The conference begins with the premise that the world is at a crossroads. We have a choice: cities can continue to grow haphazardly, without regard to human social needs and environmental consequences, or we can embrace a sustainable and equitable process that builds community, enhances quality of life, and creates safe and prosperous neighborhoods. We are convinced that in the future, the cities that utilize the social capital-building potential of their public spaces to the fullest will be the ones with the most dynamic local economies. The Future of Places will survey the field, and map out a path to a more people-centered urban development model for the globalized future.

Habitat III, the third United Nations (UN) conference to be held on Human Settlements, will bring together actors from across the globe, including local governments, national governments, the private sector, international organizations, and many others. This gathering, the largest of its kind in the world, will build on the first Habitat conference in Vancouver in 1976 and the Habitat II conference in Istanbul in 1996. The conference will re-evaluate the Habitat agenda and look at the role of UN-Habitat and sustainable urban development in the upcoming decade. It is therefore vital that the dialogue that will influence the Habitat III outcomes—and thus the future global urban agenda—commences today.

As many of you already know, the timing of the launch of this conference series is particularly exciting as, just three weeks ago, we announced the formation of the Placemaking Leadership Council, which will meet for the first time this April in Detroit to begin developing a global agenda around Placemaking in cities. To ensure a diverse, multifaceted group of attendees for The Future of Places conference in June, each of the three organizing partners for that event will be bringing a delegation of leaders from their respective realm of expertise. As such, PPS will be selecting members from the Leadership Council to attend the Future of Places conference.

This allows us to form a truly international Council by providing those who cannot travel to Detroit in April with an equally exciting opportunity to gather with peers for the discussion of the transformative agendas that are at the heart of this evolving movement. While the Detroit meeting will lay the groundwork for the Council’s future work, the role that Council members will play at The Future of Places conference will be critical in expanding the understanding of that work on the global stage. Due to this unique perspective, we will be looking for delegates with experience working internationally, and particularly in the cities of the developing world—people with a passion for addressing human, social, and community needs in ways that transform long-struggling areas into sustainable neighborhoods defined around vital, welcoming, and affirming public spaces.

If you believe that you would be a good fit for the Placemaking Leadership Council, and you are interested in attending either or both of the meetings in Detroit and Stockholm, we encourage you to review the criteria for joining the Leadership Council. Once you are up to speed on the agendas and criteria, you can then click here to tell us why you feel you’d be good addition to the Placemaking Leadership Council between now and April 1st, 2013. (Please note that, if you have already filled out this form, you do not need to do so again.)

If you want to stay up to date with news about the Stockholm conference, you can follow @FutureofPlaces on Twitter. We look forward to hearing from you. Perhaps we will see you soon, in Stockholm!

The first meeting of the Placemaking Leadership Council will take place in downtown Detroit, Michigan, home of the wonderful Campus Martius Park / Photo: PPS

For those of us who are passionate about the public spaces in our communities, this is an extraordinary time. The general awareness of the importance of a strong sense of place—to the economy, to our social fabric, to human health—is growing stronger every day. Placemaking is, at this moment, being transformed from a useful tool to a vital cause by people throughout the world. As one of those rare processes that can bring people with different objectives together under the same banner, Placemaking is uniquely suited to help us grapple with the complex challenges that we face in a globalized society. After almost four decades of working in this field, we are reaching out to peers new and old to form a Placemaking Leadership Council to consolidate and strengthen Placemaking as an international movement.

The goal of the Leadership Council is to build a culture of mutual support amongst the do-ers and deep thinkers at the forefront of the Placemaking movement, creating a community of practice around this important work. Through our work, we know many people who are actively engaged in creating great places today; many of these people—the ones we refer to admiringly as “Zealous Nuts”—have already agreed to join this Council. But there are also people we don’t yet know who should be involved. If you are one of these people, you already know who you are; you’ve achieved something beyond most peoples’ imagination, created one or more successful places, and are looking for an opportunity to share your stories and learn from others about how you might be able to raise the bar even more. If this is you, please read on.

