Larry Lund

A great public market doesn’t usually just happen–there are a lot of smart, dedicated people behind the scenes who work to make sure that markets are set up to serve their surrounding area. Like any public space, markets work best when they reflect the people who live nearby. They are places for buying and selling food, yes, but they’re also places for meeting and learning about neighbors, accessing services, and becoming part of the daily life of a community.

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Larry Lund, a long-time Placemaker and head of the Chicago-based Real Estate Planning Group (REPG). Larry is an expert on markets, particularly in regard to how they scale up and down to fit the communities in which they are based. If you’d like to meet Larry and learn more about this subject, there is still time to register for the 8th International Public Markets Conference, which will take place in Cleveland, Ohio, just two weeks from now, from September 21-23rd, 2012.

How did your interest in markets begin? How does it relate to what you do now, with real estate planning?

I got involved with markets back in the mid 1980s, when Fred Kent pulled together a group to discuss how we could use Public Markets  to rejuvenate town centers. Our emphasis was on looking at markets as a model for rebuilding activity in the downtown area. Since then, the Public Market movement has evolved from a focus on Placemaking to include a better delivery system for fresh food Now, PPS is talking about how markets can be more than just a center for food—they can deliver other goods and services to communities, as well.

I started the Real Estate Planning Group in 1990, so I had already been working on markets before that, but most of my market projects  have been with PPS. I have now worked on more than 50 Public Markets throughout the country. My primary role working with PPS is to do the economic and market analysis. Even though markets have been around for hundreds of years, the nature has changed and we have had to find new methods to estimate potential using sophisticated tools like gravity models and survey techniques to estimate market shares. It’s very important to try to get the scale right for the market setting and to have some rational basis for estimating sales potential and tenant mix. There is lots of  talk  about sustainability from an environmental standpoint, but we also try to bring the concept of  sustainability from an economic standpoint: is there enough money here so that vendors can be successful and the market can operate in a sustainable fashion. Markets need to meet customer expectations, vendor needs, and operate in a sustainable fashion for whatever entity develops the market.

How important are the characteristics of the surrounding place? Can markets drive development, or are there components that need to be in place already?

There are some characteristics that you absolutely need for a market to work well, like visibility and accessibility. Historically, markets were always in or near the center of trade routes, and there’s an intrinsic need for that even today. If there’s a strong sense of place already, before a market locates somewhere, that obviously helps. However, in some cases, putting in a market can help develop a place if the market is large enough and visible enough. We’ve seen, in the US, how a market hall strengthens the center of towns and can complement other uses such as retail, office, and residential.

A bustling street market in Markets Conference host city Cleveland / Photo: PPS

What’s always a challenge is trying to get the scale right, and that’s something I’m going to be talking a lot about at the Markets Conference in Cleveland later this month. There’s an equation here in terms of sustainability, making sure there are enough people and enough vendors to support your market. Markets have a great appeal in just a visceral sense, but not all of them turn out to be successful. You still need a good location for them, and you need enough people who have access to the area. The larger the market, generally speaking, the larger the draw. There has to be a relationship with the population around the market; it’s important to understand who your customers are: their interest in fresh foods, their sensitivity to prices, and what the competition looks like.

What a lot of people don’t recognize is that there’s also a big difference between farmers’ markets and year-round public markets. The economics around both of them are radically different. It’s important to understand that, if you have a successful farmers’ market, changing that to what I call a public market building is a big leap for everyone, and a lot of analysis has to be done before making that decision because the nature of the market changes.

One of the attractions of farmers’ markets, besides outstanding food products, is the ephemeral nature of it. These markets are one or two days a week, and they’re seasonal; the ‘event quality’ is a very strong attraction for people. That changes when you start institutionalizing it into a market building, where the economics require you to start running the market six or seven days a week. For farmers to turn themselves into permanent vendors changes their business model, too. I often say that my role is to make sure that the visioning process doesn’t turn into a hallucination, and that there’s economic support in changing the business structure.

Can you explain more about scaling markets to their context? How are markets different in big cities versus more rural communities? How are they similar?

Most of my work is related to repositioning existing enclosed markets and responding to  the desire of successful farmers’ market wanting to become a  year-round event. In either case it is usually  more challenging in rural areas than it is in urbanized areas, and I have to say it’s even a challenge in urbanized areas in being able to find vendors today who can handle that year-round schedule. It’s difficult to find butchers and fishmongers, for instance. It’s even especially difficult to find  produce vendors—the main driver in most markets—who can operate full-time. When you want to run something on an annualized basis the seasonality draw begins to disappear.

That’s not to say  markets cannot run year-round and sell in the winter time, but it’s difficult if you don’t have a wide variety of food. Today there’s a whole issue of commitment to the local food movement and what that means for the customer. That’s something that has to be considered if you’re aiming to create a local-food market versus allowing food to be imported to your area and offering a full scope of services. I always caution that market managers have to understand their goal in building a public market building. I think a lot of people don’t give that enough consideration. Different kinds of markets meet different objectives.

What I’m seeing now is a series of market buildings people are developing that only have maybe three or four tenants. They’re not farmers, but you’ll find a bakery and a charcuterie and a coffee place, and they develop into third places. People are looking at these places as community-builders. You can see this happening in Seattle, for example, outside of the Pike Place Market. There are a series of buildings that have sprung up around the market that are more about creating an enjoyable place for public gathering than delivery of fresh local food—they’re great third places built around the food movement.

These storefront buildings have developed into a food cluster that offers something for each part of the day. In the morning, that the bakery serves coffee; the charcuterie starts serving sandwiches at lunch; in the evening, you may have a wine bar that’s part of this cluster. There are things to activate the space throughout the day, which makes it a nice neighborhood attraction for people to come to.

A mix of uses ensures that the area around the Pike Place market is always bustling / Photo: PPS

For our last question, how do you expect the upcoming markets conference in Cleveland to shed light on these issues?

In one of the sessions, we’re going to be talking about the scalability of markets extensively and getting people to focus on what the sponsor’s objectives are. We’ll show examples of different kinds of markets & what people have been doing around the country to meet various needs and community goals. We’ll help people identify and think through that process to make sure they have a project that’s successful.

