane makes: Downtown Long Beach, before and after. Photo: jericho1ne via Flickr.

Pro Walk/Pro Bike is a biennial event convened by the National Center for Bicycling and Walking (NCBW), which is a resident program of PPS. And next year, it’s going to be held in a Southern California city that has been steadily improving its bike infrastructure — and is seeing that effort pay off in increasing number of cyclists.

Here’s what NCBW’s Mark Plotz, conference director, had to say about the selection of Long Beach: “For 2012, we will bring our conference to Long Beach because great things are already happening in the city, and because the city’s investments in walkable and bicycle friendly streets and neighborhoods will position Long Beach to be economically viable into the future, while continuing to provide a high quality of life for all residents. In other words: we see that Long Beach is headed where many cities need to go; lots of people are eager to learn from its example.”

The news about the Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference has gotten favorable coverage in the local press, including the Long Beach Post-Telegram, which interviewed Charlie Gandy, mobility advisor for the city of Long Beach and chair of Long Beach’s host committee for the conference:

[Gandy] said surveys show the city’s bike-only lanes in Belmont Shore and along Third Street and Broadway have more than doubled bike traffic since they were constructed several months ago.

“In Belmont Shore, we were averaging about 400 cyclists per day” along Second Street, “and that’s jumped to more than 1,000 daily now, and it’s growing,” Gandy said.

The city has also installed about 1,000 bike racks outside businesses and in public spaces, with another 1,000 scheduled to be installed at a rate of 50 per month.

“These efforts are encouraging people to leave their car at home and make those short trips to the coffee shop or to a favorite restaurant on their bike or by walking,” Gandy said. “And it’s also one way we can address the obesity and health epidemic facing our community along with the rest of the nation.”

To find out more about what’s in store at the 2012 conference, check out NCBW’s website here. We’ll be updating you with much more information in the future.

And check out the sweet video below from Vimeo user jericho1ne, showing the opening of a protected lane in the heart of the city. Makes you want to head out there and ride Long Beach yourself, no?

Long Beach Protected Lane Grand Opening from jericho1ne on Vimeo.

Photo: jericho1ne via Flickr.

State Senator S. Scott Dibble says the growth of the bike network has been “transformative” for the city: “To be able to get around on your bike gives you a connection to the place where you live that is very different than moving around in your car. You can see all people on the street, other bicyclists, you can see all the shops, all the houses — all the activity that’s going on, in a much more connected fashion.”

It’s a great example of building community through transportation.

Putnam Block Party from adele pham on Vimeo.

Earlier this year, one resident at a public meeting about the project asked, “What if people don’t want this thing?” Well, we’d say it looks like they do.

So much future potential. Photo: Ed Yourdon via Flickr.

And it wasn’t just Tahrir Square or the boulevards of central Cairo that played a role. It was the streets of residential neighborhoods as well.

Back in July, PPS’s Cynthia Nikitin visited Cairo for the UN’s Designing Safe Cities with Women and Girls stakeholder planning meeting (the trip was part of our partnership with UN-HABITAT). While she was there, she talked with people about how, during the February revolution, they had used the streets outside their homes in a way they had never envisioned before.

“The neighbors were protecting their own streets,” Nikitin says. “They had cellphone sentinels deployed, and if they saw Mubarak’s people coming, they would call and text and hold them off. Middle-class people who had never wielded a weapon before banded together with their neighbors. Women were on daytime duty and men were on the nighttime watch.”

Those actions revolutionized the way people saw these streets. “The street become not just a place to park their car, it become the gateway to their homes in a way that was sacred,” says Nikitin. “People came out in the street to defend their homes and also to participate in this revolution. They also were using the streets in a new way, meeting neighbors. It created a sense of shared space that protected their neighborhoods like a moat.”

Vendors are vital to the Cairo streetscape. Photo: Ed Yourdon via Flickr

It was a sense that no one wanted to give up.

“People were still talking about it in July,” says Nikitin. “It deepened the social cohesion of these neighborhoods. And they’re talking about how to bring that forward, saying, ‘We don’t want to just go back into our little apartments and shut our door, we want to go forward. But we don’t know how to do that.’”

Some architects and planners also recognize the pressing need for a better relationship to public space in Cairo. In an article published over the weekend in the English edition of Al-masry Al-youm, Steven Viney reported on a presentation from a planner called Fady al-Sadek about “The Streets of Cairo and the Battle of Public Space.” From Viney’s excellent report:

Sadek said disrespect for Cairo’s public spaces, and therefore the connectedness of its citizens, has resulted in urban planning disasters, such as the large informal expansions that now accommodate approximately 60 percent of Cairo’s population.

This disrespect has not only meant over-congestion and poor planning. The majority of Cairenes have become alienated from their own city because the common ground no longer belongs to them.

