Children play on the Museum of Art and History’s rooftop sculpture garden during a Placemaking workshop / Photo: Greg Larson

In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake changed the face of downtown Santa Cruz, damaging dozens of buildings and hobbling the local retail scene. The Cooper House, which had been a key public gathering space in this oceanfront city’s core, was ruined. When the site was re-developed, a larger building was placed along the street, and a smaller adjacent public space, Abbott Square, was tucked away in the middle of the block as a retail pass-through. The square never really became a real destination for downtown…but now, with the help of the adjacent Museum of Art and History, that may be about to change.

PPS’s Cynthia Nikitin and Priti Patel visited Santa Cruz recently to kick off a series of Placemaking workshops with the MAH, a cultural institution that has been re-inventing itself as a participatory community hub since bringing on Nina Simon (a past Citizen Placemaker interviewee) as director almost two years ago. The museum has outlined a new vision “to become a thriving, central gathering place where local residents and visitors have the opportunity to experience art, history, ideas, and culture.” To further that mission, the MAH is taking advantage of a 50-year lease on Abbott Square to bring the excitement within its walls out into the public realm, creating a great new destination for Santa Cruz.

Naturally, Nina and her staff brought the same innovative spirit that they’ve applied to exhibitions and events at the museum to the Placemaking Process. While hundreds of citizens and stakeholders participated in workshops and meetings over the course of several days, it was a children’s workshop organized in collaboration with one of the dads in the community, Greg Larson, that really showed off the museum’s capacity for thinking outside the box.

“The children’s workshop was exciting because it speaks to two things,” says Cynthia. “First, it showed that it’s not really far-fetched to think that kids can talk about public space and contribute really meaningfully to Placemaking. Kids have great imaginations, and they can look at an adult problem and think differently about what they want to do with it. Second, it highlighted the museum’s role as a community institution, as a creative and networked place, and so clearly spoke to that vision that the staff is working toward.”

“Kids have great imaginations, and they can look at an adult problem and think differently about what they want to do with it.” / Photo: Greg Larson

One of the most exciting things about this unique component of the process in Santa Cruz was that it grew organically out of the museum’s public engagement efforts leading up to the workshop. “One of the things we’ve heard over and over again from people is that there’s no place for families to come downtown with their kids,” Nina explains. “When I ran into Greg, a museum member and manager for an adjacent town, I invited him to the Abbott Square workshop and he asked if he could bring his daughter. He runs a dads group, and offered to put together a family component to the workshop.”

Greg worked with the MAH’s Director of Community Programs, Stacey Garcia, to plan activities to engage local kids into the Placemaking process. On the day of the event, Greg and 25 local kids (aged five to 10) joined the adults in the opening presentation on Placemaking in the workshop led by Cynthia and Priti, before breaking off for a series of adventures and brainstorming activities. The first stop was Abbott Plaza itself, where everyone was encouraged to think about ideas for the space. “We told them, ‘Imagine you could have anything you want in this square, and got them to start sharing ideas while they were in the physical space,” Greg recalls.

Next, it was up to the museum’s rooftop sculpture garden, where kids were encouraged to play on the art while considering what made the space fun, and thinking about what would make them want to come back. After that, they went back inside to do some more traditional group brainstorming, drawing their ideas on big sheets of butcher paper, and then sharing ideas with each other. Among the ideas generated were a theater space, Chinese lanterns, a giant slide, a maze, a chocolate fountain, a zipline, flowers, a climbing wall, a tunnel—even a replica of the Titanic!

Sharing ideas with the group / Photo: Greg Larson

The kids then voted on their favorites to select a few key “big ideas” to present to the grown-ups, and then spent some time coming up with three skits to act out during that presentation to illustrate their ideas for the climbing wall, maze, and tunnel. Once they were back with the adults, the skits proved to be a big hit. “The kids crawling around and over and under the tables in the room during their skits got the adults more engaged,” says Greg. “It was beyond theater in the round; the kids took the stage to the adults.”

True to form for an arts-friendly town like Santa Cruz, those adults were ready to play ball! Says Cynthia: “One of the dads worked with the city, and also teaches rope climbing, and it got him thinking, ‘You know, we could hook some guide wires between the buildings, and I could teach lessons in the plaza. It’s not that far-fetched.’ Kids wanted a zipline, and he was like, ‘You could do that, actually…’ These kids didn’t know to be cynical.”

In fact, the ideas were so well-received that, according to Nina, the kids’ contributions had a marked impact on the adults’ discussion. “You could tell that the adults really became the stewards of the kids’ ideas, in a sense. It re-oriented us to what it really means to create something that’s family-friendly.”

When you approach it the right way, Placemaking has the potential to bring out the kid in everyone. While priorities have to be determined and decisions have to be made, at the start, there is potential in every public space for an amazing new destination to emerge. Sharing freely and openly at the outset is key because, even if some of the more outlandish ideas won’t be feasible, they can help to set a tone and establish the kind of flexibility and open-mindedness that lead, ultimately, to stronger results.

“I think that the main takeaway was that it really is possible to engage kids in productive ways, parallel to adults, in a creative design process,” says Greg. “It’s important for it to be multi-modal, experiential, reflective, artistic, tactile. If there’s anything consistent to what the kids drew up, it was that the square and the art on the square needs to be engaging, or participatory as Nina would say, where they can touch it or interact with it, not simply observe it.”

We’ll be back in Santa Cruz next month. We’ll keep you posted as the new Abbott Square shapes up!

Click here to view a slideshow of the results of the kids’ workshop!

Andrew Howard

Andrew Howard is one of the founding members of Team Better Block, a group that works to implement Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper strategies for the temporary revitalization of streets and public spaces in the short-term, to inspire people to think differently about how those places could evolve. Team Better Block recently took recommendations straight from PPS’s report on how to improve the hotly-contested historic plaza at the Alamo in San Antonio, and found LQC ways to do almost everything on the list to get the ball rolling on building a more cohesive constituency permanent change.