At the inaugural meeting of the Council this April 11-12th, we will gather in Detroit, Michigan, the North American capital of resilience (Background on how Detroit and Michigan are leading the way on Placemaking), to debate, discuss, celebrate and develop a strategy for creating a global agenda around Placemaking in cities. Another gathering will take place in Stockholm this June, through our partnership with UN-Habitat and the Ax:son Johnson Foundation. The Detroit gathering will be centered on case studies and demonstration projects, publications, films, and social media as ways of demonstrating the true power in place. Discussion will be structured around four agendas that we feel have the potential to transform cities if the focus is on the idea of place and Placemaking.

• Creating healthier communities and improving streets by redefining transportation planning;
• Improving our built environment by advocating for people- and place-centric design through an architecture of place;
• Supporting sustainable local economies by highlighting the central role of public markets;
• And strengthening communities by creating new urban development models that re-orient our cities and towns around great multi-use destinations.

The Council will be organized around four sub-committees, each of which will focus on one of these critical aspects of place-centered development. (Click here to read about the Transformative Agendas in greater detail). Their agenda-defining discussions will be guided by the three strategic themes of Place Governance, Place Capital, and Healthy Communities. Outcomes for each sub-committee will include research topics, benchmarks, potential partners, and implementation strategies that will drive progress and innovation amongst Council members and the wider global community of Placemaking practitioners and community change agents over the coming year.

If your interest is piqued, please review the five criteria below to see if you might be a good fit for the Placemaking Leadership Council. If you meet several of these criteria, we encourage you to reach out and tell us more about what you do, and why you’re passionate about the idea of place.

1.) You know about and understand Placemaking. You’re well-versed in the movement’s history, and can appreciate the uniqueness of the current moment. You understand that Placemaking is a process, not an outcome. Ideally, you’re also familiar with the Project for Public Spaces and the way that we work.

2.) You understand and agree with what we are trying to achieve. You get that the Council isn’t about making money or networking, but working with like-minded individuals to drive large-scale culture change to put place at the heart of public discourse.

3.) You have substantial experience with on-the-ground projects and initiatives. You’re driven and you’ve got a few success stories under your belt–and probably even some failures that you’ve learned a great deal from. We’re looking for people who don’t just think about how to create great places–they roll up their sleeves, head on out, and do it themselves.

4.) You think holistically about place. You’ve worked on a variety of different projects, and you understand how various (sometimes unexpected) pieces fit together to create a great public destination. The term “silo-busting” gets your feet tapping.

5.) You have your own networks and organizations. You’re not a rock, or an island. You have a track record of working with people from different backgrounds, disciplines, and communities, and you understand how important unlikely partnerships are to successful Placemaking.

If you are interested in joining the Placemaking Leadership Council and attending our first meeting in Detroit this April, please click here to fill out a questionnaire that will help us to learn more about who you are and what you do.

We welcome inquiries for this first round up until March 1st, 2013, and will work internally to shape a Council that will represent a diversity not only in professional experiences, but also in age, gender, cultural heritage, and international backgrounds. Please also indicate whether travel costs will be an issue, as we will be able to provide assistance to a limited number of Council members, based on need, through the generous sponsorship Southwest Airlines and contributions by other members.

We’re very excited to announce this new initiative, and look forward to working with more of the passionate Placemakers who make this movement so dynamic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Nairobi's Kibera slum, life is lived out on the street. Public space is the lifeblood of the neighborhood. / Photo: neajjean via Flickr

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you care about your community. You’re involved with the daily life of the neighborhood to some degree, and if you want to get more involved, you know that there are plenty of options and resources to help you figure out where your talents would be most useful and the work enjoyable. But what if your neighborhood was made out of cardboard and corrugated sheet metal? Where would you start then?

As it turns out, if you ask the experts on informal settlements at UN-Habitat, they’ll give you an answer that sounds a lot like what an org like PPS might tell you back home: start with the public spaces. While perhaps counter-intuitive at first, considering that many developing-world slums lack basic necessities like clean water, electricity, and health care, it turns out that great public spaces are even more important to places like Nairobi’s Kibera and Mumbai’s Dharavi, because they allow many issues to be addressed at once. “You have to get people to understand that, when they are planning a city, they have to think multi-sectorial,” says Thomas Melin, a Head of Habitat’s Office of External Relations. “If you go into a slum area and you try to sort out only one thing–the power, the water, etc–it will not help! It might even make things worse. You have to sort out several basic things in order to get neighborhoods to work.”