Markets have to adjust themselves as they see who their customers are, and this is part of the discussion we’ll be having: how markets evolve even after they open. An exciting thing about markets is that they allow for change, and they adjust to their customers. The whole thing is about getting the scale and mission right. It’s always easier if you can do that up front, but frankly all retail has to go through that transition and evolution of understanding their customers and vice versa. The needs and demands of consumers are always changing. Our goal is to help people meet their objectives and be economically sustainable in delivering all the good things that  markets can deliver to their communities.

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Celebrating 25 years since its first gathering, the 8th International Public Markets Conference will set a new direction for the vital role markets play in transforming local economies and communities. Click here to register today!

The Perth Cultural Centre is seen here in full bloom during CHOGM 2011 / Photo: Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority

As much as we prize creativity in cities today, the cultural centers that we’ve built to celebrate it rarely hit the mark. Culture is born out of human interaction; it therefore cannot exist without people around to enjoy, evaluate, remix, and participate in it. So why do our cultural centers so often turn inward, away from the street, onto an internal space that is only nominally for gathering, and is mainly used for passing through? Why do these cultural centers physically remove culture from the public realm and plop it on a curated, often “visionary” pedestal instead of providing a venue for promoting more interaction among the people who create it? “Big Cultural Centers–think of Lincoln Center in Manhattan–they need to turn themselves inside-out and become about culture for all instead of culture for a few,” says PPS President Fred Kent. “Elitism is a big part of what’s going on in some of these places. They exude a subtle sense of who ‘should’ and ‘should not’ be there.’”

Perth’s Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority had a different vision. Their vision was to connect the 23 institutions within the Perth Cultural Centre (PCC) to each other by improving the public spaces that surrounded and connected them, and to extend the precinct past its formal edges, with cultural activity reaching out into the surrounding area like an octopus.  The PCC  is a cluster of institutions located at the hinge point between the city’s central business district and one of its burgeoning nightlife districts, Northbridge. The centre features a mix of historic buildings from the 1800s and Brutalist structures built in the 1960s and 70s, and includes art museums, theaters, a history museum, a major library, and a compact college campus.

The MRA got involved in 2008 by buying and renovating a number of storefronts along William Street, a major shopping corridor on the edge of the PCC precinct, and then carefully managing the selection of tenants. When PPS’s Kathy Madden, Alessandra Galletti, and Josh Kent were brought in back in 2009, the MRA’s understanding of the importance of careful management and cohesive vision proved to be key to developing a Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper (LQC) plan that’s completely changed the public’s perception of the space in a very short period of time. “Compare something like Lincoln Center with the center of culture and diversity they have created in Perth,” says Fred, and you’ll find that the latter is “all about engagement, people, social interaction, a hundred different things to do–maybe nobody wins a design award for it, but that diversification of uses is a really big deal for the people who use that Place, and for their local culture.”

“One of the big things for us was to take the focus off the buildings and put it on the things that happen in the spaces between them,” MRA Executive Director of Place Management Veronica Jeffery explains. “That’s why what we call the ‘quick wins’ strategy was so important: it basically went from planning straight to implementation, and was really powerful. It didn’t leave time for contemplation, which meant that people could see their ideas transform into action.”

Volunteers work on the PCC's amazing "urban orchard" built atop a parking deck / Photo: CPSU/CSA via Flickr

The LQC plan included a working orchard on top of a parking deck, a wetland and play space focused on nature-based discovery, a large screen for projecting movies and digital art, seating, food vendors, etc. Major events like the Perth International Arts Festival and Fringe World Festival relocated to the center’s grounds, which also had the honor of hosting CHOGM 2011.

The culture of risk-taking and experimentation encouraged by the LQC plan has allowed for the MRA team to try some things that failed, learn from them, and move on. This has been greatly aided by the fact that, as part of the Placemaking process, the many once-isolated institutions located within the PCC have come to see their participation in the way that the site is managed as an opportunity to collaborate and enhance their own missions and events. As Alec Coles, Chief Executive Officer of the Western Australian Museum, explains it:

“The recent redevelopment of the Perth Cultural Centre as a ‘people space’ has helped us create the permeability around the Museum that we have long desired. The softening of the edges, not least with the popular sound garden, is making our historic ‘edifice’ a much more welcoming proposition…Too often, cultural centres become cultural ghettos; we are determined that by working with MRA and our many partners that this will not be the case in Perth.”

The good news, today, is that shifting attitudes are chipping away at the austere walls of yesterday’s “culture ghettos,” with people demanding more inspiring, interactive gathering places. Creativity is becoming one of the most coveted social assets for post-industrial cities with increasingly knowledge-based economies–and this is good news for culture vultures and average Joes, alike. “This idea of the ‘Creative Class,’” says PPS’s Cynthia Nikitin, an expert on cultural centers, “is about culturally-based industries, and creatively-engaged people. They could be making clothing, they could be in web or media design. The public’s definition of creativity is really changing to be about celebrating the creativity in all of us, and creating a public environment that supports and encourages that.”

According to Richard Florida, author of Rise of the Creative Class, pressure is mounting on traditional Cultural Centers–what he calls SOBs for ‘symphony, opera and ballet’–forcing more and more of them to adapt to meet the needs of an ever-broadening audience that is looking for ways to engage creatively with each other, and actually participate in culture instead of merely consuming it. “The real challenge for the ‘Big C’ centers,” he explains, “is how to reposition for this shift…these institutions are in trouble. Many teeter on the verge of bankruptcy.  They have to get with it, like universities and all the old school organizations. They have to become more fluid, more open, more accepting.  Less imposing. Think of it sort of like the difference between haute cuisine and great food trucks.”

The MRA's focus on becoming a place for people has created a destination where people can connect and learn from each other / Photo: Fred Kent

Put another way, great, engaging centers of culture are the product of great Placemaking. In Perth, various activities and institutions had co-located, but they hadn’t come out of their respective buildings to interact and make use of their shared space. The Placemaking process allowed the various stakeholders to come together and develop a collaborative vision for their shared site. “We think it’s important to debunk the myth around Culture with a Capital C and make the place inclusive and welcoming to different kinds of people,” Jeffery explains.

That inclusiveness–of organizations, of individuals, of businesses–is the lynchpin in the process of creating great places. Florida notes that Gallup & Knight’s Soul of the Community survey found that the quality of a place’s social offerings was the #1 factor that people said creates emotional attachment to their community. Openness to all sorts of people was #2. “I say the two go together,” he argues. “Our public spaces are perhaps the last vestige of democratic space in our cities.”