Now, we’re working with Team Better Block on plans for the temporary transformation of the Plaza de Armas, a forlorn public space at San Antonio City Hall, and the adjacent arterial, Commerce Street. In anticipation of that event, which will take place this Saturday, December 8th, 2012, we spoke with Andrew about how his team approaches their work, and how LQC strategies are changing the planning profession in Texas and beyond.

Alamo Plaza bustles thanks to a temporary market during Team Better Block’s last San Antonio project / Photo: Better Block

What Better Block does, in terms of short-term implementation, is a pretty important part of any implementation strategy, isn’t it? These interventions may only be around for a few hours, but changing peoples’ mindsets is often a major hurdle that needs to be overcome, that you guys have kind of cracked the nut on.

The Midwest and the South have a very auto-centric culture, so that is often the first step. The test for us with a Better Block is: can we get more advocates? That’s what they wanted in San Antonio. They only had this small group of folks coming to the table and talking about the Alamo, but it’s a public space for the whole city. How do we broaden the discussion about it? That’s where we said, let’s take the PPS study and go implement it temporarily and get some data while we’re there.

The first time we got a glimpse of working with PPS, we were still kind of in the guerrilla phase of Better Block. We did the Living Plaza on Dallas City Hall. William Whyte had done a study of that space about 25 years ago, and it was sitting on the shelf. We pulled it off and we built what he’d recommended in a weekend. That was where we started to see there the power of getting out and demonstrating this stuff.

At the Plaza de Armas, they did a study on downtown transportation [note: PPS worked on the Downtown Transportation Study, which can be downloaded here], and they want to test changes to a major arterial, Commerce Street, and take it down to one lane and add pedestrian and transit amenities to it. That’s our main focus with the Better Block coming up this weekend. We’re also going to activate the space with a pop-up coffee shop, a holiday market with vendors, movable seating, a food truck. The whole idea is to try to get folks to a part of downtown San Antonio they don’t often go to, and also to get them to walk a bit further.

Based on PPS’s recommendations, Team Better Block built this “ghost gate” to give visitors a sense of height and extent of the original fortifications of the Alamo fort / Photo: Better Block

In getting in and doing these things so quickly, can you hear minds changing, so to speak? That’s the core of what a lot of this LQC stuff is about: getting people to change their minds, and see spaces differently than they had before, and to see the potential in them. Do you hear people talking about that as they’re walking around?

Definitely. It’s great to eavesdrop and hear people, both the tourists who think a Better Block space is like that all the time, and then the visitors who say “I am so glad that we live in a city that will do stuff like this.” There’s a lot of negative talk around the Alamo. It is like fast-paced learning for folks to get into a Better Block and experience it. It’s also great for engineers and planners who are locked up, working on a desk, maybe reading theory on this stuff, to get out and do it. They learn so much more quickly, and they start getting the eye. They know how to look at a place, and how to make it better afterwards. You don’t get that from theory and drawing pictures.

In San Antonio, we caught this group of young folks that had just formed a downtown leadership group. They had had some meetings, and were trying to figure out what they were going to do. They did the Better Block with us our first time in San Antonio, and it changed the whole focus of their group! They started becoming doers, and having fewer meetings.

There’s clearly an emphasis, in Team Better Block’s work, on social networks, and the idea that what you call “rapid city-revitalization” happens by connecting people. Can you talk more about how that plays into what you do?

As a planner, I always thought that, if I made the best plan, that would attract the right people to come from somewhere else and make that plan happen. What I’ve realized through Better Block is that every community already has everybody they need. They just need to activate the talented people who are already there, and shove them into one place at one time, and that place can become better really quickly.

Better Block is like a big matching service, too, because when we start working together and we’re doing that “barn-building,” folks are talking, and making friendships, and business relationships. It’s very unlike what happens at a public meeting or a charrette, where you have your dinner table manners on and you’re talking formally. Better Block is like speed dating for doers. You start building furniture out of shipping palettes and, at the end of the day, it’s like “Well hey, let’s go build a building!” There’s so much courage, and people just feel empowered, like they could do anything.

Since the network-building that you do creates so many new advocates and doers, do you consider the human capital that’s created one of the biggest legacies of these projects that you work on?

That’s a great way to put it. It’s definitely about the human capital. People focus so much on the monetary and the physical capital of a place; but with human capital, if you concentrate in a place, you can change that place. It used to be that we graded Better Blocks based on how many people came. “Oh, 5,000 people came, we won, we did it!” Now our main question is: how many advocates are still working for it a year later? Did anybody out of the Better Block become a leader?  That’s the win. We’ve definitely changed our idea about what the Better Block is supposed to do, and how to move from the temporariness to permanence.

Children play at an improvised LQC fountain at the Alamo Plaza Better Block event / Photo: Better Block

In addition to PPS, who are you working with for this Plaza de Armas project? Who’s part of the network that you’re working on developing right now?

This one is being done a lot with city council members. Every council member is having someone from their district operate a pop-up market stall. VIA is a part of this too, because they’ve got a bus stop on the plaza, so we’re going to jazz up their transit stop. I think a big part of bringing Better Block into a city is the acknowledgement of wanting to be progressive and wanting to be open to new ideas and new ways of the city operating. San Antonio’s City Hall is saying right now that they want to be one of the most progressive cities not just in Texas, but in the States. They’re open to trying new things, and they’re not going to be bound by the norms in Texas. They’re going to try out these crazy things that look like they’re from New York City.

That’s one of the best things about Team Better Block: that it’s not from a coastal city where you might expect to find a bunch of urban guerrillas; it’s from Dallas!

