Project for Public Spaces » Placemaker Profiles

Eric Reynolds, Master of Low-cost, High-return Public Space Interventions in London and NYC

Megan MacIver — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:09:06 +0000

Eric Reynolds

“Lighter, quicker, cheaper:” three words to sum up a revolutionary, low-cost, high-impact strategy to development, one behind all of Eric Reynolds’ projects at Urban Space Management (USM), a firm known for driving the economic renewal of run down or under-utilized spaces in imaginative and cost effective ways. Reynolds urges a movement away from “mega-schemes” which make development unsustainable because they require long time frames to assemble large sites, large teams and large sums of money- all of which can be risky in today’s volatile economy.

Eric and his business partner, Eldon Scott, promote and use an entirely different development model; one that is lower risk and lower cost and which can be an interim solution for a site that is in transition- techniques especially relevant to the thousands of evolving post-industrial waterfronts around the world. Eldon used Urban Space Management’s approach in his work setting up the Union Square Holiday Market in New York City.

At this market at Camden Lock, Eric Reynolds kept rents low to attract a wide range of tenants

Urban Space Management’s Projects (which include Camden Lock, Gabriel’s Wharf, and Chelsea Farmers Market in London, and several seasonal markets in New York City) have not only been able to not only “catch the moment” but also have created greater profit per dollar of capital expended than other, traditional development schemes. Last June, Eldon Scott shared USM’s unique approach at a PPS Forum attended by developers of Public Multi–Use Destinations at Granville Island in Vancouver, British Columbia. Eldon shared his years of experience on how a combination of creativity and local talent can be used to add uses to a site and make money in the short term, even in small spaces.

USM brought in set designers to add colorful facades to concrete structures at Gabriel's Wharf, a former parking lot.

Gabriel’s Wharf, now one of London’s thriving public multi-use destinations, was just another parking lot until USM asked a set design company to create colorful facades to decorate the concrete garages already present on the site, transforming them into studios for local artists who began displaying (and selling) their creations. The same concept was used at other USM developments, including The Chelsea Farmers Market, located off Kings Road in London: USM began by adding temporary structures, both timber and re-used containers, to keep costs low and attract an interesting group of tenants. USM uses the concept of a “Coral Reef” in their development practices. In other words, for USM, high design is not the focus. The color and vibrancy of their developments come from the tenants and visitors who occupy the space.

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Eric spoke at PPS’ Waterfront Synopsis Conference, Sept. 15-17, 2010 in Stavanger, Norway. PPS has worked with NUDA to compile the proceedings from the event.

Alfred Tredway White: Public Housing Pioneer Who Built For Quality Public Spaces

Craig Raphael — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:26:46 +0000

The public mews at Alfred White's Warren Place apartments.

Alfred Tredway White was arguably Brooklyn’s most significant and influential philanthropist and social reformer of the late 19^thand early 20^th centuries. His lifelong work on behalf of the city’s poor population stemmed from a conviction that success, health, community, and the built environment were fundamentally interrelated, and that investing in the living conditions of the working poor could be both transformative and profitable.

Public housing today does not tend to engage the street with the level of retail, transparency and detailing as White's buildings.

Several of White’s most famous projects were housing in Brooklyn built to serve the working class. With their engaging street levels, airy courtyards and gathering spaces, today many of these buildings are both treasured and valuable real estate.

The commonly accessible backyard gardens at Warren Place, housing built for the working class

Read the full profile and learn more about other noteworthy placemakers on PPS.org.

Jane Jacobs in the Modern City: Learning from her Legacy

Megan MacIver — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:15:34 +0000

Urban critic, journalist, and long-time PPS board member Roberta Gratz is the author of a new book, “The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs,” a revisionist story of New York City’s recovery from the economic crisis of the 1960’s and 70’s. While many credit Moses with Manhattan’s renewal, Gratz’ book charts a new narrative: according to Gratz, Gotham recovered precisely because of his waning influence and a lack of big government funding for urban renewal projects. Gratz argues New York regenerated organically, according to the precepts defined by Jane Jacobs in her classic, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Gratz’s book, which also details her experiences growing up New York during this time of transformation and her friendship with Jacobs, offers an on-the-ground account of urban renewal and community success; a timely story to inform our response to the current crisis.

In a recent review, Metropolis Magazine called Gratz’ most recent book a “cogent argument for revisiting [Jacob’s] ideas and adapting them to a different time and, inevitably, a different New York.”