Today, we need those kinds of comfortable social environments more than ever. Encouraging creative exploration and experimentation is a great way to develop local talent. As studies (popularized by the writing of Ken Robinson) have shown, while the vast majority of children will answer enthusiastically in the affirmative when asked if they are creative, by the time most people reach high school just as great a majority will say that they are not. For our cities to thrive, we must develop participatory public spaces to re-spark latent creative spirits.

The PCC's openness and flexibility make the precinct ideal for everything from meeting a friend for coffee to meeting a few thousand friends for a concert. / Photo: Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority

“When a cultural institution does programming out in public space,” says Nina Simon, an expert who consulted at museums around the world before taking the helm of the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz last year, “there’s a really powerful shift in the context.” Still, she cautions, it’s important that institutions remember that the shift is as important for them as it is for neighbors who attend an event or activity. “If you’re going to be out in public space, you have to have the attitude that this is about connecting to the community that you’re in, rather than just trying to figure out how to plug what you do inside the museum in somewhere else. When TV was invented, people didn’t just say ‘let’s put radio on the television.’ They had to re-think the way programming that was made in order to be successful.”

Over the years, PPS has seen how pulling cultural programming out into streets and squares has transformed not just those public spaces, but the cultural institutions that participated in their renewal as well: from Wade Oval in Cleveland, to Tucson’s Congress Street, to the Bronx River Arts Center in New York. And, of course, there’s the Perth Cultural Centre, where the MRA’s pioneering approach to transforming its precinct lights a new way forward for the formal, inward-focused capital-C Cultural Centers of yore.

“It’s been a challenging process, but the results have exceeded all of our expectations,” Jeffery says. “Ultimately, the centre is a public space, and we want everybody to feel comfortable here. They should be able to come in and feel like it’s theirs. If they happen to have a cultural experience in the process, that’s even better!”

The Pearl Brewrey's Farmers' Market has helped to make the site a food destination / Photo: John W. Schulze via Flickr

Food – we need it, we love it, and we structure our lives and cultures around it. San Antonio, Texas, is a city that is starting to structure its neighborhoods around it, starting with an ambitious redevelopment project called the Pearl Brewery. Located on 22 acres along the banks of the San Antonio River north of downtown, today’s Pearl is a multi-use campus of buildings originally founded as the J. B. Behloradsky Brewery and City Brewery over 120 years ago. The current vision for the site is for a vibrant urban district to grow out from a culinary destination that brings people together around the celebration of local food and culture.

Since PPS first got involved with the master planning process for Pearl in 2005, we’ve watched this place change the way that San Antonians think of food and its role in their city. Senior Vice President Phil Myrick, who is working now on the next phase of expansion, describes Pearl as “the vision and bold scheme of a local entrepreneur of hot sauce and salsa.” This entrepreneur and visionary developer is Kit Goldsbury, who purchased the fallow Pearl campus in 2001 through his investment firm Silver Ventures. Developments currently underway at Pearl include a plaza and hotel and the addition of retail, restaurants, and residential units that now number over 200.

The main brewery building's landmark tower watches over the site / Photo: RedTail_Panther via Flickr

A key development milestone was Kit’s courtship of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) which led to the establishment of  a third campus at Pearl in 2010 (their other two residences are in Hyde Park, New York and Napa Valley, California). Says PPS’s Meg Walker: “CIA was an early anchor for Pearl, which was housed in a smaller building before moving to its current and larger home. The Farmers Market at the site also got going early on, along with food festivals in the parking lot.” The weekly market in particular was a Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper way of weaving local, fresh, and seasonal foods into daily life of the site’s neighbors. Together, the CIA and Farmers Market have been key in re-framing Pearl as a major destination at the intersection of community life and healthy, local food.

Future plans for Pearl reflect a well-curated mix of creative uses in support of food endeavors of all types. The presence of the CIA will act as a major stimulus for other food and cooking events on the campus, tapping into the power of triangulation to enhance the vibrancy of the place. Ideas for the public plaza, for instance, include edible gardens and a chef’s table, while the Black Box aspires to be a pop-up space for young entrepreneurial restaurateurs.

Latin American food  is a common thread throughout these ventures, as are creativity and comfort. “This stems from an articulated vision and desire to give back to the San Antonio community in a nurturing way through food,” Meg explains. Part of the nurture is designing a space that provides comfort to its users in the most practical of ways. Elizabeth Fauerso, chief marketing officer at Pearl, says, “The need for shade and water provisions to make the campus feel welcoming and usable in a hot climate was one of the key considerations in designing the landscape.”

Plenty of shade makes Pearl enjoyable even in San Antonio's hot summer months / Photo: The Brit_2 via Flickr

Pearl also hosts a variety of activities and programs, including cultural events (films, parties, conferences, and live performances) and engaging services and retail like the independent Twig Book Shop and Bike World bike rentals. Well-connected by an expanded Riverwalk and a bike share station , Pearl uses the Power of 10 to create a magnetic destination for the surrounding community. “Pearl is helping set an exciting drumbeat for San Antonio,” says Phil. “In several of the local workshops that PPS has conducted recently in the city, when asked to map San Antonio’s best places, participants have mentioned Pearl despite it being brand new to the scene. There is a feeling of serendipity that people associate with it.”

The momentum behind Pearl’s transformation is remarkable, but at the same time planning remains responsive and flexible. Meg emphasizes, “Pearl is not springing full-grown out of the developer’s head. While some developers want everything at once, build-out at Pearl has been evolving incrementally over the past six years, gradually bringing restaurants in and creating places people want to visit as a destination. And it’s working. People love it.”

In the larger context of the city, Pearl is the leading edge of River North’s rebirth as a vibrant arts district that promotes an urban lifestyle and creative living opportunities. In fact, the combination of dense urban housing and the infrastructure to embolden its growth is a key tenet of the plan for a vibrant central city. In February 2012, HR&A published a report, Center City Strategic Framework Plan, Implementation, commissioned by Centro Partnership of San Antonio and the City that illustrates how Pearl helps fulfill the city’s goal to encourage more people to live downtown. “Residential growth is the key to unlocking the benefits sought by the city,” the report explains, “including downtown amenities, redevelopment of existing building stock, and the presence of more vibrant neighborhood life on the street and in the public realm.” Anchored by the amenities and vibrancy of Pearl’s food and cultural attractions, the River North district  is enjoying a population boom that would have been unimaginable just five years ago when it was mostly vacant industrial land by the highway.

