A map of the area under observation.

William “Holly” Whyte’s studies have helped us understand how people interact in public spaces. The studies, however, were performed during the 1970s, before there was such a strong presence of electronic media as there is right now. Inspired by Holly’s methods and curious to determine how speakers affect the use of public space, I recently spent two weeks observing one of the spaces that Whyte studied. I was particularly interested in determining if music and sound changed the nature of pedestrian interactions.

The South Street Seaport district is made up of a series of pedestrian streets located on the southeastern edge of Lower Manhattan’s Financial District. The area is located close to important tourist destinations like City Hall, Battery Park and the Brooklyn Bridge. It is, in many ways, an outdoor shopping mall. Vehicular traffic is cut off from the street, and–instead of cars–one can find permanent and semi-permanent commercial kiosks scattered all around. Restaurant terraces also spread onto the streets, taking up more pedestrian space that is normally allowed on commercial thoroughfares in Manhattan.

I performed my observational research at the intersection of the Seaport’s dock and the FDR freeway. This space, physically set apart from the rest of the Seaport’s streets by the massive, six-lane, elevated highway, is a place with great acoustics. It is a strategic place from which to bounce sound.

The FDR freeway makes the area a strategic place from which to bounce sound / Photos: Alan Grabinsky

I visited the place three times over the course of two weeks: on a sunny Saturday afternoon (4-6pm), a rainy Monday at mid-day (12-2pm) and a rainy Friday morning (10-12am). As one might expect, Saturday afternoon was when the space was the most crowded. On Monday and Friday, a smaller crowd was still milling about. Yet even if the number of people using the space changed drastically, the uses of the space did not. As mentioned earlier, the space is mainly a destination for tourists, with companies like the Circle Line Ferry and Blazing Saddles Rental Bikes capitalizing on the constant flow of national and international tourists that move about the district.

The area where I performed my research was particularly noisy, with sound coming from the river and colliding with noises coming from inland. I heard the occasional squawking and flapping of seagulls and the periodical sound of a boat horn (coming from the New York Water Taxi). Added to these noises were the constant whooshing of cars on the FDR, the squealing, hissing brakes of tourist buses as they stop to pick up visitors, and the shouts and chatter of tourists and tour guides. In such an acoustically charged environment, any sound that is planned and specifically targeted to someone immediately stands out. This is the case with speakers, and their function to attract attention from customers.

Mapping the South Street Seaport’s soundscape / Photo: Alan Grabinsky

The interesting thing about how and where the speakers were placed was that the sonic territory claimed by each one of them did not overlap with the others (see map above). Apparently, the only sound that drowned the other ones was the sound NYC Water Taxi horn, due to its particular strength. It is as if the noise within the space was being self regulated by the users (or a third party) to keep the sound levels comfortable for the pedestrians: it seemed to be an example of the subtle, equilibrating nature of public behavior that seemed to fascinate Whyte.

Most speakers were set up inconspicuously throughout the area, all of them facing towards the main pedestrian path. I did not see any outdoor speakers set up for internal enjoyment within a business. Restaurants like TGI Fridays have speakers facing the pedestrian pathways under the FDR. The NYC Water Taxi station has speaker that call the person in the line. There are also speakers blasting music from a stand of t-shirts. Individuals were also using portable speakers, especially tour guides, who used attached them to their belts in order to talk to the crowd.

Amongst the most distinct sounds heard in the port was of Middle Eastern music, coming out of a Hot Dog/Hallal Food stand. The cart had an old speaker set up on the roof, carefully protected by an umbrella (picture below). This speaker was especially loud on Saturday and was quieter during the weekdays.

This vendor strategically uses sound to attract hungry tourists craving an “exotic” lunch / Photos: Alan Grabinsky

The ironic thing about this particular set up was that the vendor was actually listening to private music on his iPhone while the music played out loud. This allowed me to deduce that the speaker played music that was relevant for the customers, not for him. This music was used to make the hungry tourist crave an “exotic” platter—and it worked. Situated as it was under the FDR Drive, the noise that came out of this speaker would bounce from the highway into the dock, attracting hungry tourists that had just gotten off one of the boats.