Public spaces bring many different people, activities, and government functions together where everyone can see them; this makes them ideal places to show, by example, how multi-sectoral (aka interdisciplinary) planning processes like Placemaking can start the process of transformation that turns informal settlements into thriving urban neighborhoods. In recent years, we have found ourselves working ever farther afield; it made perfect sense, then, to partner with the UN-Habitat in 2011. “When you have these kinds of partnerships,” Melin explains, “you exchange, and you help, and you assist, and both parties learn–there are enormous needs in the world, and there’s a need for a network like the one PPS has in the US, but for the whole world.”

With more than half of the world’s population living in cities and with the gap between poor and affluent areas widening, the need to adapt and adjust Placemaking for new audiences in informal communities is particularly acute. Poverty is rampant in these settlements, making Western notions of “private space” for commercial and social activity seem quaint. “People in Kibera use public spaces very differently from how they might in, say, New York City,” notes PPS’s Cynthia Nikitin, who led a series of Placemaking workshops in one of Africa’s largest slums this past spring through our partnership with UN-Habitat. “In New York, ‘public space’ translates to a park, or a plaza. In Kibera, the streets are truly the public spaces, and people are out all day, every day: selling, begging, trading. People make their living–they live their lives–right out in the streets. Having safe and adequate places for that activity is as vital in these areas as water or electricity.”

Even in downtown Nairobi, the Jevangee Garden is filled with homeless residents. / Photo: Vanessa September

So why haven’t international NGOs and UN-Habitat been focusing on public spaces for ages, already? According to Juma Assiago, the Human Settlements Officer leading the Global Network on Safer Cities (GNSC) with UN-Habitat’s Safer Cities Programme, the organization’s partnership with PPS and its broader shifts in focus are the culmination of a decades-long shift in thinking. “We’ve moved from the conception of local government alone to local governance that claims responsibility for all city stakeholders in the planning, management and governance of urban centers,” Assiago says.

In the Stockholm Conference in 1972, the UN-Habitat was formed by member governments of the United Nations. This was followed soon after by the Habitat I gathering in Vancouver, where the discussion was largely focused on creating an agenda for providing more safe and adequate housing for all. True to the times, there was little concern with the spaces between the buildings themselves. Following much of the same logic that led to slum clearance and urban renewal in US cities during the decades before it was formed, Habitat’s mandate led to the organization’s early focus on bricks-and-mortar solutions. At the Habitat II summit in Istanbul twenty years later, member states and partners came to agree that human settlements development was not a housing-only challenge, but included the built environment and the living environment encompassed by the built environment. The UN-Habitat mandate widened in response.

“This was the major outcome in 1996,” notes Assiago. “To be able to achieve sustainable human settlements, member states acknowledged the need to develop partnership arrangements that allow various stakeholders, including the private sector, NGOs, youth groups, women’s groups, and academia to participate as equal partners with governments in shaping cleaner, safer and more equitable cities, towns and villages. By 2007, for the first time in human history, the majority of the population was urban as compared to rural. A fundamental shift is taking place from a sustainable human settlements agenda to a sustainable urban development agenda.”

With that has also come a shift of focus of how cities are being built, and in how people perceive development: urbanization is increasingly now seen as the source of development, and not the outcome of development. “This has led policymakers and practitioners alike to critically question: are we having people for the structures or building structures for the people?” Assiago says. “This shift in thinking is placing more emphasis on cities for people which moves us from the aerial skyline view of cities to the level of the walking persons eye level view of cities.”

Melin echoes this sentiment when speaking about Habitat’s work in Nairobi: “We use public space as a symbol when we train different municipalities around the world to take a more multi-sectorial approach and specifically think much more about individuals. Cities are about people, it’s not really houses. Take the houses away and the city will still survive; if you take the people away, there is no city.”

