PPS President Fred Kent leads a tour of Times Square during a Placemaking training / Photo: PPS

Every spring and summer, we welcome people from all over the world—architects, planners, developers, academics, city officials, advocates, activists, engaged citizens—to our offices in Manhattan for our Placemaking Training programs. While we offer several different training programs that can be tailored to different types of public spaces, our core curriculum is made up of four courses that have become mainstays in our efforts to spread the tools of Placemaking to an ever-broadening constituency: How to Turn a Place Around, Placemaking: Making it Happen, Streets as Places, and How to Create Successful Markets. So how, you may ask, do these workshops really work? What am I going to get out of attending? What types of people actually attend?

How to Turn a Place Around (HTTAPA) is, put simply, “Placemaking 101.” The course is designed to introduce the core principles and fundamental tools at the heart of the Placemaking process. These tools will help anyone working on a public space project—whether you’re the architect designing a new plaza or a stay-at-home mom trying to rally neighbors to improve a local playground—to not only evaluate current uses of a site effectively and brainstorm for the future, but how to build community support and explain the mechanics of how great places work as well. As past HTTAPA participant Adele Gravitz (who works as the Sustainability Coordinator for Lenox, Mass., and Community Transformation Grant Program Coordinator for Tri-Town Health Department in Lee, Mass.) explains it, “The people running the training are remarkably precise about something that you’d think of as not just hard to explain, but to quantify! Everything you get is pure meat; there’s no fluff, no filler, no wasted time. I took away so many nuggets of tangible knowledge, as well as site-specific examples.”

Placemaking: Making it Happen (MIH) builds on the knowledge set up in HTTAPA and digs into the complicated and fascinating process of place management. At PPS, we’re fond of saying that the success of a public space is about 80-90% reliant on its management, so MIH offers critical insights for people who spend a good deal of their time working on spaces over the long term. “Most planners finish their plan and go on to another place,” says MIH alum Zvika Mintz, an urban planner from Kfar- Saba, Israel. “They don’t often stay and work on the maintenance of the place. Making it Happen shows the importance of maintaining the space. You’re never finished with a project.”

“I think the Making it Happen training is really helpful for anybody who is in need of outside-of-the-box concepts to help motivate them or drive a new process,” says Cara Salci, a Development Project Manager with the National Capital Commission in Ottawa, Canada, who participated in MIH last spring. Salci, whose job was to manage the implementation of a series of  projects along the Rideau Canal this past summer, utilized the principles of Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper. She noted that her experience with the Making it Happen training was especially helpful in giving her tools and a framework for approaching a project that was based upon ideas from the public: “Consulting the public isn’t a big, bad, scary thing. The public has a lot of positive input to offer and, when you empower them to do things, it can work out in a good way.”

Over the past few years, we’ve been listening, learning, and iterating to improve our Placemaking training programs by getting participants out into public spaces around New York City for hands-on evaluation exercises like the “Place Evaluation.” If it’s true that the best way to learn about a place is to manage it (and it is!), it follows that the best way to learn about the Placemaking process is to interact with other people around a real site. Mee Kam Ng, a professor of Geography & Resource Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, explains the benefits of this social approach thusly: “As an academic, participating in such a hands-on workshop was very useful for me to ground some of the theoretical discussions in my field in practical, real-life situations. We can all contribute our own experience and perspective in producing a better city; that’s my fundamental belief. That coincides with how PPS does this work. We can all learn from one another. Placemaking is also a learning process in itself, that’s really more about tapping into one another’s perspectives. It’s about figuring out how to make a shared place better, but also making ourselves better along the way.”

Norman Mintz speaks to training participants last spring in Manhattan’s Bryant Park / Photo: PPS

Truly, one of the great strengths of the Placemaking trainings is the diversity of the participants. In addition to representing a wide variety of professional backgrounds and perspectives, attendees tend to gather from all corners of the globe. “As much as we bring our own expertise,” notes Norman Mintz, one of the PPS training leaders (and no relation to Zvika), “we find that when people have more time to get to know each other, it’s made the course even better. It’s more than just sitting down and taking notes, it’s sharing experiences. We’ve noticed that the caliber of people is very high; by and large these are people who are very knowledgeable. Being able to share their knowledge, with PPS and each other, is a big strength. To be able to do it with people from across the world is wonderful.”