Applying Jacobs’ ideas to modern city life is precisely the goal of Jane’s Walk USA, an organization that facilitates a series of free walking tours which honor Jacobs’ legacy and put people in touch with their environment and each other. To learn more, or for tips on starting a walk in your community, visit http://janeswalkusa.wordpress.com/

Jane’s Walk USA

Project for Public Spaces — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:16:59 +0000

Honoring Jacobs’ Legacy and Building Community

Jane’sWalkUSA, a program of The Center For the Living City , is dedicated to honoring the legacy and ideas of urban activist and writer Jane Jacobs by facilitating free walking tours in neighborhoods throughout the country, in cities from Ankorage to Philadelphia. These walks celebrate local history, bring people together, and invite participants to discover new ways to apply her insight to modern city life.

Most walks are scheduled for the first weekend in May (close to Jacob’s birthday, May 4th). Check out this schedule to learn how to get involved and to find an event in a city near you!

Placemaker Profile: Alan Barber

dkitzes — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:31:14 +0000

“Placemaker Profiles” highlights the individuals who have captured our imagination about the need to create great places in every community. By bringing together their valuable stories, key insights, and compelling visions, we hope to share their wisdom with our readers, honor their accomplishments, and acknowledge their profound influence on the Placemaking movement.

For more Placemaker Profiles, click here.

ALAN BARBER

“Greenspace networks are not the space left over after planning, or the spaces between buildings. They are a vital component of ever-larger urban settlements in all developed countries. We neglect them at our peril.”

Alan Barber is an advocate, activist, and critic who has worked tirelessly on behalf of Britain’s public parks and greenspaces for decades. Barber’s efforts at all levels – within communities, through university teaching, and in local and national government positions – has made real and lasting change in the way public parks are managed and prioritized in the United Kingdom. Barber is unfailingly passionate and unafraid to speak his mind. His recent appointment as a member of the Order of the British Empire stands in testament to his years of devotion and commitment to Britain’s public parks.

Biography

Alan Barber was born in Lancashire, UK, in 1942. His love of greenspace was cultivated at an early age; he apprenticed with a local parks department at age 16, and at 21 he began a two-year term of study at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Throughout the rest of his twenties, Barber learned about parks management by working “on the ground” jobs in Lancashire and Manchester.

Barber then became Parks Manager for the city of Bristol, UK. Working in this position, he came to hold many of his current positions on parks management and the role of parks in urban social life. In this role, he founded important and lasting public-private partnerships, increased parks programming, and introduced goal-based management systems imported from industry.

Barber repeatedly witnessed budget cuts leading to the ruin of parks programs and historic greenspaces. This inspired him to begin campaigning and consulting nationally for dedicated parks funding and management. In this role, he served as President of the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management. In 1996, Barber co-wrote a position paper for Lord Rothschild that spurred the creation of a new grant-making parks initiative, funded by the national lottery, that became the largest investment in public parks in the UK; to date, over £300 million has been invested in revitalizing public greenspaces.

Barber went on to help found GreenSpace, a charity devoted to improving parks and involving communities in their care. He also has held several advocacy and teaching positions within government and universities, all devoted to better parks management and preservation.

In 1998, a House of Commons Select Committee – akin to a Congressional investigative hearing – met to consider the plight of public parks in the UK. Barber, who considered this a “real breakthrough,” served as a special advisor to the inquiry, and later to the government Urban Green Spaces Taskforce formed as a result. Barber helped to persuade both these bodies of the need for a national agency devoted to parks issues; in 2003, CABE Space – an addition to the UK’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) – was formed, and Barber was appointed a member of the Commission.

On April 7, 2009, Alan Barber was appointed a member of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen in recognition of his decades of advocacy on behalf of public parks. Upon receiving the prestigious award, Barber noted that: “I am still campaigning and writing about urban parks because I believe they are so important to the life of towns and cities. Their neglect in recent years has been scandalous, especially when they can do so much to encourage healthier lifestyles.”

Barber believes the biggest remaining challenge for greenspaces in the UK is “to reverse the steady decline in budgets for maintaining park systems in our towns and cities. Democracy is a much weaker force in the UK than in the USA. So much is dictated by Whitehall bureaucracy, rather than the wishes of local people. The silo-mentality in Whitehall means that nobody can link the welfare of children, which is a priority, to the care of the environment which children inhabit. A bit more attention to the latter and many of our serious problems with childcare would be reduced.”

Perspectives

The Role(s) and Management of Greenspace

Barber sees public parks and greenspaces as inherently multifunctional, and believes that their management must (but too often doesn’t) acknowledge this characteristic. He views parks as part of a larger ecological, cultural, social, and educational system.

This understanding of parks’ multifunctionality leads to Barber’s CLERE model for parks management. The model highlights what Barber sees as the five key interrelated functions of urban greenspace – its role in Community development and education; as a Landscape with conservation requirements; as an Ecosystem that provides natural services to a city; as a resource for Recreation; and finally, as a contributor to the local Economy. Each of these functions implies an accompanying set of management issues and goals, all of which must be addressed holistically for the greenspace to achieve its fullest potential.