This, in turn, echoes the sentiment at the heart of the work that PPS does. Placemaking is, first and foremost, an inclusive process that brings people together to take part in shaping the public spaces that will serve as platforms for the daily life of their communities. Creating great places and creating great human networks are, in fact, one in the same. Elijah Agevi, the CEO of Research Triangle Africa, put it beautifully when he wrote of the workshop that Cynthia led at Kibera’s Silanga field, “It was certainly one of the key milestones during the Placemaking process. It was humbling to see different stakeholders working so constructively together towards a common goal!”

Where the Kibera slum ends, a golf course and condos begin. / Photo: Chrissy Olson via Flickr

In cities like Narobi, slums nestle up next to the freeways, garbage dumps, golf courses, and other awkwardly-inserted implements of Western culture that have gouged their way into the rapidly-changing cityscape.While the formal and informal cities often sit within spitting distance of each other, they operate as two different worlds, with very different civic lives. In the formal city, Melin explains, the system is set up to service a wealthy and powerful minority. Engagement is mostly non-existent for many residents, and often there is not even a legal right to participation. In informal settlements, however, services are provided more often by NGOs than by local governments, which has created a very different climate.

“These organizations utilize participatory decision-making as a means to ensure that they do something that the community needs, understands, and will continuously maintain,” he says. “You need to get the buy-in. There’s no use in building a clinic if everyone wants a school. This means that people in the slums have rarely seen a project which is not very participatory! If we come together with partners and want to create a public space, we have to invite participation; there’s no other way. This is the norm.”

"We not only have the opportunity to learn new things, but to learn them in new ways." Photo: The Advocacy Project via Flickr

The process of creating strong public spaces for vibrant but tenuous neighborhoods offers residents of developing-world cities a unique opportunity to not only build stronger and more permanent physical settlements, but to build more robust civic social networks as well. Placemaking can serve as a bridge linking the resources of the formal city and the open culture of the informal city, enriching life on both sides. Most likely, this will in turn inform the way that Placemaking processes are led in cities in the developing world as well, as Western society shifts toward a more publicly-oriented, less ownership-driven model out of necessity. “That’s why we’re excited about this partnership,” Nikitin says. “We not only have the opportunity to learn new things, but to learn them in new ways, and to see Placemaking from an entirely different perspective.”

“The globe is becoming increasingly urban, and on the other side, urbanization is becoming global,” Assiago says. “Sometimes, when we are approaching Placemaking and public spaces, the common mistake is to apply techniques as if one size fits all; but this is not true! Through learning from practice, we begin to understand how cities are human creations that configure themselves to development in totally different ways based on the social context…the social capital of the city. We need to be able to understand those flows in order to connect with the richness of value and quality that public spaces can provide.”

Click to learn more about #WUF6

In the words of Cecelia Martinez, director of Habitat’s NYC office, “Whatever you do for human kind, you do it in cities.” To that end, we are already working with our friends at UN-Habitat and Nairobi’s City Council on an initiative, announced by the Kenyan capital’s mayor this past March, “to make Nairobi a social city” by creating 60 new public spaces around the city over the next five years. In addition, Cynthia will be attending the World Urban Forum 6 in Naples next week to lead a workshop on How to Turn a Place Around on Tuesday, September 4th. We’ve included a schedule of events where Cynthia will be participating during the week-long gathering below. If you’d like to connect with her, you can email her, or follow her on Twitter.

How to Turn a Place Around
Tuesday, September 4th, 9:00am-12:00pm
Pavilion 4, Room 20 Mostra D’altremare exhibition Center

Sustainable Urban Development Network (SUD-Net) Meeting
Wednesday am the 5th, 9:30-11:30am
Sala Sardinia Room

Launch of the Global Network for Safer Cities
Wednesday, September 5th, 5:30pm

SEDESOL Networking Event
Monday, September 3rd, 2:30pm

And, last but certainly not least, we have just released a working draft of a new publication, Placemaking and the Future of Cities. This new pamphlet, designed to serve as a guide for mayors who are interested in using the Placemaking process to directly engage citizens in the revitalization of their cities, can be downloaded by clicking here. This is a draft-in-progress, and your suggestions, corrections, updates, and other input are both welcome and valued!

