[T]he story that a building tells through its design may be as important to the community it serves as is its function. By shaping our thoughts about ourselves and our institutions, it will directly affect our efforts to work productively together.
– Justice Stephen G. Breyer (United States Supreme Court, 1994–present)

The courthouse used to be a cornerstone of the community, a source of local pride and the nexus of social life and ritual. But today, courthouses and the public spaces that surround them are often physically and programmatically disconnected from public life, even though they usually occupy central property in a community. Citizens don’t visit their courthouses unless compelled to do so, and very few serve as public destinations.

The good news is that court properties have much potential for resurgence when there is positive leadership, open-minded management, and the desire for change. Courts have the opportunity and responsibility to serve as integral places, key parts of the communities in which they reside. Courts are, after all, the people’s houses of justice, and only by becoming engaging places can they live up to their potential.

While early American courthouses often shared space with other public institutions (like the post office or the county clerk) and were heavily used, more recent court design has encouraged segregation and specialization of uses, so that citizens have little reason to enter the doors of court buildings. The design of court facilities has shifted from welcoming to foreboding, and from public to monumental. The resulting diminution of the courthouse’s community role is indicative of a larger trend: a widening disconnect between the judicial system and public life. While courts are busier than ever, trials are vanishing, and more cases are resolved by private settlement or in non-public forums. Through such privatization, court spaces are no longer truly civic, and don’t support community vitality.

What is needed – and a real opportunity – is a fundamental reconsideration of how we think about and design court spaces. If courts find ways to recapture their relevance and resonance within communities, they could once again become civic destinations that engage with and respond to their users.

Project for Public Spaces is committed to playing a key role in facilitating these discussions. PPS has worked extensively to revitalize many types of civic centers, including courthouses, post offices, museums, libraries, and seats of government. Since 1999, PPS has partnered with the General Services Administration’s Good Neighbor Program in helping communities envision public spaces that will draw a variety of people, uses, and activities. PPS has worked in this capacity in almost two dozen cities.

PPS’s extensive placemaking experience with civic centers, and our history of collaboration with GSA, give us a strong foundation on which courts of all types can build in fulfilling their potential as true civic destinations.

We encourage you to comment on this article

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By Karen Levy with Fred Kent, President and Cynthia Nikitin, Civic Anchors Program Director for Project for Public Spaces, Inc. Karen Levy is an attorney and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in sociology at Princeton University. Karen has been working with Project for Public Spaces as an Arthur Liman Public Interest Summer Fellow, a program sponsored by Yale Law School and Princeton’s Program in Law and Public Affairs.

Read the full article online.

Download a PDF version.

The past 50 years have seen the unprecedented design and development to cities throughout the world—and not necessarily with positive results. Influences that are labeled “modern,” “contemporary,” “cutting edge,” “brash,” and “innovative” are all too often being used to impose a one-dimensional view of how cities should work. What is being exported from the United States is an overarching emphasis on accommodating automobiles at every turn and a zealous devotion to novel, iconic architecture that often functions better as a symbol that journalists report on in breathless tones than as an actual building. Is this progress, or is it a step backward from what cities need: more humane, sustainable cities for the 21st century?  FULL ARTICLE

by Cynthia Nikitin – Recreation and Parks BC Magazine

“By working together and pooling their unique strengths and areas of expertise, these institutions and the communities around them can identify their true potential to better serve the public by tackling common challenges.”

May 2009 – The Upside of a Down Economy

by Fred Kent – Urban Land

“The stumbling global economy…are being balanced by a surge of interest in things local: production of local food, promotion of local businesses, preservation of local character, improvement of public spaces, and perhaps most important, the rediscovery of meaningful ways to belong to a community.”

Fall/Winter 2008 – From Cow Town to Our Town

by Cynthia Nikitin - Public Art Review - Issue 39 – Vol. 20
In this piece on suburbia, shared space and public art, Nikitin asks: Is public art part of the American Dream?