From the participant side, Gravitz echoes this: “I was so impressed by the people who participated in the workshop; they really had something to offer. Everybody had such clarity and was so sharp about why they were there, what they wanted to get out of it, and what they could contribute. It was one of the few workshops I’ve attended where I really did get something out of listening to the other participants. The conversations were quite elevated.”

More often than not, one of the most interesting results of this cross-cultural exchange is the realization amongst participants that people all over the world are dealing with many of the same issues they are. There are unique challenges at every site, but the common problems that the people working to create great places share offer the greatest opportunities for participants to jump in and start applying the Placemaking principles that they’re learning. Everyone gets to know each other through exchanging their own tips, tricks, and lessons learned. The trainings provide the tools and framework to facilitate these kinds of place-based discussions by illustrating simple but hard-to-pin-down principles in ways that just make sense.

“One of the key takeaways that I brought home and have used in my work since the trainings,” says Salci, “is to always keep an open mind. You have to give your projects the flexibility to breathe a little bit. If someone throws out an idea, take the time to really consider it. It may not be the right solution, but it might lead you to the right one. Sometimes we’re so quick to judge whether something is a good idea or a bad idea, but within the Placemaking process, there’s more of a spectrum. With a project like the one I was working on—we hadn’t done something like it before, so it was great to have these tools and concepts to back up the decisions we were making.”

“I went to grad school already passionate about Holly Whyte’s work,” says Gravitz, “and that was years ago. But I found that going through the exercises we did at PPS’s workshop really armed me with an understanding—and the vocabulary—to explain with a clear certainty things that I always knew in my head, in a sort of fuzzy way, to someone who knew nothing about Placemaking.”

Zvika breaks it down in even more straightforward terms. “People like to watch people,” he says. “It’s very simple, but the way that Fred and the other instructors at PPS show and talk about ideas like this helps you to truly understand the importance of simple things.”

Interested in seeing for yourself how valuable PPS’s training workshops can be to your advocacy efforts and/or professional practice? Our next round of Placemaking training workshops is never too far away! Click here to visit the trainings page of our site to learn more about upcoming programs.

We’re looking forward to seeing you  in New York!

PPS President Fred Kent leads a Placemaking tour of Times Square during the April 2012 How to Turn a Place Around training. / Photo: PPS

It’s almost that time of year again: every fall, we host Placemaking trainings at PPS HQ. These two- and three-day sessions are designed to help anyone working on creating great places learn how to authentically engage with community members and other constituents around the shaping of public space. The How to Turn a Place Around and Making it Happen programs not only give participants hands-on experience with a variety of tools for observation and evaluation of a of different places–they also give you the opportunity to meet and work with other planners, advocates, developers, architects, and local change agents who are facing similar challenges in cities around the world.

This fall, we will be hosting two training sessions at our New York City office: How to Turn a Place Around will take place on November 1-2; and Making it Happen will take place on November 7-9. We are also excited to be able to offer a special West Coast edition of How to Turn a Place Around shortly before that, during the Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place conference in Long Beach, CA, this September 14-15!

• How To Turn a Place Around (New York, NY / Nov. 1-2, 2012)
  This two-day bread-and-butter course offers a comprehensive introduction to the wide world of Placemaking. Through discussions and case studies, participants will learn about strategies for creating extraordinary places out of ordinary urban spaces. HTTAPA is a great opportunity to meet PPS staff–our veteran Placemakers–and to gain insight and inspiration for implementing your own Placemaking efforts, whether for a business project or your own community. The course will be led by Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, Phil Myrick, and other PPS staff.
• Making it Happen (New York, NY / Nov. 7-9, 2012)
  This three-day course picks up where How To Turn a Place Around leaves off. For people eager to jump into action, participants will learn tools and best practices for implementing and sustaining vibrant places through management techniques. This interactive workshop includes site visits to successful places in New York City and teaches participants how to evaluate places using key Placemaking principles. The course also allows time for participants to share and receive feedback on their own projects. MIH will be led by Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and Norman Mintz, with guest presentations by Eldon Scott, Alan M. Hantman, and Andy Manshel.
• How To Turn a Place Around (Long Beach, CA / Sept. 14-15, 2012)
  Exciting news for West Coast Placemakers: PPS will be teaching its core intro to Placemaking course in Long Beach. In collaboration with the Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place conference, the course will focus particularly on transportation and streets, and will incorporate many elements of both HTTAPA and the Streets as Places training course.