As visitors move through space, they enter certain sonic atmospheres and are drawn to—or repelled by—the sounds and noises that they encounter.  The South Street Seaport is an example of a highly charged sonic environment where sound-making machines are used to influence pedestrian activity. Aware of the many ways in which sound works, businesses have strategically set up their sound equipment in order to draw attention to their merchandise. Making sound in this space thus becomes a way of claiming territory; it is a way of asserting one’s presence in the public realm. By making sound, one is actually transforming the uses of the built environment. In this case, the freeway structure becomes an amphitheater, making the public space a stage from which to call out to the passing crowd.

Abandoned public baths along the Dún Laoghaire waterfront / Photo: Gary Toth

Places, like many things, go through cycles—and even the grandest of public spaces can wind up looking a bit worn and forlorn. Last month, PPS’s Fred Kent, Gary Toth, and Kathy Madden traveled to the wonderfully bucolic community of Dún Laoghaire, Ireland, to conduct one of our How to Turn a Place Around training workshops. The area between Dún Laoghaire’s waterfront and high street is picture-perfect at first glance, but the 30 workshop participants quickly identified many underlying flaws. Led by the PPS team, these locals recognized assets that together represented a “gold mine” of Placemaking potential, and developed some wonderfully creative ideas for knitting together the area’s public spaces to create a truly extraordinary destination.

Dún Laoghaire, a suburban seaside town about 7.5 miles south of Dublin along Dublin Bay, has long been nourished by its access to the sea—first as a sea base for Ireland to carry out raids on Britain and Gaul, and later as a commercial shipping center. In 1821, Ireland decided to build a harbor here due to increasing difficulty for ships to navigate, berth and transfer cargo along the River Liffey in Dublin (at one point, shipwrecks rose to literally hundreds per year off the coast). As a result, a new town center developed uphill along a former military road, and came to be called George’s Street. Ireland’s first railway started in Dublin and terminated in Dún Laoghaire (then called Kingstown), establishing Dún Laoghaire as a preferred suburb of the capital. Ever since, the fortunes of the town’s waterfront and its high street have been tied together.

George's Street, briefly pedestrianized, was re-opened to auto traffic in 2008 / Photo: Gary Toth

Dún Laoghaire was one of the Irish centers that began to experience decline when Ireland accelerated its construction of big freeways like the M11 and the M50 in the 1990s (just a few decades after the same strategy destroyed Main Streets across the US). George’s Street now suffers from over 30 vacancies along its length. The street was briefly pedestrianized at the start of the new millennium. Due to shop owners’ complaints and a lack of a sufficient revitalization of the street, one way traffic was restored in 2008. The waterfront has, similarly, lost a lot of its luster. Elements like the public baths, which flourished until 1997, are no longer functioning; some are falling into disrepair.

How to Turn a Place Around (HTTAPA), which is designed to enhance the impact of designers, planners, and other professionals by illustrating how their efforts to revitalize public spaces can strengthen existing communities, got a few tweaks for its first Irish audience. The course included a session on Streets as Places and a Street Audit. The focus was on George’s Street and a parallel strip of the harbor between the East Pier and City Hall, an area that provides a solid foundation for a great waterfront district, but that faces a lot of challenges. HTTAPA focuses on the idea that, because people are holistic thinkers and see their world in an integrated way, engaging the people who live and work in a space is the best way to turn everything upside down, and take places from inadequate to extraordinary.

A panoramic view of the harbor from the Grand Marine Hotel / Photo: Gary Toth

On the first afternoon, the attendees evaluated six distinct sites in the downtown area of the waterfront via a process we call the Place Game, which helps attendees to better understand these sites and the connections between them from their own perspective. The sites included: Carlisle Pier and its entrance area; entry areas in front of the East and Ferry Terminal Piers; the Pavilion, a newer public space created when the airspace over the train line to and from Dublin was covered over and landscaped; and a plaza alongside the new library, currently under construction.