Overcoming this division is one of the biggest challenges facing urban planners: How can Cairo, formal and informal, be progressively brought back together?…

In this vein, public spaces play four vital roles: opening channels of communication among the communities of Cairo; rebuilding the relationship and trust between residents and planning authorities; bridging the gap between the macro and micro urban scales of planning and development; and the establishment of bottom-up rather than top-down developments.…

The example of Al Azhar park was used: an old trash dump transformed into Cairo’s finest green public space. The space now very successfully bridges the gap between the more affluent, modern east side of the park with the western, semi-informal side.…

Al-Azhar Park is one of Cairo's public space success stories. Photo: Andrea Diener via Flickr.

Sadek believes that respect for public space is at the root of what is needed to reinstate a lost nationwide sense of community. It would present the groundwork for what is fundamentally needed to overcome most of Cairo’s urban planning challenges.

Clearly, there is a real appetite in Cairo for a Placemaking approach to planning. It will be interesting to see how things develop there as the political situation continues to evolve.

(Thanks to @beirutpspace for the link to the Al-masry Al-youm story.)

Photos: Street scenes, Ed Yourdon; Al-Azhar Park, Andrea Diener; via Flickr.

The children of Kibera make soccer balls from waste. Photo: Digital Democracy via Flickr.

The other night, at an event convening funders and partners in support of our joint initiative with UN-HABITAT, Michael Connery of UNFCU read aloud a letter from a young man in Kenya, Felix Oduor Otieno. Felix Oduor works with the Kilimanjaro Initiative (KI), which aims to provide “young women and men with opportunities that will enable them to take on a constructive role in their communities, thereby alleviating the need for them to engage in ungainly and detrimental activities that prove disadvantageous both to them and to the community at large and further recognizing their local knowledge and will-power.”

One of KI’s projects has been the rehabilitation of a soccer field in Kibera, a Nairobi slum that is home to nearly a million people. What difference can a soccer field make to such a place? Let Felix Oduor tell you:

Last weekend, as I was sitting outside our house close to the new road that heads to Silanga village, in Kibera slum — Nairobi, Kenya — a big lorry mounted with huge speakers and amplifiers passed-by, followed by numerous smaller vehicles. I quickly learnt that a famous tele-Evangelist was in one of the smaller vehicles. They were headed to Undugu field. I was tempted to tag along but changed my mind. After all, these days every significant event in Kibera is held at Undugu field.

Felix Oduor Otieno.

I flashed back to the days when we used to play on the field. We were little boys playing with our balls made of waste plastic bags. The field was rocky, uneven and unsafe – most of the time it was deserted. I remember one time we invited a team from a neighboring estate for a football match only for them to decline. They insisted that we go play on their estate field, outside Kibera, because according to them the Undugu field was not a playing field — they called it a “rock garden.”

The Undugu field is one of only two community fields in the whole of Kibera. Sometimes, when I take an evening stroll around the field and see young boys and girls go through their practice sessions, I have no doubt that sporting heroes are in the making. I also know and appreciate that those who participate and volunteer at the KI golf outings, to help raise funds for Kilimanjaro Initiative, are our first champions. Despite being busy, with many commitments, you see it as important to be part of this worthy cause. Please know that you maybe thousands of miles away but you are touching many young lives. You are giving them a safe space to explore and nurture their talents. On behalf of those young people and on behalf of all Kiberans, thank you so much for your efforts — you are our true heroes.

The funds you help raise today will go along way in improving the field and advancing Kilimanjaro Initiative’s objectives. For the upgrading of the field, the funds will be used to further develop the playing surface, improve storm water drainage, create a spectator seating area and help us do some landscaping. The field will become even more of a safe focal point and community space, not only enhancing sporting talents among youth but also fostering community interaction, promoting safety and security and peaceful co-existence in Kibera.

May you be abundantly blessed.

Sincerely,

Felix Oduor

That kind of says it all.

Photo of soccer ball: Digital Democracy via Flickr

The Ira Keller Fountain in Portland, Ore.: Jump right in and have a good time. Photo: Ralph Huntington via Flickr.

So, what makes a place great? Well, we look for four very simple but critical qualities: accessibility; comfort and positive image; a range of activities and uses; and sociability.

In other words, it should be an attractive place you can easily get to (and get into). A place where there are a lot of engaging things going on. A place where connecting with other people happens naturally and often. A place that makes you feel good. You know the kind of place we’re talking about.

When last we checked, Roanoke City Market, the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and New York’s High Line park were leading the pack. But not all the choices are big and famous — take the Ira Keller Fountain in Portland, Ore. (which turns out to have a pretty interesting history: Jane Jacobs attended its opening).

Karja Hansen provides a video and says this about the place:

This one-acre downtown Portland fountain from 1970 may not be the most classically beautifully thing ever, but it does evoke the crashing Oregon streams and rivers nearby and is a wonderful place to passively engage with (reading a book) or actively engage with (splashing around). Well designed into the site it is a great little pocket amid the 70′s era bad buildings in downtown PDX. And one of the best things about the Ira Keller Fountain is that is has somehow escaped the extreme liability concerns that have plagues America’s public spaces — everyone is free to walk right up to the edges, swim in the pools and splash around.