The proper management of urban greenspace has farther-reaching benefits, as well. It contributes positively to national and global problems, including environmental issues like climate change and air quality, human well-being, and economic prosperity. Moreover, quality public space fosters and supports civic engagement and community spirit. If citizens feel alienated from their public spaces and institutions, they are less likely to participate (formally or informally) in governance of their communities. Thus, careful stewardship of public space is integral for guaranteeing meaningful democratic participation. This is a cyclical pattern: the less democratic the governing bodies, the more institutionally dysfunctional, bureaucratic, and self-interested the government – and in turn, a government of this sort won’t be a good steward of green space.

The Design Profession

Barber considers the landscape design profession to have “lost the plot,” in his words; he thinks landscape architecture education must refocus on natural and ecological features, rather than cold, sterile architectural elements. He says he “would remove all [landscape architects’] paving catalogues and replace them with plant catalogues. I would ask them to contemplate a world of beautiful colours, of three dimensions and with no geometrical shapes.”

With characteristic wit, Barber describes the need for design professionals to truly listen to the public that will use these spaces, and (echoing William H. Whyte) to have a role in arranging their own spatial experience: “I must have read a thousand articles on seats in public places but I never once read that anyone had asked people which they liked to sit on. I like Paris’s Jardin du Luxembourg because visitors are given a choice of seat, and how they are arranged. In English public places immovable benches are always placed next to trash bins because the architect presumes the public like to sit next to stale food and wasps.”

Design and Management

Barber argues in favor of a closer, more collaborative working relationship between designers and managers of public spaces, and finds that design too often occurs without consideration of how people will actually use the space. Parks, in particular, must be well-maintained and well-programmed to live up to their potential as useful public spaces. He says: “Design and management have to be brought much closer together. I have found good design solutions to management problems but only where designers and managers speak the same language and where they can both communicate with people.”

Good management gives public parks the ability to adapt in response to changing user needs. Fixed architectural elements are not easily adaptable and are “incapable of self-renewal,” in Barber’s words; however, parks can be continuously renewed when managers intervene in an informed, thoughtful, publicly-minded manner.

“People-Power”

Rather than depending on government to make necessary changes to public space, Barber puts his faith in grassroots “people-power” movements. He notes the importance of local community groups (often “friends of the parks” organizations) in influencing the political agenda and engaging with public space. Barber also extols tools like PPS’s Place Game and CABE’s Spaceshaper, both of which involve communities in critically appraising their own local spaces.

Architecture

Though Barber’s writings and work focus primarily on public parks and greenspace, he commends recent architectural innovations like green roofs and walls, noting that “[t]here are few modern buildings in the world that wouldn’t look better covered in plants.” Barber also praises Prince Charles and his views on architecture: “He has a real understanding of the subject, much greater than many of his architect critics. I wish he would champion parks and public places more often. His interventions are well judged and very influential.”

Quotable

“I love public parks; the best seem to effortlessly capture the essence of civilized living in modern urban society.”

“Nothing repays its investment as well as a good public park.”

“In my writing, I am often found campaigning and confrontational, mostly towards an establishment, which does not seem to care.”

“Campaigning for better public parks is my life and I don’t intend to stop until I collapse in a heap.”

Selected Publications

Around the World in Twenty-One Parks. This annotated collection of films of Barber’s favorite parks provides wonderful insight into what makes parks work.

Green Future. Greenspace, 2005.

Time to Bite the Bullet. Green Places, March 2009.

How Green is My Eco-Town? Green Places, November 2008 (with Junfang Xie).

The Final Assessment. Green Places, March 2008.

See also Sarah Jackson’s excellent profile of Alan Barber in Parks and Gardens UK, on which the Biography section of this Placemaker Profile draws.

Contact Info

Alan Barber may be reached at: alan.barber@blueyonder.co.uk. He particularly welcomes contact from students.

–written by Karen Levy

Energy, creativity, and collaboration transform Savannah’s public spaces

joshkent — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:00:27 +0000

It was only a few months ago that Destination: Savannah Forward, a coalition of Savannah-based public and private institutions, brought PPS President Fred Kent to Savannah. Last February, Kent and over 300 Savannah citizens met to discuss how to transform the city’s car-oriented streets into pedestrian-friendly destinations, and how to create true gathering places in Savannah’s beautiful natural environment and historic squares.

Since then, Savannah’s citizens have taken bold action to begin making these plans reality. As Theodora Gongaware writes in Savannah Now , Savannians are working energetically to “make each neighborhood a destination by taking advantage of resources that were already in place. Our community accepted this challenge with style and vigor.”

Among the inspired changes taking place in Savannah are the premiere of the Blue Ocean Film Festival, the creation of a citywide Traffic Calming Task Force, and the first “meet and greet” for a group of citizens and local businesses in downtown Columbia Ward. That group plans to continue meeting in order to foster dialogue about using their community square creatively and starting a neighborhood watch program.