Going back to Kit’s original vision, Elizabeth says, “Pearl is his love letter to San Antonio.” In helping create the heart and soul of the neighborhood, Pearl’s potential as a public multi-use destination is kickstarting the economic development of a more livable, nourishing downtown.

The breathtaking central hall of Cleveland's West Side Market, a major hub in the host city for this year's International Public Markets Conference (Sept. 21-23) / Photo: PBS NewsHour via Flickr

Picture yourself at the supermarket, awash in fluorescent light. You’re trying to stock up for the next couple of weeks, since it’s a busy time of year. You grab some granola bars (and maybe even a box of pop tarts), some frozen dinners, a box of macaroni with one of those little packets of powdered cheese stuff. And oh, they’re running one of those promotions where you can get ten cans of soup for, like, a dollar each. Perfect! Dinner for the next two weeks. On the way to the register, you swing by the produce aisle to grab a bunch of bananas. Like many people these days, you’re trying to eat healthy, and breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

Now imagine that your neighborhood had a public market–the kind of place that’s easy to pop by on the way home from work to grab fresh food every couple of days. Before you reach the open-air shed, you’re surrounded by produce of every shape and color; you can smell oranges and basil from half a block away. As you follow your appetite through the maze of bins and barrels, you bump into your neighbors, and make plans to head downtown to the central market over the weekend to take a cooking class and pick up some less common ingredients. You may even make a day of it and check out the new weekly craft fair that takes place the next block over.

A boy and his mother examine produce at a farmers market in East New York / Photo: PPS

The contrast is stark. In most places today, at least in many Western countries, shopping is a chore; our food system has stopped being about food, and has become entirely about convenience. Food spoils, meaning that we used to have to shop at markets every few days; freezers and preservatives have freed us from those constraints, but in the process food has become disconnected from the natural cycle of daily life–and, thus, the communities of people that we shared our markets with. “There’s a lot of talk about food deserts today, but what many neighborhoods really have are place deserts,” says PPS’s Steve Davies. “As a result, we’re seeing a movement back to this idea of the Market City, with markets acting as catalysts for creating centers in neighborhoods that have lost their sense of place.”

Market Cities (and Market Towns) are places with strong networks for the distribution of healthy, locally-produced food. They have large central markets that act as hubs for the region and function as great multi-use destinations, with many activities clustering nearby; moving out into the neighborhoods, these cities contain many smaller (but still substantial) neighborhood markets that sell all the necessities for daily cooking needs; in between, you’ll find small corner grocers, weekly farmers markets, produce carts, and other small-scale distribution points. Market Cities are, in essence, places where food is one of the fundamental building blocks of urban life–not just fuel that you use to get through the day.

Today, Barcelona is often held up as one of the truest examples of a Market City system in action. “They have an incredibly thriving network of around 45 permanent public markets,” notes PPS’s Kelly Verel, “because when they planned out the city in the late 19th century, they considered markets the same way that you consider all utilities–like, where does the water go, the power, the garbage, etc.”

A map showing the locations of public markets around Barcelona, and the areas they serve.

Barcelona’s markets, many of which now incorporate modern grocery stores, prove that contemporary urban food systems do not necessarily need to use the big box supermarket as their base unit, and that markets are more than just nice extras or luxuries. In fact, with people growing increasingly suspicious of modern agricultural practices, the idea that the paradigm could flip is looking less and less far-fetched. “Markets are viable,” argues PPS’s David O’Neil. “They’ve always been viable, but their viability is especially apt today because the global economy has skewered our sense of being able to support ourselves. Markets are very reassuring places, because they give you a sense of responsibility for your own health. People are experimenting, and reinventing what it means to have a good life.”

According to O’Neil, there is Market City ‘DNA’ still hidden around most cities. Our cities grew up around markets and, while many of the old buildings have been dismantled, inexpensive and lightweight farmers markets have been making a comeback. By 1946, there were just 499 markets left in the US; that number rose to 2,863 by 2000, and then shot up to 7,175 by 2011. Many of the great public markets we know today started out as nothing more than roadside exchanges, so there is reason to believe that some of these new markets could very well put down more permanent roots if they become reintegrated into the life of their surrounding neighborhoods.

Up in Nova Scotia, where Davies and O’Neil have been working with the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market, Operations Manager Ewen Wallace notes the importance of his market (which does have its own permanent building) in the local community. “Throughout my involvement in this project and spending so much time face-to-face with the community at large” he says, “the thing that’s really hit home is that the people of Halifax really do consider this their market.”

Shoppers peruse the booths at the Halifax Seaport Farmers Market / Photo: Nicole Bratt via Flickr

And while the market is truly a stalwart (they’ve never missed a Saturday in 262 years!), the role that it plays in the regional economy contributes greatly to the sense of community ownership, since most residents of Atlantic Canada are just a generation away from a farmer or fisherman. “At the end of World War II,” Wallace explains, “we had around 35,000 independent farms in Nova Scotia. Now we have around 3,800. This market is intended to serve as a hub from which money in the urban core is being channeled back into rural areas around the province. This is all tied to food security.”

In Portland, Oregon, Director Trudy Toliver’s Portland Farmers Market benefits greatly from  a strong local food culture. “In Portland, for the most part, we really care a lot about food,” Toliver says. “It’s just important to us; the population has strong values about eating healthy food. We also don’t have many commodity farmers in Oregon–we grow food here. In a way, we’ve hit on the perfect storm.”

When food and agriculture play an important role in local culture, a market becomes an easier sell. But with many cities disconnected from the greater food systems that serve them, ancillary uses become important for longevity. This bodes well for places; as Davies explains: “Great markets are created through the clustering of activity. They require the intentional aggregation of local food production, but also of other services and functions. The food is the central reason for why people gather, and that gathering creates a hub for community life.”

Since markets are centered on the sale of nutrient-rich, natural foods, one smart way to add value to these locations is to focus on creating “healthy food hubs,” which cluster health-related activities around markets to encourage visitors not just to eat more fruits and vegetables, but to take a more proactive approach to their own well-being. Some markets include things like health clinics, fitness classes, nutrition information, or classes that teach healthy living principles. Healthy food hubs are especially useful in low-income areas where the need is more acute because of the high cost of regular preventative medical care.