Kent, Madden, and Toth guided participants through the Placemaking process, helping them to identify challenges and brainstorm a range of solutions, from short-term, inexpensive fixes that could start to change the way that other residents of Dún Laoghaire thought about the waterfront and start building local momentum immediately, all the way up to creating a long-term vision for the area.

On the following day, participants conducted a Street Audit at five sites—three along Marine Road and two on George’s Street. Guided by the Streets as Places concept and observation of these sites, the team came to understand the important role that streets could play in knitting together the various destinations within the vibrant downtown district that they’d imagined. The broad corridor of Marine Drive was identified as a critical lynchpin in their vision, as it represents the greatest opportunity for linking George’s Street to the waterfront.

Harsh streetscaping on Marine Drive, between the water and George's Street / Photo: Gary Toth

Below, we’ve mapped the ideas that were generated for central Dún Laoghaire during the HTTAPA training. If you are working on a public space project in your own city, take a look—and if you’re interested in learning more about the Placemaking process and the various strategies and concepts behind creating a great place, you’re in luck! We’ll be offering another HTTAPA training here in New York City in just two weeks (April 19-20). If you’re interested, email Casey Wang: cwang@pps.org.

View How to Turn Dún Laoghaire Around in a larger map

MAP KEY
DARK BLUE AREAS: Sites analyzed on during the waterfront Place Game evaluation
LIGHT BLUE AREAS: Sites analyzed on the second day of HTTAPA through PPS’s Street Audit process
PINK LINES: Existing streets and paths that need to be re-engineered to restore balance & re-thought via the Placmaking process
YELLOW LINES: New paths that could be engineered to improve connectivity throughout the downtown

Downtown Traverse City, MI in early July during the National Cherry Festival. Image © Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau

Interest in the idea of Placemaking and Place-based Governance has been ‘percolating’ around the world during the past several years as people are looking for new models for economic growth and for creating place capital, the shared wealth that drives thriving communities.

One center of this ‘percolation’ is in Michigan where the new Governor, Rick Snyder, used the announcement of his first Special Message to the Michigan Legislature to demonstrate the important role that Placemaking could play in the state’s future.

Recognizing the successful efforts of various organizations including the Michigan Municipal League, The Michigan Land Use Institute, and the Michigan State University Land Policy Institute, the governor’s Director of Strategic Planning, Bill Rustem, helped craft a Special Message with an unprecedented focus on Placemaking at both the state and local levels:

The Governor’s Special Message on Community Development and Local Government Reforms to the Michigan State Legislature, March 21, 2011:

“Neighborhoods, cities and regions are awakening to the importance of ‘place’ in economic development. They are planning for a future that recognizes the critical importance of quality of life to attracting talent, entrepreneurship and encouraging local businesses. Competing for success in a global marketplace means creating places where workers, entrepreneurs, and businesses want to locate, invest and expand. This work has been described as a “sense of place” or “place-based economic development” or simply “placemaking.”

Economic development and community development are two sides of the same coin. A community without place amenities will have a difficult time attracting and retaining talented workers and entrepreneurs, or being attractive to business.

Each community contributes to the overall success of its region. People, companies and talent do not move to specific communities- they move to regions. Being globally competitive as a region requires understanding, mapping and pooling regional resources and assets. Local governments, the private sector, schools, higher education and nongovernmental and civic organizations must collaborate to make Michigan’s economic regions, and ultimately the state, competitive.”

According to Arnold Weinfeld, director of Strategic Initiatives and Federal Affairs at the Michigan Municipal League, “Placemaking is a positive approach to recreating our economies and communities for the 21st century.”