Is your city’s best place on the list yet? This is your chance to get it on the map.

If you need ideas, head over to our database of Great Public Spaces.

Tell your friends and get out the vote!

Photo by Ralph Huntington via Flickr.

Next summer, New York will have bike share stations for real.

The city awarded the contract to Alta Bike Share, which is behind some of the largest systems in the world, including London’s, Montréal’s, and Washington’s. “The wheels are officially in motion for New York City’s bike share,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner, at at the kickoff event, which took place in a pedestrian plaza next to the Flatiron Building.

A crowd including former Talking Heads frontman and bike fan David Byrne milled around the temporary bike station set up for the event, admiring the bikes, which bore the logos of other Alta systems, among them Melbourne and Boston. Some lucky folks got test rides.

David Byrne made a stylish appearance at the kickoff event.

In New York, where street space is scarce and often contested, siting the stations is going to be a special challenge, as Alta president Alison Cohen acknowledged in her remarks. So the city — perhaps mindful of past conflicts over bike lanes — is looking to actively engage the community in making decisions about exactly where the stations will go. “We’ll be doing an outreach process for the community to plan the system with us,” said Sadik-Khan.

That process will include meetings with business leaders and community members, as well as a website where people can suggest sites for stations and explain their reasoning. Within a couple of hours of the site going live, there were already dozens of suggestions. And they provide an insight into just what kind of an effect this system might have on the way New Yorkers see their city.

“Make this mini-park a destination…” wrote a user named @dens, when suggesting a small park near Cooper Union in the East Village. Robin Lester Kenton suggested a spot in Fort Greene, Brooklyn: “This great block has lots going for it — vintage shop RePop and delicious brick oven pizza Il Porto. Need a station here to help connect people from Fort Greene and Clinton Hill.”

The way people are talking about what stations could do, even before a single one is built, hints at one of the greatest things about bike share systems: it enables a city’s residents, to gain a new understand the way neighborhoods connect and also what draws people to places to begin with. It can change the way you see a city. For tourists, it can provide a route for exploration of destinations they never would have considered otherwise, along with a sweet feeling of belonging.

From a Placemaking perspective, a bike share station is a powerful attraction, especially if it’s added to a location (like the Fort Greene one mentioned by Robin) that already has some good things going for it. And, as I discovered while riding the system in Washington, D.C., this spring, bike share can bridge the gap between neighborhood hubs much more effortlessly than walking or a subway. You move from one node of activity to another quickly, but never stop being aware of the city around you.

Many more details about the proposed bike share program can be found at the city’s bike share site. They’ve also set up a Facebook page. We can’t wait to see how this develops.

A variety of Canada Day activities brought the crowds out to Mississauga's brand-new Celebration Square this summer. Photo: ammiiirrrr via Flickr

Back in June, we told you about the triumphant opening of Celebration Square, in Mississauga, Ontario. The unveiling of the square was the culmination of years of efforts to create a sense of place and identity in this city of 734,000, which has long been defined by its proximity to Toronto — and its enormous mall.

Back in 2006, the City Council voted to approve PPS’ master plan for using Placemaking to bring new life to the city, “Building Mississauga Around Places:  A Vision for City Centre Park and Open Spaces in the 21st Century.” Now that vision has become a vibrant, exciting reality, and the square has turned into a hub of activity, with concerts, fireworks, movies, art exhibits, and much more bringing thousands of people out to enjoy the space.

But that’s not all. Now, as we learned from a posting on our Facebook page, some City Council members are considering the benefits of permanently closing City Centre Drive, which runs through Celebration Square, to motor vehicle traffic.

From an article in the Toronto Star:

After the city opened its downtown Celebration Square in June, pedestrians previously hemmed in by a blur of cars on Hurontario St. and Burnhamthorpe Rd. suddenly had a space to themselves.

During the square’s construction, City Centre Dr., the street that ran through its centre, was closed to traffic for almost two years.

What happened next was unexpected.

“Having the road closed really made it a vibrant square and it was great to see,” said Councillor Frank Dale. “Having seen how well it worked by having the road closed, one would say why don’t we close it forever.”…

“I feel very strongly that (City Centre Dr.) should remain closed,” Councillor Pat Mullin said at last Wednesday’s council meeting.

“(Opening it) goes against everything we’re trying to do in the downtown core and that’s to make it pedestrian friendly. I don’t know of a square anywhere that has been successful with a road going up the centre.”

Councilors remain concerned about the possibility of traffic congestion in the area, but according to the Star, the closure will be extended until October. Monitoring of traffic levels will continue through the winter, and there is a chance  that the square could be made permanently car-free.

The positive response to a car-free Celebration Square is validation of the vision Mississauga citizens started developing with PPS — at the initiative of our longtime friend and collaborator Gil Peñalosa — years ago. And it shows that despite the city’s autocentric reputation, big change can happen. We’ll keep an eye on developments.

Photo: ammiiirrrr via Flickr