Markets can also serve to amplify cherished aspects of local culture. Says Verel, “The idea of a marketplace is pretty open to what the talents and interests are in a given region. Food will always be the core, but how you build off of that depends on local needs. What if one of Detroit’s markets was for classic cars? Every Saturday you could set up the food stands in a parking lot, and line classic cars for sale up along the edges. If you’re open to it, a market can be anything.”

Relaxing with a view of the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene / Photo: Eli Duke via Flickr

For a success story of a market not only building off of, but strengthening local identity, Verel taps the Brooklyn Flea, which has served as a major driver behind Brooklyn’s well-documented boom in artisanal food and craft goods. “The Flea gave all of these people who had ideas for a product a market, when they couldn’t have gotten it into a store because they were too small. There are so many permanent businesses here that started out of the Flea, and together they give Brooklyn this interesting character.”

This hits on one of the major strengths of the Market City in today’s economy, especially in down-at-heel cities where the things that they used to be famous for making are no longer made. Along with industry, many cities have lost their sense of identity. Markets offer a Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper way to start rebuilding some of that identity and economic activity (as some of our recent work in Detroit has shown). Food is something that every city and town has the resources to produce locally–if a place as densely-built as New York can become an urban agriculture leader, any city can.

In Halifax, Wallace can rattle off a long list of activities that the Seaport Farmers Market has added to its programming, from a library book-drop to serve far-flung farmers, to student art exhibits, to community org booths. These efforts are all aimed at turning the market into a “modern agora,” in his words. Most exciting are the partnerships with businesses in the surrounding area that highlight the market’s vendors, hinting at the potential for markets to serve as economic anchors.

“In the community,” he explains, ” our landlord has put together a committee to get neighbors involved to promote the area as a district. In August of 2011, the market partnered with the Westin Hotel across the street, and they built the concept for their restaurant around the idea of a 100-mile diet–now they’ve got it down to a 50-mile diet. They are sourcing as many ingredients from the market as possible. They’re listing all of the producers from around Nova Scotia on their menus.”

Seattle's Pike Place Market is the hub of a model market district / Photo: PPS

In a Market City, the most vibrant places are these types of market districts: places where market activity spills out into the surrounding streets and businesses. Using the Power of 10 framework, we can identify market districts as neighborhoods with at least ten market-related activities all within close proximity to each other. Zooming out, a great Market City or Market Town needs at least ten market districts, where local activity spreads out from the neighborhood marketplace.

If you want to see a Market City in action, you may want to consider attending the 8th International Public Markets Conference in Cleveland this September. Chosen as the host city because of the role that food is playing in its remarkable turnaround, Cleveland illustrates many of the aspects of a Market City, according to O’Neil.

The West Side Market tower, seen from the nearby Ohio City Farm / Photo: PPS

“From agricultural production areas, to smaller markets, to bigger markets, you can really see things changing in Cleveland,” he says. “For a long time, Cleveland was a Market Town, and now institutions like the West Side Market are leading its post-industrial revival. The WSM isn’t a suburban market, but it’s not right downtown–it was always a neighborhood market. It’s a good lab for seeing the power that a market can have on its town or district. The Ohio City district has become an attractive place to open up a business because of the market. The effect is becoming so positive that it’s affecting the larger city of Cleveland, itself. The market is becoming a sun, and the city is leaning toward it for oxygen, light, and life.”

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Don’t forget — early bird registration for the 8th International Markets Conference ends on July 31st. Act now to lock in the lowest rates!

The St. Kilda Adventure Playground just outside of Melbourne, Australia / Photo: Fernando de Sousa via Flickr

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I don’t think I ever once used a “play structure.” I can still vividly remember the playground at my elementary school, with its castles, pirate ships, Amazonian treehouse cities, secret lairs, and rivers of lava. My friends and I never thought of the wooden pavilion, the monkey-bars, or the giant tire off in the corner of the lot as what they actually were. The term “play structure” did not apply–there was nothing structural about the way that we used that place.

Today, of course, that same corner of the school yard is occupied by a brightly-colored construction that is very safely bolted to a rubber pad. Gone are the wood chips (which served as gold doubloons, secret keys, magic gems…), the giant tire, and anything remotely resembling a treehouse. There is a slide, and big plastic blocks with Xs and Os on opposing sides, where children can enjoy hours and hours of unstructured tic-tac-toe. If such a thing exists.

This is an all-too-common story, and one that you probably know well. Over the past few years, we have siloed different types of play within playgrounds, just as we have siloed different types of uses in cities. Pieces of play equipment that might be transformed into fantastical alternate worlds when jumbled together are isolated (a slide here, a tire swing there), underlining that each piece is meant to be used in one specific way. But research and support have been mounting for years to back up what many of us feel on a gut level: these sanitized playscapes are junk.

There has been a recent burst of interest in adventure playgrounds, which “depend on ‘loose parts,’ such as water, sand, balls, and other manipulable materials.” Thoughtful articles from The Guardian‘s Justin McGuirk, Kill Screen‘s Yannick LeJacq, and Cabinet magazine’s James Trainor have each explored the history of this movement within the past couple of months, revisiting everything from Aldo van Eyck’s work in Amsterdam following WWII, to the unique cast of characters (Richard Dattner, M. Paul Friedberg, Lady Allen of Hurtwood, et al) behind the surge of interest in London and New York in the 1960s. To see so much solid new writing on this subject should be encouraging to anyone who hopes to see kids playing amidst wood chips again. Unstructured play is having a moment, and moments are meant to be seized.

Cities are where us “grown-ups” play at leading meaningful and enjoyable lives, so it may be helpful (if anecdotal) to think of playgrounds as the staging areas for the cities of tomorrow. If we want to live in siloed cities, with offices here, houses there, and all quarters safely demarcated by wide arterial roads, we should probably go right on ahead building playgrounds where the slides and plastic tic-tac-toes cower away from each other. But if we want bustling, creative cities full of the surprise and serendipity that makes urban life so enjoyable, we might want to start thinking about playgrounds as microcosmic multi-use destinations.

I think of my favorite public space now, Washington Square Park, and it reminds me, in a way of that schoolyard playground. There are so many different things happening at any given moment: people are playing music, and games, they’re kissing, chatting, taking photos, sunning, jogging, and watching the world pass by. The magic of that park is in its open-endedness, and its mix of these activities. That’s what a great place looks like.

Shouldn’t our playgrounds be great places, too?