PPS and Placemaking in Michigan

In early 2011, Fred Kent of Project for Public Spaces gave the keynote address at Michigan’s first Placemaking Summit.  And over the past decade, some of PPS’s signature projects have been in Michigan.  The new Campus Martius Square in downtown Detroit has become a community magnet and has attracted over $700 million in new investment around it. Most significantly, Compuware, a computer firm, moved its headquarters and 4000 employees from the suburbs to a new building adjacent to the square. “Compuware would not have come downtown without the park,” notes Bob Gregory of Detroit 300. “They didn’t want just a building. They wanted a lively district, where their workers would have things to do.”

Campus Martius, Detroit

The revitalization of Eastern Market, underway today, was made possible by PPS’s planning and technical assistance dating back in 1998.  More recently, with the support of the Ruth Mott Foundation, PPS has completed a three year Placemaking program in downtown Flint, and new vitality is emerging in places ranging from Riverbank Park to the Flint Farmers Market.

Over the last 5 years, PPS has also given keynotes at the Michigan Association of Planning, the Michigan Municipal League and to the Michigan health community.   PPS has also facilitated and led many Placemaking trainings and workshops in Midland, Dearborn, Detroit, Holland, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, and other cities.

Michigan State and Local Authorities to Prioritize Placemaking

Mike Finney, director of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and leader of the Economic Development Executive Group, was directed to engage state agencies and authorities to prioritize the following points and to issue a report on their progress by the end of the year:

• Identify ways to foster and promote collaboration among entities engaged in economic development and Placemaking activities.
• Maximize under-utilized resources throughout the state, particularly in urban communities and rural communities.
• Establish a process for evaluating the performance of economic development and Placemaking activities.
• Support investment programs that deliver measurable, positive results.
• Encourage new initiatives that support local and regional programs involved in economic development and Placemaking.
• Recognize successful state, regional, and local economic development and Placemaking programs that can be role models for groups around the state.
• Promote best practices for local and regional economic development and for Placemaking activities.
• Partner with local economic development and civic groups to fully understand the needs of the community

The Potential for a New Michigan

Orienting the state’s economic development strategy around creating and sustaining great places and using a new, collaborative approach towards economic development built on broad, community-based partnerships makes it possible for the creative entrepreneurial spirit of Michigan’s citizens to emerge.

Crowds at the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City, MI. Image © Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau

Placemaking is a catalyst that provides a way of not only playing off the natural assets that exists within every community but also strengthening partnerships between communities and government.  Because Placemaking is holistic, it breaks down silos between government agencies that would not usually communicate with each other.  It may very well be the best way to re-create our economies and communities for the 21st century.

The Grand Traverse Bay Region, mentioned by the Governor’s Special Message, could lead the way in establishing a Place-based agenda in the state.  Its citizen-led Grand Vision, a blueprint to guide the region’s growth for the next 50 years, provides a vision for cooperation on building transportation, education, and broadband infrastructure to renew the region’s downtowns.

As Jim Lively of the Michigan Land Use Institute explains, the process of drafting the Grand Vision was one of asking what citizens wanted for their region.  He also said that “the regional visioning process clarified that people who live here want to see new growth in our existing cities and villages. That helps us now to put a focus on working within those communities. What’s so cool about Placemaking is that it offers ways to enhance our communities with ‘lighter, quicker and cheaper’ approaches, because we can see that there’s not going to be a lot of government money coming in. You have to change your mind set to figure out how you can do things yourself.”

According Nigel Griswold, Regional Planner with the Northwest Michigan Council of Governments , “the power of a Placemaking approach is also that it’s a sexier way to find solutions to traditional problems with land-use and investment strategies.”  Sexy or not, PPS has always known that thinking in terms of creating great places brings together a wide range of skill sets and professions around a common goal.

In Michigan, Griswold thinks the greatest Placemaking opportunity in the region is to “create a package to unite the area’s most beautiful assets, especially among Michigan’s coastal and waterfront communities.  The region is home to world class inland lakes and streams and fantastic freshwater resources and governments of all scales must take steps to weave together and leverage and preserve these assets.”