We’ve had to take a lot of these edgy ideas from the coasts and figure out how to recalibrate them for the south! How do we make it work in an auto-centric, hot, boot-scootin’ environment? But people are people. They like each other. They want to rub elbows.

Detroiters crowd the Placemaking Hut to vote for their favorite ideas for improving downtown spaces / Photo: PPS

What do you want to see happening in your favorite public spaces? This is one of the questions at the core of the Placemaking process, and getting responses from as many different people as possible has always been central to what we do at the Project for Public Spaces. But now, as our work in Detroit evolves, we’re taking our own oft-given advice about thinking Lighter, Quicker, and Cheaper, and testing out some new ways of gathering input and getting more people excited about shaping their public spaces.

Over the next few weeks, PPS’s Steve Davies, Elena Madison, and Meg Walker will be conducting a series of “Pop-Up Placemaking” workshops with Detroiters at the Downtown Detroit Partnership’s D:hive, an innovative social gathering space along the city’s famed Woodward Avenue corridor. Packing the punch of a standard day-long Placemaking workshop into a few hours, these specially-designed sessions will offer participants a unique opportunity to be intimately involved with the continued transformation of downtown Detroit. Workshops will take place from 5-6:30pm on December 5, 11,12, & 18.

And based on the response that we’ve been seeing at events in the Motor City recently, we’re on the edge of our seats, excited to see what people come up with. Recently, Davies, Madison, and Walker set up a “Placemaking Hut” at the Christmas Wonderfest tree-lighting ceremony and holiday market in Campus Martius Park, where people were invited to share what kinds of amenities and uses they wanted to see more of in downtown public spaces.

Upon entering the Placemaking Hut, everyone was given eight dot stickers. They were then able to peruse images of 12 different amenities and 12 different uses, and place their dots next to the images of the things that they wanted most (four from each of the two categories). This visual voting system not only made the important data-collection phase of the Placemaking process fun and interactive, it also built off of the festive atmosphere at the Christmas Wonderfest event (which attracted tens of thousands of Detroit-area residents) and generated a steady dialog between people about how downtown should evolve, putting place at the center of the discussion that evening.

The Placemaking Hut proved to be so popular, in fact, that we ran out of dots just a few hours into the festival! Considering that there were 3,000 stickers on-hand, an estimated 150 people moved through the hut per hour, providing a wealth of feedback about desired uses. That information, along with results from the upcoming Pop-Up Placemaking workshops, will be used by PPS and D:hive to craft a Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper plan for the activation of Downtown Detroit this coming summer.

Dog parks were a popular request / Photo: PPS

In case you’re thinking that 16 amenities and uses sounds a bit too prescriptive, fear not: plenty of crayons were available, and participants young and old were welcome to draw things that they wanted to see in their public spaces on a large flip chart if they couldn’t find a corresponding image on the hut’s walls. “We forgot to include a dog park image,” Davies recalled while recounting the story in the office this week. “Big mistake! So many people were using the crayons to ask for that; if you flipped through the chart, it was ‘dog park, dog park, dog park!’”

We’ll keep you posted on how things turn out at the pop-up sessions this coming month; if Detroit lives up to its burgeoning reputation as a hub of urban innovation, these Pop-Up Placemaking sessions could soon be making their way to a public space near you!

Locals mill about Silanga Field, which will soon become the Silanga Community Centre / Photo: PPS

In Nairobi, Kenya, the contrast between rich and poor neighborhoods is beyond stark.  And even though half of the city’s population lives on a mere 1.5% of the total land area, in Nairobi, public space is scarce. Since the creation, by Colonial powers in 1948, of the master plan that led to the formation of the city we now know today, little to no provision has been made for well structured common spaces for much-needed programming, activity, and services. In that same period, the city’s population has ballooned from 120,000 to more than 3.1 million people–and that’s just the official number! Nairobi is home to many informal settlements, where it’s very difficult to take an exact head count.

One of the most well-known of these settlements is Kibera, a massive slum comprised of 13 separate villages where most residents get by on less than a dollar a day. It is here where PPS has joined forces with UN-Habitat, the City Council of Nairobi, and local partners including the Kilimanjaro Initiative, KENSUP (the National Housing branch of the Kenyan Government), Chief of SOWETO (South West Township) in Kibera, and the Undugu Foundation, for one of two pilot projects in the city’s effort to create 60 great public spaces over the next several years.

Earlier this year in Kibera’s Silanga village neighborhood, PPS’s Cynthia Nikitin and Board Member Vanessa September met with community members to conduct a Placemaking workshop to generate ideas and support for the next phase of improvements to a soccer field that serves as an important recreation facility for this long-underserved community. Today residents continue to work toward the transformation of Silanga Field (which contains school facilities, a meeting room, a pottery studio, and other important resources) into what they have agreed, collectively, to re-name the Silanga Community Centre. “I have taken great delight in the confidence that is being displayed by the team in how they have taken ownership of the projects,” wrote PPS board member Vanessa September (who continues to work on the ground with partners) in a recent email. “If they have 58 more spaces to do, then the sooner they take ownership, the better!”

We have written previously on the Placemaking Blog about how dangerous social conditions produce alienating public spaces in developing world cities, especially for women. In Kibera, the desire for a safe and welcoming space for the community very clearly influences recommendations for everything from comfort to accessibility. A variety of Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper improvements are included in an as-yet-unpublished report detailing recommendations generated through the Placemaking process, with many of them focused specifically on creating a safe space for people to gather. From using fences to define the perimeter of the site (and designate entrance and exit points), to programming the space, very intentionally, with local security meetings and social programs focused on youth and good parenting, the focus on safety plays a critical role.

“The best way to make a public space safe,” the report suggests, “is by creating positive activities in and enhancing wider citizen ownership of the space.”