People chatting at a demo bike share station in New York City / Photo: Planetgordon.com via Flickr

With yesterday’s big announcement from the NYC DOT, bike shares are in the news again. Here in New York, we’re getting excited about the possibilities on the horizon as hundreds of bike share stations start popping up all over town. These stations don’t just improve mobility and transportation options–they’re also wonderful tools for activating public spaces. In fact, bike share stations are ideal for engendering what we call Triangulation, which Holly Whyte explained as “the process by which some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to other strangers as if they knew each other.”

Here are three reasons that bike share stations are ideal triangulators:

1. They’re natural conversation-starters: You can’t participate in bike share without visiting a bike share station. Stations bring people together around a common interest, giving them an opportunity and a reason to communicate with people they might not otherwise meet. Being that they serve as nodes in a transportation system, these stations also have a moderate sense of urgency to them: everyone there is trying to get somewhere else. This lowers the barrier-to-entry for casual social interaction for people on the shyer end of the spectrum, since it’s easy to smile and say “Nice helmet!” or “It’s a great day for a ride!” to someone as you both hop on bikes. Since instances of social interaction lead to a desire for greater contact, bike share stations make for happier, more social public spaces overall.
2. They attract a stream of diverse users at all times of day & night: A truly great place facilitates a mix of uses over time; if there’s nothing to keep a space active at night, it can create uncomfortable or even unsafe conditions for passersby, and detract from the entire community. Bike share stations ensure a steady flow of people through a space even after dark, keeping “eyes on the street” and making other constructive after-hours uses more likely. This extends the usefulness of a place as a social hub for the surrounding community.
3. They act as casual landmarks that concentrate activity: Bike share stations, with their colorful bikes and signage, help to make a place more comfortable and navigable for people who might not be familiar with a neighborhood. Think of the relief you felt the last time you were walking around, lost, and stumbled onto a subway or bus station; transit nodes help to re-orient us when we get turned around, chipping away at the sense of alienation that sometimes accompanies visiting a new place. The visual impact of these stations is also great for surrounding businesses and attractions, as the identifying signage and maps often highlight nearby points of interest.

One of the key principles to remember when trying to create a great public square is that the inner square and outer square must work together. Active edges (sidewalk cafes, museums, shops) feed into the center; in turn, a lively scene at the heart of a square creates a buzz that draws more people to the area, generating more activity for edge uses. It’s symbiotic!

The video above illustrates this principle using imagery from our study of Alamo Plaza in San Antonio, Texas. Home to one of the most iconic buildings in America, the plaza itself is more of a place to stand for a photo op than a place where people linger and enjoy. As you can see, creating a sense of connection and flow between the inner and outer square is key to success.

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.

“It’s amazing how much can change in a single day. In November, Fred and Norman from PPS came to our city, a suburb on the island of Montreal, to give a Placemaking workshop to our Council and staff from several different departments.

Fred Kent working with a municipal employee to re-envision the city center of Cote Saint-Luc

It started with how we work. The workshop was completely transformative in terms of our internal interaction and collaboration. People from various departments have started consulting with each other on a daily basis. Every department knows what every other department is doing. Staff members who attended have really been infused with a great deal of ideas and inspiration. Many came back from the weekend after the workshop with a list of things they wanted to do. Better still, they’ve been doing them. For example, in the spirit of lighter, quicker, cheaper, (the new mantra of our city), we put lovely Christmas lights outside of City Hall to spruce up for winter.  A small change, but people have commented and love it.

Given that it has been budget time, we’ve added all sorts of items to ours to forward our Placemaking mission, which indeed has become just that – a mission. We see everything differently now through the Placemaking lens. Our Council so strongly believes in it that it has put its money where its mouth is. We’ve allocated about $25,000 to fix up the plaza in front of the City Hall/Library complex, the area where we did the place audit. We’ve also planned to change the intersection right in front of this complex, possibly with a roundabout or some pedestrian-friendly variation.

Workshop attendees discuss possible changes to the City Hall and Library complex

Now that half of the Mall across the street has been completely torn down, we wanted to get moving on the surrounding area. We met with the contractors about the Main Street plans and we completely changed them according to the principles we learned.  Thanks to PPS.”

Côte Saint-Luc faces many of the challenges that other communities of similar size must confront – a lack of cooperation between public agencies, the need for upgrading its public spaces, establishing priorities and alleviating traffic congestion, among others.  Despite these issues, Tanya’s testimonial shows that with a place-based approach villages and suburbs can enact high-impact change rapidly and effectively despite limited resources.

PPS’ recent work in Plein 40-45, a square in one of Amsterdam’s most diverse districts, has shown that a Placemaking process that incorporates the needs and desires of a diverse community can go a long way to catalyze quick improvements and promote true livability.

The workshops PPS facilitated this fall brought together diverse cultural groups to envision a bright future for this space as an inclusive town square.

In September 2010, PPS facilitated a workshop with local stakeholders around Plein 40-45, the central square of the garden city Geuzenveld-Slotermeer on the western edge of Amsterdam.  The workshop brought together a diverse group of neighbors and led to a number of short and long term strategies for improvement; many of which have already been implemented. Before the workshop, many local government representatives and stakeholders had not met and had perhaps not realized the incredibly rich and diverse resource that the community represented.

During the past several years, Geuzenveld-Slotermeer has become a place where Turkish and Moroccan immigrants have moved and opened businesses along with existing Dutch residents and retailers. A testament to this evolving population mix is the story of the recent opening of a grocery store named Tanger on the second floor of a building on the edge of Plein 40-45. The day the store opened 1000 people lined up in the Square to wait to enter, even though the store had done very little to advertise. Why? The store carried products that appealed to and reflected the changing population of the community and were sold in a friendly, market-type environment.

A vision of the future of Plein 40-45. Located on a canal, Plein 40-45 is reachable by boat from the center of Amsterdam.

Today, the Square is somewhat underused but does feature a market where vendors sell a variety of products ranging from fruits and vegetables to clothing, rugs and other dry goods.  The recent workshop unlocked a vision of the Sqare’s potential as a town square. Rather than trying to come up with changes for the Square as a whole, the space was broken down into 5 sub-areas.  During the workshop, small groups of about 5 people evaluated one small part of the Square, talked to people who were using it, and came up with ideas for short and long-term improvements.