Public-private partnerships have been a key part of Savannah’s most creative projects. For example, the county government, the Historic Beach Neighborhood Association, and the Savannah Tree Foundation have teamed up to revitalize and replant a local park. Plans are also underway to move the historic Mother Matilda Beasley House to the park, upgrade existing ball fields, and build a pavilion to serve as a community gathering place.

What can you do now to make your neighborhood a better place?

joshkent — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:13:16 +0000

There are plenty of simple things everyday citizens can do to reenliven their local communities – techniques to engage with your neighbors, revitalize your street, and improve everyone’s quality of life.

Organize an art fair for the kids on your block

It’s easier than you’d think. The Neighbors Project has compiled a set of checklists of simple actions you can take to be more neighborly – from tasks as easy as saying hello to your neighbor, to more involved weekend or seasonal projects, like organizing a block party or community garden. PPS’s own Great Neighborhood Book is packed full of creative ideas for creating fun, safe, vibrant communities – inspired projects carried out by real people – that run the gamut from printing up neighborhood T-shirts, to (literally) tearing down backyard fences, to creating enjoyable public places in local cemeteries. Many of the projects in the Great Neighborhood Book are very low-cost, sustainable, and use only local resources and the brainpower of community members.

One example: the Meridian Hill community in Washington, DC, made efforts to improve the usability of its local park, which had a dangerous reputation. The community organized a simple, inexpensive park cleanup, filling over 400 bags with trash. Motivated by this success, the group went on to organize a series of arts events in the park. Within a few years, park crime had dropped by 95 percent, and park use quadrupled!

The Internet also holds lots of promise to help communities create real connections and share local knowledge. Check out Placeblogger’s network of local blogs, or EveryBlock’s news feed of information about your city. You can also share your best community placemaking ideas, stories, and questions by joining the Great Neighborhoods group at The Placemaking Movement, PPS’s own social network for placemakers.

It's not hard to get to know your neighbors

Do-it-yourself placemaking in your community makes good economic and environmental sense – but even more importantly, it helps you create a truly great place you’ll be proud to call home.

PPS Workshop Inspires Bold Action in Blind River

Craig Raphael — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:40:03 +0000

A mural of Blind River from the downtown area

Contributed by Mandy Johnson

On May 14th, Cynthia Nikitin of PPS keynoted the Ontarians Walking Now workshop in Blind River, Ontario. Shortly after the workshop, the Blind River attendees put together a plan to make a beautiful but desolate beach in a central part of the town one of ten great places to visit and walk to. The recommendation was taken to Town Council and accepted pending a budget review of the costs. A factor in the success of the proposal was the fact that five of the key decision makers, including the mayor, attended the OWN workshop and were so inspired by Cynthia’s message and the concept of “The Power of Ten.”

The proposal includes providing picnic benches (to be built by local students enrolled in a carpentry program), garbage cans, signage, washroom facilities and a stewardshp program to provide ongoing care and maintenance.

Blind River is a small picturesque town situated on the North Channel (atop of Lake Huron) mid-way between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury. Ontarians Walking Now (OWN) is a project of Green Communities Canada with the goal of promoting the importance of walkable communties (www.canadawalks.ca) and providing community stakeholders with the motivation, tools, and resources to effect local change.

More information:
Possible Upgrades to Fourth Sand Beach

Improving Transit “By Any Means Necessary”

joshkent — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:41:10 +0000

Malcolm X once said that “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” And so we found ourselves in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn at the first annual Bedford-Stuyvesant Malcolm X celebration, as guests of the Malcolm X Merchants Association (MXMA). We were there to educate ourselves about the community’s experience using mass transit in their neighborhood, with the intention of improving the transit service in the community by equipping local stakeholders with tools to influence the transit planning process.

When people think of the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, or Bed-Stuy as it’s better known, transit may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But as with many other urban centers, transit was a key factor in its development, growth, and sustenance.

In 1888, the Fulton Street Elevated line, operated by the Kings County Elevated Railway (KCERy), began operation. It connected the Fulton Ferry with Bed-Stuy. The next large transit infrastructure project was the development of the A subway line, which connected Harlem with Bed-Stuy. The new subway line led to an exodus of African-Americans from overcrowded Harlem to Bed-Stuy. From that point on, the neighborhood has grown into one of the most vibrant in the Brooklyn metropolis.

Bed-Stuy is now served by the A and C subway lines at the Utica Avenue, Kingston-Throop Avenue, and Nostrand Avenue subway stations, the B46 and B25 bus lines, and the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). An extensive list of services compared to many other American communities. But is that translating into quality service for the travelers to and from Bed-Stuy?