We often say that public spaces reflect the communities that surround them; this can be both a good thing, and a bad thing. In Nairobi, the lack of adequate public spaces reflects the stark social divisions across the city and, worse yet, reinforces them. Since Nairobians rarely come into contact with people from different socioeconomic groups, there is little upward mobility for people in places like Kibera—diminishing one of the chief benefits of urban agglomeration. The lack of space communicates to these people that their presence is undesirable. This contributes directly to the sense of isolation and desperation that makes for more dangerous neighborhoods.

In wealthy areas, meanwhile, fear of the violence created by this tension leads to more fortress-like compounds and walled golf courses when what the city really needs are great public spaces, and shared destinations where people from different neighborhoods and backgrounds can take part in the formation of a shared civic identity. Spaces like the Silanga Community Centre are steps toward a stronger Nairobi.

Presently, the UN-Habitat is working with local partners to accurately survey the site, and prepare for the RFP process in order to push forward on Silanga Field’s reconstruction. The newly appointed City Planning Director, Mrs. Rose Muema, recently presented on progress at the site both at the World Urban Forum in Naples Italy and more recently to major donors from Norway, Sweden, and Spain, “[stressing] the importance of participatory approaches to development.”

Looking north from the corner (Click to Enlarge) / Photo: Brendan Crain

In her 1958 essay “Downtown is for People,” republished online by Fortune late last year, Jane Jacobs noted the presence of a Park Avenue block that had been razed in anticipation of an office building for which the developer was struggling to raise capital. Jacobs (who had been invited to write the essay by none other than Holly Whyte) called the site “New York’s Mystery Plaza,” noting wistfully that “in the meantime, sidewalk planners can design some wonderful plazas.”

There’s a similarly ephemeral and provocative moment that one can experience in New York right now, a bit further downtown. For the time being, the block bounded by Astor Place, East 9th Street, and 3rd and 4th Avenues is sans structure: once the site of Cooper Union’s unassuming Engineering Building, is now home to a dirt pit and a couple of backhoes. The adjacent jumble of intersecting streets creates a number of thin triangular traffic islands that have long subbed in for a coordinated public space, with defiant success. In spite of the auto-centric planning so clearly on display, there are people here: coming and going, talking, performing.

The aforementioned dirt pit will be filled by a particularly egregious office block soon enough. Designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, it will feature an immense facade of dark glass that will glower over Astor Place, gobbling up more of the sky than its predecessor. But for the time being, there is a palpable sense of possibility here. The vaguely European 6-train entrance and Tony Rosenthal’s accidentally iconic Alamo sculpture appear enhanced, now seeming like hints of a grand public square in the making, backed by so much blue sky.

The same site, seen from the northeast corner (Click to Enlarge) / Photo: Brendan Crain

The buildings surrounding the site are of varying heights and colors, and with their facades open and turned toward each other across the open block, they look as if they were always meant to be seen this way, like friends chatting around the table. Even the “Sculpture for Living” is less standoffish within the context of a larger urban tableau, reading more like a comedic foil to the dignified Wanamaker block, and less like a caged peacock.

Like Jacobs’ original, this mystery plaza provides ample fodder for “sidewalk planners.” Perhaps it is a side effect of the frenetic density of its surroundings, but the block almost demands that passers-by imagine an alternate use here. It feels as if the grid itself is saying “Do you see this? I clearly intended for this to be a square.”

"New York's Mystery Plaza" in 1958 / Photo: Fortune

The mystery plaza at Astor Place will be gone soon. Long before Maki’s “Death Star” is occupied, its frame will zip the space back up. But as the city moves forward with plans to pedestrianize some of the surrounding blocks to create a more deliberate public gathering place, let’s hope that the sudden, bewitching openness created by the construction process inspires people to imagine not just what the site could have been, but how the adjacent spaces could better serve the people who use them–and to speak up. As Jacobs argued in Fortune, “planners and architects have a vital contribution to make, but the citizen has a more vital one. It is his city, after all.”

We’ll be talking more about Astor Place and its environs in the coming weeks as part of our ongoing discussion about moving towards an Architecture of Place. There is a great need, today, for more inclusive, flexible public squares and plazas that can serve as social hubs for the surrounding communities–spaces that strengthen neighborhoods and provide a rich context for architects and designers who use a place-based approach in their work. Stay tuned…

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.

Cynthia leads a workshop in Kibera. Photo: Ulrik Nielsen, Gehl Architects

Over the course of a week, I led a series of placemaking trainings with 40 staff people from seven city council departments, the Kilimanjaro Initiative, UN-Habitat, and several local organizations working on the ground in the Kenyan capital, as part of an ongoing partnership. When talking about expanding public space within the city, I kept bumping up against this assumption from the Nairobi staff  that this meant they had to buy big chunks of land and even clear people out of existing neighborhoods to make room for new parks. The idea that schoolyards and sidewalks, streets, plazas, and fire stations could be meaningful places within the city’s public realm was new to them. There’s a division, for many in Nairobi, between “Public Spaces” and spaces that merely happen to be public.

Reasons for this division aren’t hard to figure out. We worked at two specific sites during the trip, in very different neighborhoods. The first was an athletic field in the Silanga section of Kibera, purportedly the largest informal settlement in Africa. Our project was to re-think the field as a multi-use community destination, but just walking through the surrounding  neighborhood was so eye-opening. Kibera’s buildings are built mostly out of sheets of corrugated metal, and its streets are packed dirt. The main (and only) thoroughfare here, Kibera Road, is a pretty amazing place. It has an intense mix of activity, all right out there on the street: a huge variety of vendors, people getting their hair braided, people cooking, socializing, reading the paper, kids doing their homework. But the infrastructure is terrible. It’s a clear-cut example of how Nairobi has so much public space that people don’t even recognize as public space.