“Public art can begin to create a mental shift. It can help a community begin to redefine and reimagine the notion of shared space, shared values, and collective common interests”

August 2008  - Place Making Around the World

by Fred Kent - Urban Land

“At the same time, the United States is incubating another growing trend that holds great promise for how people across the planet will live in the future. But this trend gets far less media attention. At the heart of this movement is place making—a set of ideas about creating cities in ways that result in high quality spaces where people naturally want to live, work, and play.”

July 2008 – Community-Based Street Design

by Gary Toth and Renee Espiau -  Smart Growth Network

“While early streets were designed to be sensitive to their context and to serve the communities in which they were located, post-World War II street planning and design shifted focus to serving our desire for speed. Fortunately, there is a new and growing movement to look at streets in their broader community context.”

April 2004 – Pedestrian Paradise

by Jay Walljasper – Utne

“All across the land, people are speaking up, organizing meetings, fighting city hall and, in some cases, working with city hall to make streets safer and more pleasant for pedestrians”

Summer 2001 – Creating ‘Places’ that Work

by Kathy Madden – Planning Commissioners Journal No. 43

“From our experience, placemaking requires a radically different approach than is used by most designers today. In contrast to the traditional design or planning process, a place-oriented approach is necessarily broader than one that is primarily design driven.”

September 2000 – Paradise Lost, Again

by Fred Kent – The New York Times

“We need to remember that it is still our responsibility to insist that our city parks are open to everyone all the time. Otherwise, we will get used to being shut out of them, and they will become the same empty, useless spaces they were 20 years ago.”

New York, NY (May 10, 2002) – Learn how to revitalize your neighborhood, town or city through farmers and public markets.

The 5th International Public Market Conference of Project for Public Spaces will be held this November in New York City. The three day event will include tours, speakers, workshops, neighborhood ethnic food tours, and local food prepared by W Hotel chef, Michel Nischan of Heartbeat Restaurant. Tours will include visits to New York City Greenmarkets, Fulton Fish Market (the final year of this historic market), Chelsea Market, Gansvoort Market District and Grand Central Market.

The conference is sponsored by the Ford Foundation.

“Great Markets, Great Cities”
November 9-11, 2002
The ‘W Hotel’, 541 Lexington Avenue, New York

http://store.pps.org:1040/PMC.htm

PPS held its Fourth Annual Public Market Briefing in Washington, DC on Thursday, May 3, 2007. Over 80 people attended the briefing, which focused on the benefits and needs of farmers markets and public markets, with special attention given to the role of these markets in the upcoming 2007 Farm Bill. [View the briefing agenda.]

In our work we have seen how farmers markets and public markets provide profitable revenue opportunities for farmers; reinvigorate communities by creating vibrant social and economic centers of activity; improve access to locally-grown fruits and vegetables; and address the social and physical health of communities. However, as the number of markets around the country expands, the needs for planning and coordination, farmer training, and nutrition education for consumers are all too apparent.

This year, in light of the Farm Bill’s renewal, we wanted to take the opportunity to share our thoughts about the final year of PPS’s three year, $3 million grant program for diversifying farmers markets and public markets. With support from the Ford Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, PPS has been able to provide some 40 grants in 22 states. “Through this effort, we have been able to see the benefits for farmers, consumers, and communities that come from strategic investments in innovative programs and to build the capacity of market management,” said Steve Davies, PPS’s Senior Vice President.

Several PPS grantees also spoke, including Elaine Brown, Executive Director of the Michigan Food & Farming Systems (MIFFS) and Fred Broughton, the Small Farm Program Manager with the South Carolina Dept. of Agriculture, who both spoke about the need for investment in state farmers market associations to enhance access to EBT/food stamps at farmers markets, and to build the capacity of hundreds of farmers markets to run bigger and better markets for the benefit of farmers and consumers. [Read the text of Elaine's remarks.]

Linda Boclair, a grantee with the Camden Area Health Education Center (AHEC) in Camden, NJ, spoke about the success her organization has had operating farmers markets in a city notorious for crime, poverty and health issues: “In addition to providing fresh produce and nutrition education to 2,500 residents per week, we are contributing to the revitalization of a city that for [the past] two years was designated the most violent city in the nation and now the poorest city… The demand is great for farmers markets in Camden but we simply do not have the resources to meet those demands.” [Read the full text of Linda's speech.]