The statistics tell us that the Utica Ave. subway station, which is at the intersection of Fulton Ave. and Utica Ave., on the A and C lines, carried 4.46 million passengers in 2008, making it the 101st busiest station out of 422 in the City. And although we don’t have a count for how many bus passengers board the B46 at that intersection, we know that the B46 carried 17.3 million riders in 2008, giving it the second highest ridership out of all NYC’s bus lines. While these numbers are impressive, they don’t tell us the full story of transit service in Bed-Stuy. They don’t explain how and why people use transit, and what improvements could be made to accommodate even more users, and perhaps more importantly, to make the community a better place.

Before we get into the survey process and the results of the survey, I should describe the basis of this project. It is part of a Federal Transit Administration research grant intended to develop tools for public participation in transit-dependent communities. PPS has been working in two pilot study sites, one in LA’s Byzantine Latino Quarter and the other in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Local stakeholders, community activists and merchants have been meeting over the past few months to try out some of these tools. In Bed-Stuy, PPS has worked with the Malcolm X Merchant’s Association and Bridge Street Development Corporation (BSDC) to hold workshops and focus groups that will pilot our public participation tools and, simultaneously, create a community vision for Malcolm X Boulevard and Utica Avenue Plaza.

We went to the Malcolm X festival to gather the type of qualitative information that traffic reports often lack. We set up a table on Malcolm X Avenue, in between a vendor selling homemade earrings, and another vendor selling very random trinkets, with the hope that a few interested people would stop by. We had with us two tools to understand the community’s interpretation of their transit service — one was a short survey regarding the quality of pedestrian journeys, and the other was a large neighborhood aerial for a Destination and Route Mapping exercise. The survey had basic questions that we used to determine people’s destinations, preferred paths, and thoughts on how transit stops could be improved. The map was used to determine positive and negative areas in the community, as well as the paths people chose to get to or avoid those places and why.

Before we knew it, our table was swarmed with community members. The wealth of nuance that they gave us was tremendous. Many of the participants in our research had been living in the community their whole lives and their family histories go back several generations. That’s no small measure in a city as transient as New York City! They described their streets down to the most minor detail, as if they knew them like the back of their hands. “Don’t go down Stuyvesant between Bainbridge and Chauncy after dark because it’s not lit well enough,” one woman said. Another woman spoke of the well-kept landscaping on Decatur between Malcolm X and Patchen. “What about that wine bar opening up on Lewis?” “I don’t like those drug dealers on Fulton,” “There’s Solomon’s Porch on Stuyvesant!” People were blurting out things left and right. Within a few hours our map was filled with green and red dots, and we had 25 completed surveys in our back pocket.

Many community members are not involved in the transit planning process, and as a result, transit service is not catered to their needs. Instead, it is designed to meet the parochial benchmarks of transportation engineers – “level of service” and so on and so forth. But “level of service” isn’t always the best measure for level of service; it doesn’t consider the café down the block that people might want to walk by in the morning to get coffee, or the fact that a vacant block across the bus stop might attract seedy characters. Our pilot project is intended to understand the reality of a community’s transit needs, and equip them with tools to influence transit service to it adapts to that reality – a bottom-up approach, not a top-down approach that we’ve seen far too often.

During our research the community’s main concern regarding their transit experience was safety. Participants mentioned fear of crime in places where certain infrastructure such as lighting was missing. Nevertheless, there was a clear sense of neighborhood pride that people shared. The community spoke with confidence that the streets were theirs, and there was always a glimmer of confidence in their words that they were restoring their community from an era where it suffered greatly from crime, poverty, and political neglect. With the tools that we are helping to develop for Bed-Stuy, and eventually, other transit-dependent communities, we can play a role in empowering them to improve their journey from point A to point B. We want everyone dancing while they wait for the bus, like this gentleman waiting for the B25 in Utica Plaza.

Playborhoods: Bringing Communities Together through Play

joshkent — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:23:50 +0000

Children are Placemakers, too!

Mike Lanza has long been an advocate for safe and livable streets that allow children a safe place to play freely outdoors and meet other local children. He has coined the term “Playborhood” to describe the ideal neighborhood social situation for kids: “A place where children, ideally from more than one family, play outside on their own on a regular basis – i.e. at least a couple days a week.”

Lanza is in the process of turning his front yard into a type of “public outdoor family room” where neighborhood residents can gather to talk, get to know one another and play together.

With many local school-age children headed off to summer camp this summer, Lanza was concerned about both the lack of opportunity for younger children to play freely and safely outdoors, and their missing crucial opportunities to learn and observe play and social interaction among older kids. To remedy the problem, he’s starting an initiative called Camp Yale. However, it won’t be a structured camp with strident activities and regulations. The goal of Camp Yale is to guide children in free play amongst themselves until they are ready to play independently of adults — and then, teach the next generation of neighborhood children by example.