Shops along Kibera Road. Photo: Ulrik Nielsen, Gehl Architects

Back in the center of the city, our second site was a very formal English garden donated to the city by the Jeevanjee family. I visited the site with several members of the family and the city council who had recently been to New York. They’d seen successful public spaces all over the city, and when we visited the garden, I said ‘Think of this as the Bryant Park of Nairobi!’ The space had been kept very pristine, and they didn’t have an idea of how it could evolve. Once we started talking about it with Bryant Park as a reference point, they got really excited. The idea that this could still be a lovely green place that was also full of activity was something that sunk in very quickly.

"Think of this as the Bryant Park of Nairobi!" Photo: Ulrik Nielsen, Gehl Architects

Promoting the idea that existing spaces could become really wonderful pieces of public life was so important on this trip. The idea that you can do many small things instead of a few big things–that placemaking doesn’t have to be capital-intensive–is critical in a city like Nairobi, where so much economic activity is still informal. Public spaces there have to provide a way for people to earn a living. Vendors, hawkers, performers: these are people whose livelihoods depend on active public spaces. Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper interventions that change things right now are what’s going to raise the quality of life in Nairobi; not big new parks on the edge of town that take years to build.

Children play at the Silanga athletic field next to a sign advertising coming infrastructural improvement. Photo: Ulrik Nielsen, Gehl Architects

At one point, I showed a slideshow of possible examples for how the athletic field in Silanga could be made into a more vibrant hub for the community, and the group had already come up with a lot of the same ideas on their own. It’s one thing to suggest to people what they could do; it’s an entirely different thing to show them, ‘This is what they did in a slum in Rio; this what they did in a slum in Colombia, where the neighborhood used to be completely run by gangs,’ and to have them see that what they’ve envisioned is totally possible. When a few dedicated people take ownership of a place and band together to push through existing misconceptions about what public space “should” look like and how it can function for the people that want to use it–that’s where placemaking starts.

Work on the two pilot sites will continue, spearheaded by the Nairobi City Council and supported by UN-Habitat (whose international headquarters are located in the nearby Girgiri neighborhood) with PPS providing technical support.  Two down, 58 more to go!

San Antonio's iconic Alamo Plaza / Photo: Blondie5000 via Flickr

Downtown San Antonio is probably best-known for its public spaces: the RiverWalk, the Alamo, and Main Plaza chief among them. But the local perception has long been that the city’s core is for tourists, not residents. Luckily, there is a considerable amount of energy being devoted to changing this perception, and remaking downtown as a place for people. Just this past weekend, the city hosted its second Síclovía, which saw two miles of the central Broadway corridor closed to automobile traffic. The event, which also included San Antonio’s first Better Block project, drew more than 40,000 people out into the streets for a day-long celebration of public space–a response that surprised even the event’s organizers.

“We’re just so excited, because other cities who have a stronger reputation for this kind of thing came, and they were blown out of their shoes,” said the city’s Health Program Manager, Maggie Thompson, who organized the city’s first Síclovía last October, and built upon the success of that event with assistance from the federal Communities Putting Prevention to Work grant program. “After the first one, there was such overwhelmingly positive support from the public. The mayor came out as a fan of this initiative, the city manager came out and spoke. It now has big public support.”

Síclovía 2012 Route Map

Downtown’s sidewalks and plazas will remain very much in the public eye this coming week: the city will mark the 176th anniversary of the massacre at the Alamo with public ceremonies this Tuesday and Wednesday, while the annual Luminaria festival will flood the area with color over the weekend. And while major events can help to enliven spaces in the short term, there are real and concerted ongoing efforts to make liveliness the default for downtown. PPS has been working with several city agencies, non-profit organizations, and companies on a variety of projects, and from where we sit, downtown San Antonio looks like it’s really building some serious momentum.

Since last summer, PPS’s Phil Myrick has been working closely with the Center City Development Office under Assistant City Manager Pat DiGiovanni, leading a series of workshops and trainings to teach city staff about the placemaking process. PPS also recently began helping the city revitalize and reconceptualize Alamo Plaza and Plaza de Valero. These places have played an important role in the city’s history; this has led to their popularity with tourists, but has had the unintended side-effect of driving many locals away. One of the main goals in re-thinking these spaces has been to focus on changes that will open downtown up to a wider variety of uses. Speaking specifically about Alamo Plaza (for which there will be a Placemaking Community Meeting this Wednesday evening), Phil explains: “We’re trying to think of it primarily in terms of its huge potential to be a great city square that becomes an anchor for activity in downtown, and makes people want to come back to the city center to work, live have fun, bring their children, and generally have a wonderful experience.”

Beyond downtown’s historic plazas, the city is also gearing up for major overhaul of HemisFair Park and its surrounding streets. Officials have kick-started an effort to craft a new Downtown Transportation Plan for the area around HemisFair, and will host the second public meeting on this initiative tomorrow night.

The energy around placemaking in San Antonio is starting to spread out into the city’s neighborhoods, as well. Last summer, PPS launched Power of 10, a website where San Antonians could share their ideas for how downtown could be improved. Power of 10 generated roughly 300 ideas from the public, and we’re now working with Texas Public Radio to launch a citywide version of the site in May, which will lead to the implementation of citizen-sourced Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper projects later in the year. We’re also working with Rackspace Corporate Headquarters to create a new public park for the northeast side neighborhood surrounding the former shopping mall that the company is redeveloping as its base.

San Antonio, in short, is a city that ‘gets it.’ Back to Phil: “I think that people are going to look back on this moment as a real turning point. We’ve been happy to be involved in guiding [city officials'] thinking, but they’ve lined up an incredible slate of projects.”  If you’re interested in learning more, make sure to check out one of this week’s public meetings on the Downtown Trasportation Plan (Tuesday) or the Alamo Plaza re-design (Wednesday), and keep an eye out for May’s citywide Power of 10 launch. We’ll be keeping you posted!