Please note that enrollment in all Placemaking trainings is limited to 35 participants in order to ensure a personalized experience and close-knit environment, and registration is now open for all three of the trainings listed above. We look forward to working with you! Click here to register for one of our upcoming trainings.

Photo created at Cheezburger.com

After months of hard work behind the scenes, we’re excited to unveil our new website today! As frequent visitors will have probably already noticed, we’ve freshened up the look of the site. Here on the Placemaking Blog, we’ve got a lot more breathing room for big, colorful images, as well as a Related Posts section at the end of each post to make it easier for you to learn more about the issues that matter most to you. Beyond the blog, we’ve improved navigation to make PPS.org a more user-friendly resource, whether you’re looking for help with planning a new public space, or conducting research on an old favorite.

The primary navigation bar for the site is now located up top, where you can determine whether you’ve come looking to hire us for our various Services, learn about Placemaking through our Training program, learn more about the thousands of Projects we’ve completed in cities all over the world, or delve into our trove of Resources to read about the history and practice of Placemaking.

We’ve re-organized the Services and Resources pages extensively based on feedback over the two years since the last version of the PPS website was launched. If you’re wondering what we can do to help with your public space project, we’ve made our menu of services much clearer. If you’re just searching for information, our Resources page is now streamlined to help you find the most relevant articles on many different types of public spaces, from parks to waterfronts to downtowns.

Finally, we’ve made it easier to stay connected by integrating our social media presence into the site more prominently; all of our content is now easier to share, from blog posts to reference articles. If you haven’t already, we encourage you to like PPS on Facebook, follow @PPS_Placemaking on Twitter, and subscribe to our bi-monthly Newsletter, which will keep you up to date on all of the latest news from across the Placemaking movement. We hope that you dig the new look — and if you happen upon any little bugs that we’ve missed, do let us know.

• How to Turn a Place Around
  This course serves as a comprehensive introduction to the practice of placemaking. We’ve learned through our work that placemaking is a sacred community process. People take the shaping of their blocks and neighborhoods very seriously, and have much to offer to planners, architects, designers, and local leaders who are ready to ask the right questions–and to listen. Through the discussion of key case studies like the Perth Cultural Centre’s Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper activation plan, as well as opportunities to get out into the streets of New York City to experiment with tools like the Place Game and Power of 10, attendees develop a deeper understanding of what really makes public spaces function. The course is conducted by PPS president, Fred Kent, along with Kathy Madden, and Phil Myrick, and other PPS staff. For more details about this course, click here.

• Placemaking: Making It Happen
  Making It Happen takes things a step further by teaching people who are ready to take action–especially people who are embarking on a new project–about best practices for developing an effective public space management and implementation strategy. Over the course of three days, we’ll travel around New York City to visit some of its best-managed spaces with the people who helped make them happen. This course will also give participants the opportunity to discuss and get feedback on their individual projects during facilitated, interactive workshop sessions. Kent, and Madden, and Norman Mintz from PPS will all present, and we’ll also be joined by Urban Space Management director Eldon Scott, Alan M. Hantman, FAIA,10th Architect of the US Capitol and former Vice President of Architecture, Construction, and Historic Preservation at Rockefeller Center, and Andy Manshel, the Executive Vice President of the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation (GJDC). For the first time, we’ll be expanding the course to take place over three days instead of two, and will include site visits to some of New York City’s best managed public spaces along with a dinner at PPS the first night and a reception the second night and more time for participants to present and get input on their projects.  All of this will also allow for more of the networking and collaborative learning that past participants have found so beneficial to their work. 

  We’re thrilled to be welcoming Andy as a new addition to the Making It Happen training team. Before joining the GJDC, Andy served as the Associate Director and Counsel at the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation and General Counsel and Director of Public Amenities to the Grand Central and 34th Street Partnerships. He is currently the treasurer of PPS’s board of directors. He will be talking about the practical elements of public space management, successful strategies used in Bryant Park as well as the more challenging environment of Jamaica, and what is generally applicable to other places. To learn more about Andy, and for other details about this course, click here.