For more information, visit the Playborhood blog!

Playborhoods can also be a part of big cities. The Come Out and Play Festival, a weekend-long event that turns public spaces into giant play areas for children, will take place in NYC from June 12th-14th. The event combines new technology, like GPS, smartphones, texting and bluetooth, into classic childhood activities such as kickball, chalk drawing and treasure hunts. Referencing sense of place, the festival provides an opportunity for children and adults alike to come together around play while exploring thir city in new ways.

Cultivating a Tradition of Placemaking with the Garden Club of America

joshkent — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:22:14 +0000

On May 2nd Fred Kent gave the opening keynote to 700 leaders of Garden Clubs from every corner of the United States. The message resonated as a natural evolution for their powerful role in communities, leveraging their skills as practical implementers, social networkers and resourceful fundraisers. The local garden club is often the first partner mentioned at our workshops to help implement short term improvements. We will now look to Garden Clubs to play a leading role as conveners and facilitators of Placemaking in their communities.

To offer them a tool to support this potential role, PPS lead 200 of the conference attendees in an afternoon “Place Game” workshop to train them to use the tool to evaluate public spaces and kick start placemaking projects. We were aided in facilitating the large crowd by 20 local partners involved in our Kennedy Plaza effort that saw the workshop as a good opportunity to get fresh ideas from the Garden Club members.

Greater Kennedy Plaza Placemaking May 2, 2009 from Russell Preston on Vimeo.

The video was also posted on CNU New England’s Sustainable Urbanism Summit blog, where blogger Russell Preston says:

A critical piece of creating a sustainable urbanism is pleasing and vibrant Public Space. As we move towards a more resilient way of planning for our villages, towns and cities, as Fred Kent says, we can no longer afford to only create “open space”. Our land is too valuable to not be used, be programmed and be enjoyed.

Community Placemakers: Newell Nussbaumer and Buffalo Rising

joshkent — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:13:17 +0000

Portions of Buffalo's waterfront are being revived

Back in the summer of 2008, Rochester native Alan Oberst contributed an article to Buffalo Rising – a local news format blog — that analyzed both Hertel and Elmwood Avenues using PPS’ Ten Qualities of a Great Street.

The city, which has been struggling with population loss and economic downturn since the mid-1950s, is now home to a dedicated segment of the local population working to revitalize city streets and connect important downtown destinations. As it turned out, I was headed upstate the following week for a family wedding and the folks at Buffalo Rising quickly made time in their busy schedules to invite me to their offices and give me a tour of Buffalo’s waterfront.

The organization’s offices, located in the newly-designated cobblestone district (volunteers removed the bricks one by one to log and then replaced them!), were once used as an ice house to store winter ice from adjacent Lake Erie each winter. Down the street, a former truck terminal has been repurposed as a coffee shop, restaurant and bar. Across the cobblestone street, a massive (empty) parking lot fills a city block’s worth of space. Changes here have not been sweeping, but are happening in small, meaningful ways.

Buffalo Rising’s founder, Newell Nussbaumer, grew up downtown. In 1993, he returned from college and opened a shop on then-struggling Elmwood Avenue. The street is now one of the city’s prime location for local businesses, artisans and street festivals.

Nussbaumer started Buffalo Rising as a print publication in an effort to highlight all of the positive activity happening downtown. It was initially a reaction to the prominent Buffalo News coverage of downtown crime and suburban news. Buffalo Rising produces only stories about downtown Buffalo. If the topic being covered is negative, writers try to offer a positive solution for moving forward. Today, a volunteer staff works on covering local politics, urban planning and positive community action.

Nussbaumer had been a key player in ensuring sidewalk and curb redesign, starting a local children’s parade, community composting, and a local garden walk where residents open their gardens to the public. Recently, he’s been busy advocating for better bike parking to encourage cycling between downtown destinations. He has also been at the forefront of “Buffalo Homecoming,” an event designed to bring Buffalo expats back home once a year to remind them about their hometown’s sense of place.

To the west from the roof of the Buffalo Rising building, Nussbaumer points to a rail track filled with light rail trains not in use. Buffalo’s “subway” currently runs in a straight line down Main Street. While the rail is heavily used during home hockey games at the HSBC Arena, located at one end of the rail route, there are no transfers to other lines or accessibility to some of Buffalo’s neighborhoods that have recently seen revitalization. Main Street, closed to cars when the light rail started service, has become a virtual dead zone and the city is readying to retrofit the street and bring the cars back. Nussbaumer heavily advocates a rail extension, which would allow much improved access to Buffalo’s intriguing waterfront. This extension might be an easy place to start, as the tracks extend towards the waterfront currently for rail car storage.

Nearby, one is able to catch a glimpse of Buffalo’s inner harbor between the massive buildings that make up the local General Mills plant. Newell took me to a dead end street where a bridge had been taken out by a large ship some 25 years earlier.