Photo: Blondie5000 via Flickr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Houston’s Market Square Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s an excerpt:

 

Detroit’s Campus Martius Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The surprise winner: The Circle in Normal, Ill. Photo: HOERR SCHAUDT landscape architects

Chances are you didn’t flash on The Circle in Uptown Normal, Ill., which came out on top in the crowd-sourced poll the folks at Planetizen conducted with our help. As Tim Halbur wrote at Planetizen, “Passion was the rule of the day for our Top 100 Public Spaces survey project,” and the people of Normal turned out to be surprisingly passionate. (For the record, Central Park placed at #32, Rittenhouse Square at #17, and Stanley Park at #59.)

Let’s take a closer look at the not-so-obvious #1, which obviously inspires quite a lot of local passion. Normal’s Circle isn’t just any old roundabout. It’s a multifunctional shared space that provides entertainment and activities for the community and visitors alike all year long. The Circle also has sustainability cred: It recycles stormwater, recirculating it into the public drinking fountains and irrigation system. It’s a pleasant place to sit and relax, and it’s home to  a farmers market as well.

Here are the rest of the Top 10:

2. Temple Plaza, New Haven, Conn.
3. Campus Martius Park, Detroit, Mich.
4. Cal Anderson Park, Seattle, Wash.
5. CityArt Walking Sculpture Tour, Mankato, Minn.
6. Bryant Park, New York, N.Y.
7. Pittsburgh Market Square, Pittsburgh, Pa.
8. Arts District at Bay Street, Bellingham, Wash.
9. Balboa Park, San Diego, Ca.
10. Church Street Marketplace District, Burlington, Vt.

Many of the spaces in the top 10 are projects that have been redeveloped in recent years in order to create a balance of form and functionality that serves the community, giving residents a sense of pride in and excitement for their neighborhoods. They are also places that serve as destinations, attracting visitors from outside the community. They will likely continue to thrive and evolve over time.

Some of the places on the list have been integral parts of the community for over 100 years, but it was only after they were redeveloped with an eye toward Placemaking that they found new life — Pittsburgh’s Market Square (#7) is one such example. After many redevelopment attempts over the years, the latest refurbishment of Market Square has finally landed on a successful combination — embracing historical elements of the original square, while at the same time redesigning aspects that were less successful. It is now a safe place for children to play, an appealing spot for workers from surrounding buildings to take a break, a venue for community-wide events, and much more.

The Planetizen survey points to the success of revitalization projects that are bringing neighborhoods all over the world back to life. Perhaps it’s a sign of yet more positive things to come.

For the full list and more in-depth information, head over to Planetizen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Available Dates and Locations:

October 20, 2011 Syracuse, NY
October 21, 2011 Batavia, NY
October 26, 2011 Saranac Lake, NY
November 7, 2011 Farmingdale, NY
November 9, 2011 Albany, NY
November 15, 2011 Brooklyn, NY

How can you create healthy places in your community? Photo: Wally Gobetz via Flickr.

The Healthy Places Training Program presents a holistic approach to improving population by planning active transportation systems that connect to key destinations, including healthy food hubs that eliminate food deserts and support local business. The training program will work with local, regional, and state public health officials, along with other key stakeholders, to understand and implement policies and programs that encourage physical activity and healthy eating — while also revitalizing the streets, parks, and gathering spaces within their communities.

The trainings will be one day each, and will include presentations and interactive exercises, including a facilitated on-site analysis activity. Each training will educate practitioners and stakeholders on best practices in fostering active transportation and healthy food programs through markets — using policy, design, and community engagement actions. Training instructors will review methods and tools that health officials and communities can use to break through bureaucratic silos, take personal action, and engage likely and unlikely partners. We’ll be talking about how these strategies can enable people to transform their community into a place that promotes physical activity and healthy eating, while simultaneously improving public space and community development.

PPS instructors will use their experience in working with a wide range of agencies, organizations, and interest groups, along with case studies and recent research, to demonstrate the need, opportunities, and methods by which community health can be improved.

A new “Healthy Places Audit” will be developed for use during the trainings. The audit will allow participants to understand first-hand the barriers and possibilities of changing the built environment to improve public health.

The trainings will be delivered by Aurash Khawarzad and Kelly Verel of PPS. Come with your community partners (planners, county officials, business owners, etc.) to this FREE event.

We wish to thank our partners for their collaboration on delivering these regional trainings.

Batavia Town Center Brownsville Partnership Recreation Center
CNY Community Foundation
Elsmere Fire Department
Harrietstown Town Center at Saranac Lake
Sustainability Institute at Molloy College
Vision Long Island

Photo: Wally Gobetz via Flickr.

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

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

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

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

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

Putnam Block Party from adele pham on Vimeo.

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

A huge interactive map was part of the exhibit in Sofia's central square. Photo: Architects for Sofia.

As civil society has become more vibrant and the new social institutions have become more robust, people have begun to see the potential of their public spaces in a completely new way. There is a growing eagerness to make those places better. It’s a revelation for people to realize that they can take ownership of these places and make the change happen themselves.

I recently returned to my hometown, the capital city of Sofia, at the invitation of Architects for Sofia, an association of younger architects. They invited me to lead a series of discussions and workshops introducing local leaders, architects, designers, and planners to the theory and practice of Placemaking, and to begin developing a strategy for improving public spaces in the capital and for strengthening the network of public spaces in Sofia. (PPS activities in Sofia were supported by the Municipality of Sofia, the Sofia Development Association, the Chamber of Architects in Bulgaria, and industry partners.) The annual Johns Hopkins Conference of International Urban Fellows Association was also taking place in Sofia at the time, with a focus on the management of public spaces. It was a great chance to get a glimpse of where the city could be headed.