Please note that enrollment in all placemaking trainings is limited to 35 participants in order to promote a close-knit environment where participants can learn techniques for implementing and managing public space improvements that are practical, economical and meet the community’s needs. We’re looking forward to working with you to help you discover new ways to make your place great. Click here to register for one of our upcoming trainings now!

Dún Laoghaire's beautiful harbor is one of its main attractions. Photo: William Murphy via Flickr.

In conjunction with the “Place Making Place Branding” conference in Ireland (March 6-7, 2012), PPS is offering a special two-day training program, “How to Turn a Place Around in Ireland” on March 8 and 9.

The conference will be held at the Royal Marine Hotel and the training will be held in the County Hall in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland. It’s designed to help decision-makers, activists, and others who work at the local level to improve the places where they work and live.

The training program will include presentations by PPS President Fred Kent, Senior Vice President Kathy Madden, and PPS Director of Transportation Initiatives Gary Toth. It will also feature an on-site “place evaluation” exercise and interactive discussions about critical public space issues facing cities of every size.

Dún Laoghaire (or Dún Laoire, sometimes anglicised as “Dunleary”) is a seaside town in County Dublin, about 12 kilometers south of Dublin, at the foot of the Dublin Mountains. It is a popular tourist spot well-known for its vast selection of activities, its brightly painted villas, its parks and palm trees, its many restaurants and pubs, and the view of the sea from the walk along the piers.

“How to Turn a Place Around in Ireland” will introduce new ways of thinking about public spaces and how Placemaking can be used to bring communities together and revitalize underperforming spaces. Participants will explore the principles of making places through presentations, case studies of public space innovations, on-site evaluation and interactive discussions of critical issues and challenges. Discussion sessions will focus on the particular issues of participants.

Topics include: why public multi-use destinations are the best attractors of downtown activity; using public markets as generators of local economies; implementing an architecture of place strategy; and building community through transportation. Transportation issues will be explored in a special “Streets as Places” session which will focus on how to rebalance the transportation system for people versus vehicles. It will give participants insight into the parameters and thought processes of decision-makers who plan streets, and provide tools for evaluating streets and working with designers.

Drawing on PPS’s work in cities across the globe, this training course will provide case study examples of successful solutions that unlock both the social as well as economic potential of public spaces.

For more information and to register, click here, or email cwang@pps.org.

Photo: William Murphy via Flickr.

Placemaking Chicago participants evaluate a public space near the training site.

PPS offers a full range of tailored training programs customized to your specific groups’ goals and outcomes. Together with PPS, you can craft the content, format, and location of your training program based on your needs and resources. All tailored trainings include an introductory course designed around the principles of successful spaces and the Placemaking process.

PPS draws upon its 35 years of research and experience to provide tailored training topics including: Public Sector Training, Transportation Planning, Libraries as Civic Centers, International NGO training, Partnership Building, Public Space Management Forums, and more.

PPS has developed training programs for various city, country, and state departments, including planning, parks and recreation, transportation, economic development, and other specific professional organizations. PPS has also worked with NGOs on establishing country-wide Placemaking programs, including our programs in Scotland, Serbia, and the Czech Republic.

Visit our Training Portfolio for examples of Tailored PPS Training.

To discuss a potential PPS tailored training program, please contact Dana Kitzes at dkitzes@pps.org or call 212.620.5660.

Streetsblog offers a full report.

Click here for the full job descriptions and information on how to apply.

His theory is that attractive, non-automobile dominated public spaces layered with multi-use functions will pump vitality back into communities that have become too isolated.

“As an internationally known advocate for public spaces, Fred Kent, founder of the New York-based  Project for Public Spaces (PPS), sees cities – and the people who inhabit them – through the measured senses of an urban provocateur.”

Museum Mile Festival, 5th Avenue

Read this special issue of PPS’s newsletter Making Places, which includes the city commentary, New York great public spaces and hidden gems, and the places that provide the biggest opportunities for improvement.

WHEN & WHAT TIME: Thursday, January 11, 6pm

SMALL URBAN SPACE: The Edge Bar (95 E 3rd Street between 1 and 2 Avenues), New York City

SOCIABILITY: Drinks and Games–billiards and darts!

We hope to see you there!

Read more about this position at: http://www.pps.org/info/aboutpps/jobopenings