Here in the US, we are part of several new partnerships and programs that will have us working in all 50 states, from big cities to small towns. The formation of major partnerships like Livability Solutions and CommunityMatters; PPS’s absorption of the National Center for Bicycling and Walking and the re-focusing of its Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference on the theme “Pro Place”; new work with federal and state agencies, including the EPA, NEA, and DOTs in multiple states–all of these events indicate a shift in the way that people are approaching their work, as they come to understand how focusing on place changes everything.

We are also working with the Ax:son Johnson Foundation and UN-Habitat to convene an international group of Placemaking leaders in Stockholm, Sweden, next summer. This event will be structured around the transformative agendas at the heart of our work, and will be the first of three major conferences leading up to Habitat III in 2016. We’re also bringing together the best and brightest place-centered minds for a Placemaking Leadership Council, which will meet for the first time at the end of the year, and will be instrumental in shaping our work as the Placemaking movement continues to grow.

These initiatives are the culmination of our work up to this point. We look forward to collaborating with our new partners on re-centering the discussion about sustainable, prosperous cities on Place, and to creating a “Town Square of Placemaking.” Below, we’ve rounded up photos from some of the most exciting work that we’re doing right now. There will be many opportunities in the coming months to plug into the growing global network of Placemakers. We’re looking forward to connecting with you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out!

We traveled to Nairobi this spring as part of Transforming Cities through Placemaking & Public Spaces, our joint program with UN-Habitat. We continue to work closely with our friends there, and are looking forward to bringing Placemaking to a global audience at the World Urban Forum in Naples, Italy, this September. (Photo: PPS)

Just last week, we announced the exciting news that PPS will be leading the National Endowment for the Arts' Citizens' Institute on Rural Design as part of our work with the Orton Family Foundation and its new CommunityMatters partnership. We're looking forward to putting lessons learned from recent work in rural communities, like the above-pictured plan for the future of Windham, NH's Village Center, to good use! (Photo: PPS)

We’ve had the pleasure of working on some of the most treasured places in Detroit, including Eastern Market, the largest public markets in the country, where we developed a comprehensive outreach program to foster closer links between the market and the community. Michiganders have taken to championing Placemaking, as well, from the grassroots to the real estate community the governor's office. (Photo: PPS)

You’ll be able to learn from farmers markets and public markets around the world at the 8th International Public Markets Conference, which will take place in Cleveland, OH, this September 21-23. It will be a great opportunity to explore how “market cities” are revitalizing their neighborhoods by focusing on creating healthy places. (Photo: PPS)

Inspired by PPS’s work, Philadelphia’s University City District has created “The Porch,” a Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper public plaza at a major transportation hub downtown. Philly is one of ten communities to receive free technical assistance from the Livability Solutions partnership on major Placemaking projects thanks to an EPA Technical Assistance Sustainable Communities Grant. (Photo: PlanPhilly via Flickr)

We’re looking forward to traveling to one of our very favorite places, Vancouver’s Granville Island, with a group of civic leaders from Salt Lake City to help Utah’s capital develop a leadership agenda around key destinations. We’ll also be hosting another round of Placemaking trainings at our office in New York City this fall—dates coming soon! (Photo: PPS)

Our team of transportation experts has been very busy working with cities and towns around the world. You can meet and chat with them at this year's Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place conference in Long Beach (Sept. 10-13, 2012), which will put a fresh spin on North America's premier event for bike/ped advocates and enthusiasts by focusing the conversation on how transportation can help create great places. (Photo: PPS)

San Antonio’s appetite for Placemaking has made turned it into what we like to call a “popping city.” We’ve recently worked on recommendations for Alamo Plaza (pictured above during the Luminaria festival), participated in the Downtown Transportation Study, worked with Rackspace on a public space plan for their headquarters, and participated in planning for the revamp of HemisFair Park—all within the past few months! (Photo: PPS)