Nussbaumer looks out over the disconnected river

General Mills, however, stood in the way of rebuilding it in the hopes of protecting their privacy and keeping pedestrians away. The area is now completely cut off from the outer harbor and it only accessible by traveling all the way around the area and across a busy highway. As our group was looking out over the missing bridge, a cyclist rode up to ask us how to reach the outer harbor. I assumed it was a friend of Newell’s making a joke, but the cyclist was a stranger, truly looking for a point of access.

A cyclists comes by, unable to access the outer harbor

Nearby, Newell showed me some signs of citizen action, mostly small but significant. Next to the General Mills plant, locals have built their own mini dock with access to the street, a wooden sign pointing towards Swannie House across the street. Local blue collar bar Swannie House has become a popular hangout for both factory folk and activists. Outside, if the wind is right, one gets a whiff of toasted cereal from the nearby plant. I can’t help but imagine how interesting it would be if the factory opened its doors to tourists, playing on the great cultural role many of their cereals play in the American narrative.

The outer harbor is the site of much current contention. The Skyway, an elevated highway that looms large and grey between the city and the waterfront, is still a working roadway despite frequent closures during cold, icy weather. Nussbaumer and Oberst enthusiastically offer creative ideas for the structure (“Paint it red!” “Install windmills!” “Hanging condos!” “Turn it into a high-line-style park!”), but the city has a long way to go before its ready to consider such unconventional solutions. The highway was recently named in a list of elevated roadways primed for transformation by the Congress for the New Urbanism, indicating its potential for significant evolution.

Along the lake, Route 5 is about to revert back to elevated highway status. Local advocacy group Buffalo-Niagara Riverkeeper has conducted several traffic studies and created an alternate plan that calls for the transformation of the road into a boulevard that connects the city at large to the waterfront. Buffalo Rising has been instrumental in circulating information on the project, as well as alternate designs.

More information:

PPS’s approach to waterfronts [pps.org]
Buffalo Rising
PPS’ Placemaker Profiles [pps.org]

Shovel Ready!

joshkent — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:15:45 +0000

Today, First Lady Michelle Obama will put a shovel in the ground of the White House lawn. Mrs. Obama, like many home gardeners, is celebrating this first day of Spring by getting her home garden ready for the season, and she promises that the garden will be maintained by the entire First Family, President Obama included. The 1,100-square-foot plot will soon supply the White House with fruits and vegetables for the Obama’s healthy, family meals, and the total cost to plant the garden will be just $200.

This isn’t the first First Family to use the nation’s lawn for a garden; President Adams and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt both tended to their own White House vegetable gardens, and President Wilson even used a flock of sheep to mow and fertilize the grass!

Perhaps Mrs. Obama always planned on planting a garden if she moved to the White House, but a great deal of thanks still goes out to those people and organizations that worked tirelessly to make this happen. Both The White House Organic Farm Project and Eat the View spent the past year advocating for a White House garden and gathering signatures from thousands of citizens who wanted to see “the people’s lawn” used for something healthy, active and social. This garden will not only supply the First Family with fennel, spinach and blueberries, it will be a symbol that our front lawns can be used for more than just landscaping. Now, let’s hope that President Obama reconsiders his position on beets!

Speaking Engagement: Fred Kent will lead a public forum in Savannah, GA entitled “Destination: Savannah Forward”

joshkent — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:42:08 +0000

The Metropolitan Planning Commission administered a short online survey for Chatham County residents in order to collect public feedback in preparation for the forum on creating and sustaining public places to build communities. The forum will take place at the Coastal Georgia Center.

Great Places Symposium Advances Placemaking Movement

joshkent — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 18:54:20 +0000

A few weeks ago, a group of dedicated placemakers gathered at a landmark event in Seattle, the Great Places Symposium, laying the groundwork for an even larger regional movement around the idea of place. PPS has been collaborating with the leaders of this new network, called the Great Places Forum, since its inception, and we are thrilled to highlight the Seattle region’s vibrant Placemaking network, which is working to unite like-minded people around the region around the importance of place.

The three-day conference brought together leaders from a variety of professions and fields to “celebrate and advocate for the necessity of placemaking in the vitality of our downtowns and suburbs, rural landscapes and villages.” Among the many positive results of the symposium was the drafting and signing of an unprecedented document called the Great Places Declaration. The forward-thinking spirit that this declaration embodies should be celebrated as a huge step forward for Placemaking networks everywhere, and we at PPS are delighted that the Seattle region is fully embracing the movement and the challenges that come with it.