The public realm: It belongs to us
For many years in the post-communist era, efforts to change cities were focused on “big” infrastructure, with public spaces and parks seen as a “fluffy” amenity that didn’t require immediate attention. But as Bulgaria has stabilized, that, too, has changed. Now ordinary people and professionals alike are seeing the potential and importance of public spaces, and asking how they can take an active part in making their cities more livable.

People came up with plenty of ideas for improving Sofia's public spaces. Photo: Architects for Sofia

The architectural legacy of communism includes huge apartment blocks with surrounding green space whose ownership isn’t always clear. It is in these places that the first citizen-led and volunteer initiatives in Sofia sprang up. Some of the efforts are small-scale — like parents who got together to plant gardens or repaint playground equipment (made out of Soviet tank steel, these Bulgarian playgrounds are one piece of public infrastructure that won’t break!). Larger groups have organized around issues such as improving conditions for bicycling.

Looking outward
Bulgaria has always been a geographically provincial place, at the outer edge of one empire or another. And so change has come more slowly here than it has in the Soviet bloc countries of Central Europe, such as the Czech Republic, Poland, or Hungary.

But since Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, the country has been looking outward more and improvement appears attainable. People can travel easily around Europe now. They see residents of cities around the world — not just Paris, but also former communist capitals such as Budapest and Prague — who feel pride in their places. They even see smaller towns around the country sprucing up their main streets and central parks to the delight of their citizens. And they ask themselves, why not in Sofia? A few years back the answers were: “It’s always harder in the big cities; people don’t care as much; they don’t feel ownership; the bureaucratic barriers are too great; and so on…”

Today things seem different. A younger generation, with almost no memory of “the old way” of doing things, is coming of age. Expatriates are returning from abroad, seeing their homeland as a place of opportunity for the first time. Even city councils and municipal governments seem to be poised for experiments and ready to do things differently in the public realm. Bulgaria’s citizens are coming to demand more of their government and a much higher quality of life in their cities. And they are ready to be a part of making it happen.

Young architects, planners, and designers in Bulgaria are open to new ways of doing things. Photo: Architects for Sofia.

Professionals are also shifting their focus. After years of breakneck residential and commercial development fueled by the rapid privatization of the economy, there’s a renewed interest among architects and designers in the public realm, in part because that’s where the money is now. Urban planning as an independent academic discipline is young in Bulgaria — it’s only been around for 5 or 10 years as a field of study distinct from design and architecture. No longer the poor stepchild of architecture and social policy, the discipline has broken away from its dogmatic socialist past and is growing. Today, there’s a new crop of professionals who are young, energized, and ready to contribute their skills to improving their cities.

Using Placemaking to improve Sofia’s public spaces
It’s that new generation of architects, designers, planners, landscape architects, artists and NGOs that fuels some of Bulgaria’s most promising experiments in Placemaking. Architects for Sofia, my partners on this trip, is a nonprofit created in May 2010 that advocates for great public spaces around the city. Their website, Sofia 2020, is dedicated to generating ideas from the public and from other architects about improving Sofia’s public built environment.

An important component of building a Placemaking strategy for Sofia was to conduct a demonstration Placemaking workshop in a prominent public space in order to show the potential of this methodology for eliciting ideas, building consensus and identifying “lighter, quicker, cheaper” improvements that could be implemented right away. On the second day of my visit, local planners, architects, landscape architects, sociologists, psychologists, artists, anthropologists, and journalists came together to brainstorm ideas and build a vision in a demonstration Placemaking workshop focused on one of the most central public spaces in Sofia – the plazas and park spaces surrounding the National Palace of Culture.

The ideas started popping up right away — repurposing a derelict monument from the communist era into a place for rock-climbing and graffiti art; transforming a parking lot into an event area, complete with a carousel and games for kids; clearing up overgrown green areas and turning them into gardens, dog runs, and tot lots; refurbishing water fountains; replacing amenities; creating areas where youth and seniors mix and learn from each other; and many more.

Following the workshop, Architects for Sofia staged an outdoor exhibit in one of the discussed spaces and invited citizens to re-imagine all the places around the Palace of Culture. They created a huge and beautiful rendering of the ideas generated in the Placemaking workshop and then invited people to leave their comments and suggestions directly on the plan. (The place where the map was hanging was actually on the map itself.) The Bulgarian National News Agency covered the exhibit, a sign of changing attitudes toward public participation in the planning process.

The next generation of Bulgarians is ready for change. Photo: Architects for Sofia

The exhibit is just a first step in demonstrating the benefits and potential for Placemaking in Sofia. I am hoping to return soon to help with developing an implementation plan for some of the ideas that came out of this very public process, and to continue a discussion about the best practices and most appropriate models for managing important public spaces in Sofia. Among the ideas we hope to pursue with city council members and municipal administrators is the concept of establishing a conservancy or nonprofit association to manage, program, maintain and develop the public spaces of the Palace of Culture.

As we gear up for this continued effort,  one thing has becomes clear: The people of Sofia are ready to make a better city for themselves — not an imitation of other European capitals, but an authentically Bulgarian great place.

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

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

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

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

From an article in the Toronto Star:

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

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

What happened next was unexpected.

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: ammiiirrrr via Flickr

The Square is the Center of City-wide Placemaking Campaign

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

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

Building a Vision for the Heart of Mississauga

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

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

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

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

How the Placemaking Process Created a New Square for Mississauga

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

Placemaking has Paid Off in Mississauga’s Celebration Square

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

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

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

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

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

Barcelona, Spain

What constitutes a public space? Where do public and private jurisdictions end? Should the private sector be involved in managing public spaces?