Michigan’s struggles are not unique: budgets everywhere are tight- and citizens are starting to see that they can’t wait any longer for investments to come from the top to fix or improve their neighborhoods.   To create the changes they want to see, they will have to take the lead.

And while the shift to place-based strategies for economic development in Michigan might have been motivated by the state’s severe budget deficit and the need to make each tax dollar do more, the place-based strategy for economic development is actually a wonderful, positive way to encourage citizens to take an active and creative role in co-making the places where they will live.

For more information about Placemaking in Michigan, feel free to contact:

• Fred Kent, President, Project for Public Spaces, fredkent@pps.org
• Arnold Weinfeld, Director, Strategic Initiatives and Federal Affairs, President, Michigan Municipal League Foundation, aweinfeld@mml.org
• Jim Lively, Program Director, Michigan Land Use Institute , jim@mlui.org
• Nigel G. Griswold, Regional Planner, Northwest Michigan Council of Governments, nigelgriswold@nwm.cog.mi.us

Buffalo Waterfront Flickr Image by Rho-bin

Building a Vision for Buffalo’s Waterfront:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compiling this list of the Placemaking highlights of 2010 confirmed for us that these ideas have real importance to people in different types of communities, in different styles of public spaces, in different economic settings and in different parts of the world. As the year ahead unfolds, we think these trends will continue at an even greater rate.

Upcoming PPS newsletters will focus on exciting plans for our transformative agendas on markets and transportation, as well as our Digital Placemaking initiative, waterfront developments and a new PPS training course on managing and improving public spaces. We will also continue to revisit our core values, which began with Holly Whyte’s captivating book and film about the importance of getting the details right in the design of public spaces..

And now for the highlights of 2010…

• Lighter, Quicker Cheaper
• And the Silos Came Tumbling Down…
• The Boom in Citizen Activism
• Return of the Civic Square
• Placemaking Heard Around the World

Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper

Projects that are generally of smaller scale, can be constructed more quickly than traditional developments and can be done for a smaller amount of capital are catching on as a new way of doing development in public spaces. Eric Reynolds, founder of Urban Space Management in London coined the phrase “lighter, quicker, cheaper” nearly 40 years ago when he implemented an innovative project at the UK’s Camden Lock in London.

Such projects are being implemented in a variety of environments including markets, waterfronts and even on parking lots throughout the world. The results are destinations that grow out of the community in which they are located, creating jobs and a sense of community ownership.

In 2010, PPS hosted two forums that brought together implementers of the idea. Eric’s business partner, Eldon Scott, is promoting the concept in the U.S. with innovative markets in New York, including the Union Square, Madison Square, and Columbus Square holiday markets.

• Eric Reynolds, Master of Low-cost, High-return Public Space Interventions in London and NYC
• The Magic is in the Mix: Creating Great Multi-Use Destinations
• Lessons from Waterfront Synopsis 2010: How Placemaking Can Build Sustainable Waterfronts
• Placemaking Energizes the Campaign for Buffalo’s Waterfront Development
• A Placemaking Testimonial From Côte Saint-Luc, Montreal

And the Silos Came Tumbling Down…

“The whole earth is in jail and they are planning this incredible jailbreak.” – Legendary Bay Area activist, Wavy Gravy

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to placemaking and community building today is the tendency to define design professions so narrowly that important goals which could make cities more livable are lost. Fortunately, a new trend is emerging in which local governments  realize how much more effective they can be when interacting with a number of different disciplines and implementing changes that reach broader audiences.

One of the outcomes of this kind of “Silo Busting” is a more holistic approach to implementing public spaces and a greater recognition of the convergence that occurs between movements such as preservation, economic development, sustainability and health. For example, transportation is converging with health and community development to promote the health benefits of walking and biking, as well as the benefits of using transportation to build compact community centers.  PPS’ transportation program is  a leader in the Partners for Livable Transportation Solutions that seeks seeks to change the culture of transportation planning in America from a single-minded focus on high speed mobility to a greater focus on  service in which communities view transportation as a logistical means to societal ends.