After PPS' workshop, Plein 40-45 became one stop on Amsterdam's Annual 1001 Markets Tour

The community has already tried out many ideas that emerged from PPS’ workshop.  The day after the workshop, one of the participants suggested changing the name of Plein 40–45 to “Freedom Square” (the square was named Plein 40-45 in 1955 to recognize the German occupation from 1940-1945). Just one month later, Plein 40-45 became one stop on Amsterdam’s Annual 1001 Markets Tour. Government employees developed sketches to visualize new activities that could occur on the Square and additional meetings were held with stakeholders.

What is the message here? When a diverse group of stakeholders come together to evaluate a small part of that place, they can build a shared vision that can produce meaningful changes very, very quickly.  Margaret Mead’s words still ring true: “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

“It can become so exciting, it can change the perception of Corpus Christi from a city that’s very quiet to a city that has a lot of dimensions to it, that’s really one of the great cities in Texas,” says PPS President and founder Fred Kent.

Draft Concept Plan of Corpus Christi's Waterfront includes a variety of public multi-use destinations

Destination Bayfront, a grassroots group of citizens in Corpus Christi, TX, understands the idea of creating a great public multi use destination on its waterfront and enlisted PPS’ services to help them achieve this goal. Sensing the real potential to transform the waterfront, hundreds of community members attended a series of public meetings throughout 2010. Citizens gathered to build a common vision for the different kinds of activities and improvements that could occur on the waterfront site. Ideas were as wide ranging as seawater slides off the jetty to farmers markets to boardwalks with local performers and artists.

A series of community meetings drew hundreds of interested citizens to talk about the city's waterfront

The goal of the project is to use PPS’ Placemaking process to create a gathering place for people in the city and a destination that will improve Corpus Christi’s economic health.

In recent years, waterfronts have once again become the focus of redevelopment for many cities, this time as priceless public spaces, and there have been both successes and failures.  Although some cities have managed to avoid common pitfalls and have created great destinations on their waterfronts, many more have not.  The pitfalls range from privatizing the waterfront with high rise residential or fortress type convention centers to planting swaths of green space that provide few opportunities for people to use them.

The best waterfronts are developed primarily as public destinations and are strong economic engines that support local businesses.  They have succeeded by creating highly accessible, multi-use destinations that include green spaces but are not exclusively defined by them.  They use the tried and true approach of focusing on creating a place that attracts residents first, knowing that tourists want to be where they can experience how a real community lives.

Waterfronts, Placemaking, and Sustainability

Projects like the Corpus Christi Bayfront demonstrate how both “sustainability” and “placemaking” are both important considerations in waterfront developments today. Placemaking is both a process and a philosophy that takes root when a community is able to express their needs and desires about the places in their lives. It enables people to realize just how inspiring their collective vision can be, allows them to look with fresh eyes at the potential of the public spaces in their cities and sparks an exciting re-examination of everyday settings and experiences in our lives. Sustainable places and cities emerge naturally through this process by creating destination spaces that are used and loved by the community.

Corpus Christi's Waterfront has many opportunities for development

The Corpus Christi waterfront has many natural assets. Not only does the City have one of the best climates in the United States for attracting people on a year round basis, it also has a two mile length of shoreline that, for the most part, has not been interrupted by private development. And, it is located adjacent to the downtown. With the project to realign Shoreline Boulevard comes an opportunity to create a strong connection between the downtown and the Bay, as well as a major destination for the region. Altogether, this makes Corpus Christi poised to become the best waterfront on the Gulf Coast if it continues the community based process it has started and stays close to its initial goal of enhancing the uniqueness of the public beach and the surrounding area, creating a signature waterfront destination for everyone.

Our own experience in Corpus Christi started about 20 years ago when Project for Public Spaces (PPS) was part of a team developing public spaces around the newly conceived transit system so that people would find it convenient and attractive to use. Growing out of a process that we facilitated, but mainly due to the inspiration provided by many, many members of the Corpus Christi community, the Staples Street Station was built and later received the Presidential Design Award.

Today, close to 100 years after the hurricane of 1919, which was recognized as one of the four worst natural disasters of the 20^th century, there is a unique opportunity to bring back the vibrancy and life that the waterfront once provided to the citizens of Corpus Christi.  They have only to seize that opportunity.

Check out the local press:

Bayfront’s New Design Ideas Draw Praise at Meeting

A Bayfront Opportunity? Plan Praised; Questions Over Cost Remain

Next Destination for Bayfront Plan: City Council

Texas Architect Magazine devoted its July-August 2011 issue to Placemaking and highlighted the extraordinary citizen-led change in Corpus Christi. Click on the image to read the full article.

The latest news:

Texas Architect magazine devoted its July-August 2011 issue to Placemaking and reports on the remarkable story of community involvement through which more than 2,500 community members participated in more than 80 public meetings. Their input was all incorporated into the Waterfront’s master plan.  Read more here.

“I thought this was a meeting, and it turns out it’s a movement!” said Mark Goldman, Tony’s brother and Buffalo historian, author, entrepreneur, and someone PPS would lovingly call a “zealous nut.” The turnout at this forum in Buffalo on November 6 was tremendous (more than 600 people attended!) and is part of an inspiring trend PPS has been noticing in our work across the country. More and more communities are organizing themselves to campaign for the future of the places that matter most to them.

Through a place-based approach and with the help of its large group of dedicated citizens, Buffalo's waterfront could one day transform into one of the best in North America. www.facebook.com/buffwaterfront

Buffalo is a city ripe for Placemaking: with these forums, the community is not seeking silver-bullet design solutions but a bottom-up, Place-based approach. In short, Buffalo is calling for an Architecture of Place: as the CSCA explains, these forums are meant “…to help us focus less on what we want to build there and more on how we want to feel there. The goal is to bring a new and different sensibility to land use decisions.”

From PPS’ point of view, Buffalo’s waterfront could be one of the greatest in North America because of the way the canal and the land connects with the entire length of the city. We know from our work around the world that extraordinary destinations are nurtured by good connectivity with other great places. The physical advantages of this unique place, when combined with tremendous community involvement, could mean a perfect storm for Placemaking.

PPS thinks Granville Island in Vancouver, Canada, is one of the world’s greatest places- and a wonderful example of a public, multi-use waterfront destination that doesn’t rely on large infrastructure investment. It’s a great model for Buffalo.

Like Buffalo, Granville Island's now thriving waterfront grew out of industrial infrastructure. PPS thinks it's become one of the best public multi-use destinations in the world.