A Landmark Symposium Sets the Stage for Greater Change

Billed as a working “think tank,” the Great Places Forum brought together the Seattle region’s Placemaking leaders July 19-21. Participants included a wide-ranging group of leaders from the fields of urban planning, municipal government, environmental studies, architecture, real estate development, international sustainability, and community organizing. Organizers billed the symposium as a way to “celebrate and advocate for the necessity of placemaking in the vitality of our downtowns and suburbs, rural landscapes and villages.”

PPS’s Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Ethan Kent attended the symposium, along with other leaders from organizations like the Trust for Public Land, the Cascade Land Conservancy, and the Urban Land Institute. Public sector leaders were also present, from Mayor Greg Nickels to Seattle City Planning Director John Rahaim, to City Councilor Richard Conlin to representatives of the Seattle Department of Transportation and many other municipalities. Earth Day founder Dennis Hayes, Great City’s Michael McGinn, also participated.

Two PPS board members, Ron Sher and Don Miles, have developed the Great Places Forum along with Karen True, its current director. Their work has created new opportunities for great public spaces to emerge and flourish in the greater Seattle region. PPS has been a part of this planning process, and we laud the Great Places Forum as huge step toward a more open, productive dialogue about place. If people and organizations with experience in Placemaking discuss and share their understanding of what makes great public spaces, their ideas gain the momentum necessary to reach more individuals, communities, and places worldwide.

The “Great Spaces Declaration”

The leaders who attended the Great Places Symposium closed the conference by signing a document called the Great Places Declaration, their shared statement of intent to foster a network of people and resources to support the creation of great places. The document voiced the basic principles and ideals that these leaders shared:

“We assert that Great Places act as a magnet, drawing people together to live, work and play in complete and sustainable communities, allowing us to preserve natural spaces and enhance the health of the planet.”

They also outlined a clear statement of intent for the future of the movement:

“We affirm these ideas and together pledge to create new policies, systems, and initiatives to shape Great Places for the enrichment of future generations.”

This is language that evokes responses, shared thinking that fosters innovation, and action that gains attention. The next step is to turn these bold declarations of intent and collaborative networks into real, tangible action. PPS is proud to see this kind of raw potential taking a tangible, constructive path among professionals in the Seattle region.

Moving forward

These far-reaching plans offer enormous potential and a significant hope for those of us committed to seeing the cause of Placemaking spread to as many active, engaged minds as possible. The Great Places Declaration and the Forum’s plans to continue spreading the word for the Placemaking movement exemplify one of PPS’s 11 Principles of Placemaking: You are never finished. We look forward to further this supporting this movement to take shape in the greater Seattle region and the around the world.

Remembering Jane Jacobs

Project for Public Spaces — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0000

1916-2006

Anyone who ever met Jane Jacobs or read her books couldn’t help but be infected by her enthusiasms. She loved cities and celebrated the life that teems within them. She articulated better than anyone how the best ideas about making cities great come not from theories and master plans but from careful observation of what goes on around us. This was a startling, radical idea when she first proposed it in the 1950s and 60s, and it changed the way North Americans think about cities.

But above all else, Jane Jacobs loved people. Whether chronicling the habits of fellow city-dwellers or organizing a campaign with her neighbors to save important places from destruction, she was always engaged in the life of her community.

It is hard to imagine a world without Jane Jacobs, harder still to imagine what shape our cities would be in had she never come along. Today her books are classics, taught in universities all over the world. Her ideas are well-known by planners, architects, and activists everywhere. But at the time The Death and Life of Great American Cities was released in 1961, she was a brave, singular voice challenging the dominant theories of the entire planning establishment. Without any formal training in city planning, she managed to transform the field. Indeed, her lack of a degree in architecture, planning or even journalism is often cited as the secret of her wisdom and innovation. She took a fresh look at what makes cities work and what makes them fail, never blinded by the assumptions and orthodoxy of a particular profession. Jane Jacobs was a true original.

One of her earliest champions was William “Holly” Whyte, then an editor at Fortune Magazine who encouraged her to write a series of articles in the late 1950s that became the basis for Death and Life. Later in life, Jane always professed a special affinity for Holly, who had gone on in the early 1970s to create the Streetlife Project, which in turn led to the founding of Project for Public Spaces. She was one of the first people to visit the PPS office in 1975, and we were fortunate to have spoken with her and shared our progress every few months in recent years. Her advice, encouragement, and dedication to the cause of making places great have been invaluable to us and to our mission.

It has become fashionable of late for certain architects and critics infatuated by high design to pooh-pooh her thinking as rigid and out-of-date. But such groundless criticism has never made even a dent in her legacy, since so many people from so many fields have been influenced and inspired by her wisdom.

We are greatly saddened by Jane Jacobs’ death yesterday, but confident that her infectious love for cities will be carried on by many followers far into the future. We will miss her dearly.

– The Staff of Project for Public Spaces

For more about the life and ideas of Jane Jacobs, see her Placemaker Profile.