In conclusion, Tazuer Smith of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition spoke about three ways in which the reauthorized farm bill could support markets through the Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP):

• Expanding the program to $25 million;
• To the maximum extents possible, using 25% of total program funds for projects implemented in areas the Secretary deems underserved; and
• Specific statutory identification of the categories of farmer-to-consumer direct marketing activities eligible for funding under the program, including the implementation and staffing of electronic benefit transfer (EBT) systems in farmers markets.

A reception followed featuring farm, fresh foods direct from the Takoma Park Farmers Market in Takoma Park, MD; the Byrd House Market and William Byrd Community House in Richmond, VA; and the California Farmers Market Association in Walnut Creek, CA.

During the conference, 97 panelists hosted 27 workshops and information sessions covering a diverse range of public and farmers market topics, such as how to start and sustain markets in both high and low-income communities, how to attract new vendors, and how to strengthen partnerships with community groups. Three market tours visited over 10 diverse indoor and outdoor public and farmers markets in the Washington DC and Baltimore metro areas. The conference helped to further build the voice of public markets and to demonstrate markets as vital tools for sustainable community and economic development.

The policy forum, held on the last day of the conference, featured the release of two policy papers on farmers markets. The first paper, entitled Farmers Markets’ are Good for Everyone: Here’s how to make them better, developed by the Farmers Market Coalition itself and called , highlights three federal programs, Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (FMNP), Farmers’ Market Promotion Program and (FMPP) Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT), and details how some simple changes to these policies could enhance the success and reach of farmers markets all over the country.

With support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, PPS also commissioned a white paper on farmers market policy for the forum, entitled Farmers Market Policy: An Inventory of Federal, State, and Local Examples, by Professor Neil Hamilton of the Agricultural Law Center at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The study was designed to provide an assessment of current farmers market policies found in the U.S. and to use this inventory to evaluate the effect of policies and identify how they can be improved.

Other speakers at the conference included Clarence Carter, Deputy Administrator of the Food Stamp Program at USDA, who gave the keynote address; Kate Coler, Deputy Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, USDA; and Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon), who gave an inspiring closing address.

“This issue goes beyond saving agriculture and revitalizing neighborhoods in small-town America. You represent one of those rare issues that really nobody is against. Think about it: every farmers market, every public market project that I’ve seen touches a wide range of participants. You have people of all different political persuasions, philosophies, economic backgrounds that are brought together because they love a public market. If we can get it on the radar screen and have people focus on it we can make it part of a larger reform. I think you would be amazed by the breath and the depth of the support for your agenda which is why your being here is so important.”

Download the full speech here.

May 27 – Transportation as a Fulcrum of Change: Project for Public Spaces Congratulates New Jersey Transit on ITE Best Project Award

Apr 23 – Kathleen A. Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, to Address 7th International Public Markets Conference

Apr 8 - The Best of the Bay Tasting Event to Feature Unforgettable Local Food and Drink

Apr 3 – Project for Public Spaces Publishes Transportation Series with AARP

Mar 17 – Project for Public Spaces Announces the 7th International Public Markets Conference in San Francisco, CA

2008

Oct 14 – Join Us in Support for T4America Tomorrow, October 15 2008

Sep 8 – Project for Public Spaces Writes Feature Article in UrbanLand Magazine on Placemaking

Drake University Agricultural Law Center, Des Moines, Iowa

The future is bright for America’s farmers’ markets. Strong demand for high quality fresh food, growing interest by farmers and market gardeners for higher value markets, desires by communities to create social connections and vibrant shopping experiences, and widespread concern over health and nutrition are just some of the forces fueling the growth and awareness of farmers’ markets.

While the future is bright there is still significant room to improve the role of farmers’ markets in our nation’s food and farming system. A critical element in this future concerns the impact of policy and law on markets. This study is designed to provide an assessment of current farmers’ market policies found in the U.S. and to use this inventory to evaluate the effect of policies and identify how they can be improved.

To download the entire report, click here.