As Fred explained in his talk in Buffalo last week: “a lot of cities think that if they make this big iconic architecture or this big mixed-use development, that will be the key. What we’re saying, what we know, is that if you look at the [area around the Gugenheim Museum in] Bilbao in Spain, they only get about 800,000 visitors a year, and they’re all tourists. You take Granville Island, you get 10 million visitors, and a substantial number of them are locals who come on a repeating basis. There are 3,000 people who work on Granville Island and 270 businesses. When you go to Bilbao, there’s a museum and the people who work in the museum. And that’s it.” PPS knows that sustainable jobs and local economies are rooted in great places. Development along Buffalo’s waterfront could give a boost to the whole city.

Fred’s talk was live-streamed during the event.  It begins at the 22 minute mark in the first video below and continues onto the second video:

In the second video, Fred continues his talk until he introduces Tony Goldman at around the 19:00 minute mark.  He takes questions at the end of the video.

To learn about Fred’s talk and the ongoing campaign to make Buffalo’s waterfront great, check out this local coverage:

Aspirations and Inspirations: The Latest in a Series of Public Forums on Waterfront Development Aims to Infuse the Conversation with Creativity

Buffalo Rising: Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper

Don’t Box In Waterfront, Forum Told

Park features like this fountain at Discovery Green keep visitors of all ages coming back year-round to Houston's once quiet downtown core. Flickr photo by AlphaTangoBravo/Adam Baker

Often, downtowns hard-hit by disinvestment turn to sports arenas or performing arts venues for an economic boost. Yet as this article shows,  parks, not stadiums, are responsible for invigorating depressed cores. Alive with year-round programming and activities,  these thriving Public Multi-Use Destinations are treasured by the local community and generate millions of dollars of investment,  proving there can be an Upside of a Down Economy, as PPS President Fred Kent explains in this Urban Land Institute article.

The Washington Post is not the first major newspaper to highlight the potential for parks like Campus Martius to generate true prosperity over the long-haul: just last fall The Boston Globe wrote about how Discovery Green has drawn over a million visitors to downtown Houston while Boston’s new Rose Kennedy Greenway still seems “placeless” and deserted.

From our experience working in more than 2,500 communities around the world, PPS has known for years that the missing ingredient in many discussions about economic revitalization, job creation, and sustainability is the fact that secure jobs are tied to a place.

To learn more about models for sustainable success, join us in Norway at PPS’ upcoming Conference on Sustainability and Placemaking next month where PPS and “out of the box” Placemakers from around the world will share their secrets to creating great destinations.

This contest is the newest initiative of the citywide Placemaking Chicago campaign, born out of a partnership with PPS and Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council. In collaboration, PPS and MPC produced a brand new, locally-oriented Placemaking publication with associated online content.  PPS also led onsite training courses for community and government leaders in the region.

This summer, from June 2 through July 26, 2010, enter the “What Makes Your Place Great? Your Secret Corner of Chicagoland” contest by emailing a photo or video of your favorite undiscovered public space in the region to placemakingchicago@metroplanning.org. Together with a 250-word-or-less description, use your photo or video to describe why this place is so special to you and how it adds to your community. 

Four winners will receive a prize package that includes passes to the Brookfield Zoo, Chicago History Museum, Shedd Aquarium, or Chicago Architecture Foundation tours, the chance to have their space featured in an exclusive CAF tour in October, 2010, and bragging rights to the best undiscovered public place in the region!

Read the guidelines for entry and voting at www.placemakingchicago.com.

MPC and Placemaking Chicago are grateful for the generous contributions of our sponsors and donors:

The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation
Prince Charitable Trusts
Perkins+Will

Questions?  Please contact Karin Sommer, MPC Associate and Placemaking Chicago Project Manager, at 312-863-6044 or ksommer@metroplanning.org.

The place game is used on a street in Denver, Coloardo.

PPS works with thousands of people every year to help them improve their communities, and one of our most powerful tools is the place game. A short survey used to evaluate public spaces based on four criteria–access and linkages, uses and activities, comfort and image, and sociability–the place game generates valuable insights about how to transform public spaces into vibrant community destinations.

At our recent Streets as Places training course, participants used the street audit–a cousin of the place game focused on streets–to evaluate Petrosino Square, a small public plaza in downtown Manhattan. Wayne Senville, editor of the Planning Comissioners Journal, provides an excellent writeup of his experience “Circling the Square” that illustrates the myriad lessons that can be learned by simply observing a space, talking with people who use it and then sharing findings in a small group.

For more on Senville’s experiences at the Streets as Places training course, visit the Planning Commissioners Journal‘s website, a terrific source of resources and information for citizen planners.

The benches at Petrosino Square are heavily used during the day, but the space lacks a strong identity. Photo credit: Wayne Senville

Can you see this sign? (Photo Credit: Marc Stiles, Daily Journal of Commerce)

The battle over the right to use public spaces on private property has been played out throughout the US over the last half century. Many developers, in exchange for a more favorable floor-to-area ratio (FAR) allowance, were required to build ground level public plazas.   Unfortunately, most of these plazas were public only in name; all too often, property owners and building managers discouraged people from using them, in direct violation of the law.  The problem, which continues to this day, is exacerbated by the fact that the spaces often feel private and univiting, and as a result are heavily underused.

PPS got its start in the late seventies working on many privately owned public spaces, convincing owners to make them more inviting and then adapting them to actually work for people. Rockefeller Center remains one of our strongest examples of accomplishing this transformation.  When PPS was established,  it was thought that the organization would not need to exist after a few years when everyone saw the value of making public spaces truly public and understood the simple principles for designing and managing them to be inviting to people.

Of course, the struggle continues today.  A group of city officials in Seattle recently organized a tour of these Privately Owned Public Spaces–or POPOS–to spread awareness of the issue to both the public and property owners.  During the tour, the issues at stake arose almost immediately; as reported by an article in the Daily Journal of Commerce, the group was asked by a security guard to leave the premises.  The officials politely informed the guard that they were on public property.

A press conference of the event (Photo Credit: Catherine Anstett)

Cities that have offered similar incentive programs, including New York City and San Francisco, have also continued to wrestle with this issue. Early successes there, as well as in Seattle, include new signage that clearly identifies these spaces as public areas. This is, of course, a long way from realizing the full potential of creating gathering spaces on privately owned property, for both social benefit and private economic gain.  And at PPS, we will keep working untill the last of these spaces is actually a public asset.