• How Can Realtors be Key Partners in Placemaking?
• Boston’s Public Market To Be a Hub for Local Food
• CRA/LA Placemaking Academy
• Placemaking in Regina, Saskatchewan
• A Placemaking Testimonial From Côte Saint-Luc, Montreal
• Announcing a New Partnership with The Planning Commissioner’s Journal
• Placemaking Meets Preservation
• National Trust for Historic Preservation and PPS Partner to Create More Livable Communities

The Boom in Citizen Activism

There has been an explosion of community-led efforts efforts that represent a new kind of planning – one that is proactive, positive, passionate, practical and provides a new model for the development of public spaces. We’ve seen it happening in places as diverse as Corpus Christi, TX, Buffalo, NY, Annapolis, MD and Tupelo,   MS.

• Turning Corpus Christi’s Waterfront Around
• Placemaking Energizes the Campaign for Buffalo’s Waterfront Development
• Using Public Process to Enliven Annapolis’ Waterfront
• Tupelo, MS to Receive a Dose of Placemaking

Return of the Civic Square

PPS is excited to announce the opening of four projects in which we were involved that created new gathering spaces in each of the cities: Market Square in Houston; Market Square in Pittsburgh; Main Plaza in San Antonio; and the Perth Cultural Centre in Australia. In each of these places, PPS worked with the communities and stakeholders to create a place-based vision that informed the program and concept plans for the activities taking place. In addition, the Chinatown Summer Nights in Los Angeles, which grew out of a series of PPS workshops, was a catalytic project that kick started improvements for the area

• Houston Celebrates the Grand Opening of Downtown’s New Market Square
• Pittsburgh’s Market Square Opens This Week
• Deep in the Heart of Texas, San Antonio Creates New Hearts through Placemaking
• Chinatown Summer Nights Lights Up LA’s After-Dark Scene
• Strong Programming and Management Bring Life to Downtown Rochester

Placemaking Heard Around the World

Placemaking is definitely taking hold internationally. Last year, PPS staff worked in South Korea, South Africa, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria.

• Placemaking Catches on in South Korea
• Creating Safe Community Gathering Spaces in South Africa
• Placemaking Spurs Low-Cost, High Impact Improvements to a Diverse Public Square in Amsterdam
• In Northern Italy, Placemaking to Revitalize a Small Town
• Placemaking in Eastern Europe
• What Can We Learn about Road Safety from the Dutch?
• Placemaking in Scotland

As we look towards the future, we continue to be excited about the range of resources available on PPS.org. We have created our website to be a town square where people can gather to find out what’s new and participate in a powerful exchange of ideas that helps propel the Placemaking movement forward.

We are excited to explore with you ways that the Town Square can evolve in the future. We think we are at a turning point and look forward to your continued support and ideas for making better public spaces.

City Dock is located at the heart of the Historic District alongside many of its original 18th century buildings, including the Market House. City Dock currently offers some activities, but needs more in order to attract more locals and tourists to the area. The Market House will soon be under new management after being vacant for seven years, but some locals worry that the community vision is not being included in the plans.

Annapolis City Dock (Photo: Annapolis and Anne Arundel County Conference and Visitors Bureau)

PPS President Fred Kent visited Annapolis in late August (watch his entire talk here), offering suggestions and perspectives from years of experience revitalizing waterfronts. He encouraged the city to take on a more public process for the redevelopment of both City Dock and the Market House and emphasized that it was up to the community to create a vision for the space. “Placemaking, by its nature, has to be done by people who are in that place.”

Annapolis Planning Department Assistant Director Virginia Burke agreed with the importance of the public voice in redeveloping City Dock. “If it works for the locals, if the locals will come down here, it will work for the tourists, so we put a great deal of stock in what do the locals want to see here.”