Cynthia Nikitin

These questions were hotly contested at the recent public space conference “What’s the Place for Public Space in our Cites?” hosted by French think-tank The City Factory/La Fabrique de la Cité.  This convening marked the first academic and professional dialogue amongst French cities, professionals, and researchers as to what constitutes a public space. I kicked things off with an opening address on “What are good public spaces?”

It seemed like the majority of the French contingency was completely convinced that it is the job of municipal government  to build, provide, and manage public spaces whereas we in the US and Hamburg Germany have found public-private partnerships to be very successful and viable in the long term.

Check out this video by The City Factory/La Fabrique de la Cité. It’s a great exploration of the French perspective on public spaces.

[vimeo video_id="23487065" width="400" height="300" title="Yes" byline="Yes" portrait="Yes" autoplay="No" loop="No" color="ff0179"]

We also talked about how to measure the value of public spaces and what elements are most important to people (in London, Hamburg, Paris and Barcelona); what is public vs. private space; whether would BID’s would work in France; how transportation impacts cities; and highlighted the importance both of managing public spaces and engaging communities in defining, visioning, and designing them.

No matter the weather, people flock to Barcelona's Las Ramblas

Las Ramblas at night (Barcelona, Spain)

Next Steps

Next year’s conference will explore the issues related to the differing functions of public spaces in the global north vs. the global south and further discuss the various models of privately owned public space, privately managed publicly owned space, and public/private partnerships for maintaining, programming and building public space.  Stay tuned!

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Meg MacIver contributed to this post.

By Jay Walljasper

The influence of the new digital commons in democratic uprisings from Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain has been chronicled at length in news reports from the Middle East, with Facebook, twitter and other social media winning praise as dictatorbusters.

But the importance of a much older form of commons in these revolts has earned scant attention—the public spaces where citizens rally to voice their discontent, show their power and ultimately articulate a new vision for their homelands. To celebrate their victory over the Mubarak regime, for example, protesters in Cairo jubilantly returned to Tahrir Square, where the revolution was born, to pick up trash.

Tahrir Square in Egypt, by Jonathan Rashad on Flickr

It’s the same story all over the Middle East.  In Libya’s capital city of Tripoli, people express their aspirations and face bloody reprisals in Green Square and Martyr’s Square. In Bahrain, they boldly march in Pearl Square in the capital city of Manama. In Yemen, protests have taken place in public spaces near the university in Sanaa, which students renamed Tahrir Square. Kept out of the central Revolution Square in Tehran by the repressive government, Iranian dissidents gather in Valiasr Square and Vanak Sqaure.

Last week in Tunisia, they changed the name of the main square in Tunis to honor Mohammad Bouazizi, an unlicensed street vendor whose suicide in December in response to government harassment sparked the revolution that toppled the regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

The course of recent history was rewritten by events happening in Prague’s Wenceslas Square as dissidents ousting an oppressive regime in December 1989 helped bring down Communism. Those protests were inspired in part by events in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that seized the world’s imagination earlier that year when democracy activists unsuccessfully challenged the power of China’s dictatorship.

This is not just an Old World thing. The Boston Common has been a sight of protests, and public gatherings for three centuries. In 1713, two hundred Bostonians protested food shortages in the city and in 1969 100,000 protested the Vietnam War.

The state capitol in Madison, where thousands of workers now protest the Wisconsin governor’s fierce attacks on collective bargaining rights, represent another case of a public commons becoming a staging ground for political resistance. The capitol, which sits right in the heart of downtown Madison, was nominated to our list of Great Public Spaces of the world.

The people rallying behind public sector union workers at the Capital are actually protected by the Wisconsin state constitution, which forbids the legislature from denying public access to the building when it is in session. State law does permit capitol groundskeepers to clear the building in an emergency, presumably on orders of the governor, but those groundskeepers are presumably members of the same union the governor wants to crush.

This all shows that the exercise of democracy depends upon having a literal commons where people can gather as citizens—a square, Main Street, park or other public space that is open to all.

Tahrir Square Egypt on January 26, 2011

An alarming trend in American life is the privatization of our public realm. As corporate run shopping malls replaced downtowns as the center of action, we lost some of our public voice. You can’t organize a rally, hand out flyers, or circulate a petition in a shopping mall without the permission of the management, who almost certainly will say no because they don’t want to distract shoppers’ attention from the merchandise. That’s why you see few benches or other gathering spots inside malls, which limits our abilities to even discuss the issues of the day (or any other subject) with our fellow citizens.

Of course, public spaces enrich our lives in many ways beyond protests. Local commons become the site of celebrations, festivals, art events, memorial services and other expressions of a community.

The moment when I first became aware of the importance of public spaces was when the Minnesota Twins won their first ever World Series in 1987. I did not have tickets to the game but gathered hopefully with thousands of others outside the stadium in Minneapolis to share in the joy of the victory. When the Twins won the game, thousands more poured out of the ballpark into the streets and we all marched to…where? Minneapolis has no downtown square or landmark gathering place so we milled around the streets for a while—an unsatisfying way to celebrate a World Series championship. If it had been the Red Sox, everyone would head for the Boston Common. We weren’t so lucky.

I’ve often wondered if this lack of a central commons in Minneapolis and most other American communities somehow inhibits our civic expression. With no place to voice our views as citizens, do we become more passive about what happens to our country and our future? I don’t know the answer, but I imagine Hosni Mubarak wishes he had built a shopping mall in Tahrir Square.

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This piece also appeared as:

• From Middle East to Madison, Justice Depends on Public Spaces on On the Commons
• From Tunisia to Egypt, Democratic Expression Depends on Public Spaces on the Huffington Post
• People, Power and Public Spaces on Yes! Magazine.org