Moving forward, Annapolis Mayor Joshua Cohen showed excitement about the possibilities of revitalization. “Starting with the Market House, the city has a unique opportunity now to re-envision the whole of City Dock as a vibrant destination for residents, boaters and visitors alike.”

Mayor Cohen also appointed a committee of 25 members of the community from diverse sectors to advise the City Dock revitalization. To kick off the Commission, the Urban Land Institute provided a pro bono 24 hour blitz studies, providing recommendations to the City and the Commission that echoed Fred’s sentiments last August.

The challenge now for Annapolis is to continue to engage the public in a thoughtful way that helps develop a community vision for City Dock and Market House that best reflects the history and identity of the waterfront, while at the same time providing opportunities for activities that attract a wide range of people during all times of day and year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waterfronts, Placemaking, and Sustainability

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

Corpus Christi's Waterfront has many opportunities for development

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

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

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

Check out the local press:

Bayfront’s New Design Ideas Draw Praise at Meeting

A Bayfront Opportunity? Plan Praised; Questions Over Cost Remain

Next Destination for Bayfront Plan: City Council

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

The latest news:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buffalo Rising: Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper

Don’t Box In Waterfront, Forum Told

Industry still dominates many waterfront cities- but change is coming (Flickr photo by Sweethardt)

As PPS gears up to host its Waterfronts Synopsis Conference next month on sustainability and Placemaking in Stavanger, Norway (Sept. 15-17),  waterfronts have been on our mind.   In today’s evolving economy, many urban waterfronts have recently been liberated from heavy industrial uses and are on the verge of transformation. Often a central and beautiful part of any metropolis, urban waterfronts have enormous potential to provide an identity to cities and to host activities that attract diverse groups of visitors.

PPS pulled together seven great resources to help Placemakers everywhere turn their waterfronts around:

1. The Waterfront Renaissance Waterfronts are inextricably linked to the identity and vitality of cities. As many cities rediscover their roots on the river, lake or sea, we have a remarkable opportunity to create a new generation of great public spaces.

2. How to Transform a Waterfront As more cities envision their waterfronts as lively public destinations that keep people coming back, PPS outlines the following 13 principles to make that happen.

3. The Waterfront Hall of Shame Most of the world’s great cities boast exciting waterfront settings, yet have blown the opportunity to create lively public destinations where people will naturally want to gather.

Waterfronts thrive when they keep people coming back, like this promenade in Venice, Italy

4. Nine Steps to Creating A Great Waterfront Guidelines to help you avoid common mistakes and make your waterfront shine.

5. Ten Qualities of a Great Waterfront Look at your waterfront development with fresh eyes.  Which of these qualities is it missing?

6. Putting Our Jobs Back in Place Authentic development along waterfronts can spur economic revitalization and create lasting jobs.

7. Great Waterfronts of the World:  A truly great urban waterfront is hard to come by.  PPS staff has examined more than 200 urban waterfronts around the world, here are a few dozen of the best.

We hope you’ll join us in Norway to meet pioneering Placemakers like Eric Reynolds and others as they share stories  at the upcoming Waterfronts Synopsis Conference in Norway next month.

Located near the Market, Granville Island's waterfront is one of the island's many great gathering places

Presenters spoke on issues like “Placemaking as a Tool to Develop Multi-Use Destinations,” “How to make Community Places Happening Places,” “The Experience Economy,” and “How Temporary Markets can be Places for Creative Uses,”  among other topics.

As everyone who visits quickly learns, Granville Island is much more than just an island. One of the top two destinations in Canada, it is also a unique example of one of the best “multi-use destinations” in the world.  This kind of destination defines a city’s identity through the variety of uses and public spaces that highlight local assets and unique talents and skills of the community -educational, cultural, and commercial- that are all open and available to all visitors to enjoy for free. They allow you to visit, become involved and stay awhile. These destinations are not defined by architecture or design elements, but rather the uses these features support.

Now 30 years old, Granville Island has not only retained the marine-related uses that defined its history, but also embraced the existing concrete plant and added such diverse uses as a public market (its economic anchor), a variety of community related activities and services, performance spaces and museums, a hotel, a college of art and design, a brewery, 200 artist studios and a variety of other retail and service oriented amenities. Growing incrementally over the years, Granville is publicly owned and managed and has proved that successful development need not be expensive. The Candian Management and Housing Corporation, a federal department which manages the island, updated many of the original corrugated metal buildings that were on the site and continues to maintain a mix of uses that make it socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.

There were a variety of interesting lessons that emerged from the forum:

-Public multi-use destinations like Granville Island have proven to be most successful, and we should replicate them more often. Why do we spend so much money on new developments that don’t work and that don’t attract people?

-Don’t lead with design. The design of multi-use destinations should be to create a “setting” for the uses that are occurring and that emphasize the products and the authentic aspects of the place.

-The importance of government learning to say “yes” to new ideas and developing stronger more trusting relationships with the private sector.

-“If you think you’re done, you’re finished” – Develop spaces that are flexible and that “manage themselves.” Ongoing and innovative management are key to creating vibrant multi-use destinations.

-“The magic is in the mix.” We are moving beyond the simple concept of “mixed use” toward a technique of development that builds authentic places through establishing settings and uses that are intimately related, interconnected and interdependent. True sustainability comes from the relationships between uses, tenants, and the organizations within a place.

-Find creative funding strategies to keep rents low, attract a range of tenants and incentivize the presence of tenants who may not produce a lot of money for the site, but who bring a lot of foot traffic and are invested in the area.

We want to hear from you. Do you know of any great multi-use destinations in your community or elsewhere?

]]> http://www.pps.org/blog/creating-great-public-multi-use-destinations-at-granville-island/feed/ 9 http://www.pps.org/blog/great-public-space-ver-o-peso-market-belem-para-brazil/ http://www.pps.org/blog/great-public-space-ver-o-peso-market-belem-para-brazil/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:39:06 +0000 Tom Peyton http://blog.pps.org/?p=3969

What: A permanent market on the Amazon River with over 2000 tents.

Why it Works: The Ver-o-peso market is amazing market located on the Amazon River. It is on a very large-scale with more than 2000 tents. It is a historical site, and was recently renewed. Located in the city centre, on the [...]]]>

What: A permanent market on the Amazon River with over 2000 tents.

Why it Works: The Ver-o-peso market is amazing market located on the Amazon River. It is on a very large-scale with more than 2000 tents. It is a historical site, and was recently renewed. Located in the city centre, on the margins of Guajará Bay, it is accessible by the people who come from the nearby islands by boat. The place is full of life, densely occupied with people and products from the Amazon. The fish market, a steel construction imported from Glasgow in 1901, is the most memorable image of the city. The market is open from 4:00am to 15:00pm. People from all social classes use the market. It is where they buy traditional products from the Amazon. The people here are very friendly, although there are a few pick pockets.

Read the entire profile here.

Click here to nominate your favorite public space!

• The Environmental Defense Fund’s Reinventing Transit highlights a new generation of innovative public transit. [EDF.org]

• In the greater Toronto area, the Tower Renewal Project looks to transform post-war, high-rise, concrete towers with sustainable, suburban development. [Worldchanging]

• A bill recently passed by New York’s state Senate will provide a boost in funding for farmers markets facilities. [Watertown Daily Times, The Gouverneur Times]

• After five years in a New Urbanist community, residents of Glenwood Park reflect on visibility, neighborhood involvement, access and businesses. [The Atlanta-Journal Constitution]

• Joanne Arnay makes the case for including preservation in urban planning efforts. [The City Newspaper]

• At the Green Cities Conference and Expo, officials, planners, architects and advocacy groups discussed how to pitch a ‘green’ agenda. [NY Times Blog]

• In San Francisco, the Great Streets Program (a PPS collaboration) hits the ground running. [Streetsblog]