We’ve been working on the Perth Cultural Centre in Australia, helping the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority to re-think the campus as a true cultural hub by focusing on Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper tactics (like the concert pictured above), busting silos and bringing art out into the streets. The results have been astounding! (Photo: MRA)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A marketplace in Cairo

For many women and girls around the world, just passing through a public space- a market, a crowded street or riding the bus – is cause for great anxiety: the threat of sexual harassment can be terrifying and have lingering psychological impacts and consequences.  Unfortunately, patterns of sexual abuse in urban public spaces are often seen as an unavoidable part of urban life and generally speaking, not therefore recognized as a problem either by local governments, enforcement agencies, or the public.

Cynthia Nikitin

As part of PPS’ ongoing relationship with the UN-Habitat, I flew to Cairo to join over 100 participants from more than 12 countries who are working together to bring an end to sexual harassment and violence against women and girls in public spaces at the 2011 UN Women Designing Safe Cities with Women and Girls Stakeholder Planning Meeting. UN Egypt reported on the event.

In what spaces do women suffer most from sexual harassment?
Many, many topics were covered during the planning meeting- but what I found most startling was the emphasis about public space as places where women suffer most from sexual harassment and gender based violence.  While most public spaces in North American cities and those of the West in general – markets in particular – are usually where one is most likely to find police, an on site management presence, guards, and watchful neighbors, in the Global South and developing countries, public spaces are the most dangerous places to be for women and girls, and the least supervised as well.

At a marketplace in Cairo

How can Placemaking Help Prevent Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces?

Streets, squares, and parks, the focus of our initial work at PPS, are often chaotic, poorly planned and maintained places (if they exist at all in disadvantaged and under-resourced communities).   Once transformed, however, public spaces are anchors to safe, inclusive and thriving urban centers.

Moreover, an improved public environment can have a catalytic impact on a city: enhancing the delivery of basic social and infrastructural services, driving the creation of economic and cultural activity, expanding mobility options, and nurturing a cohesive, civil society based upon mutual respect between men and women.  Finally, as a grassroots process, Placemaking provides a way to concretely engage people – especially women and youth – in planning and implementing pubic space improvements in their communities.

Traffic in Cairo

Change the Physical Environment to Change Behavior

What became clear to me over the 4 days of the conference was how important it was to and perhaps even easier it might be to make changes to the physical environment in order to influence behavioral patterns and minimize the fear factor of sexual violence that haunts women the world over. Instead, the goal of the conference organizers and the Safer Cities for Women and Girls program is to change the mindset of men and boys, advocate for and protect the rights of women, build the capacity of women to voice their views,  raise awareness of the seriousness of this issue (98% of all foreign female visitors to Cairo cite being sexually harassed for example), change cultural patterns and legal systems, educate police and local governments to be more responsive to women’s concerns and build public trust in these institutions.

Using a grassroots process to redesign the public spaces where women live could be a much faster way to bring about the changes necessary to make cities safer for women.

But, by the end of the conference, and impacted by my presentation and conversations over the course of the 4 days event, there seemed to be an emerging recognition of the need to also address the built environment and its impact on women’s feeling of safety and security as a way of achieving on the ground immediate resolution of and means to begin to deconstruct long held systemic belief systems and insensitive legal structures.  Redesigning bus stops and stations, train stations, public markets, and all the places where women live and go through a grass roots process which includes and empowers them could prove to be a much faster way to bring about the changes that will make cities safer for women.

Cairo

Rethinking Design to Include Safety Concerns

Partnerships with architects, urban planners, transit authorities, landscape architects and planning agencies and educating the design professions about ways to build projects from the outset that consider women’s safety as a key element of their design program could set the stage for and induce the psycho-social, behavioural, and cultural changes that need to take place before women are truly able to enjoy public spaces and engage fully in the civic life of their cities.

Breaking Down Silos for Stronger Safer City Initiatives

It is a question then of social movements geared towards making on the ground, visible changes, lead by empowered grassroots women, (which our friends at the Huairou Commission has been championing and achieving for the past 15 years) vs. a more considered, quantitative approach towards collecting analyzing and disseminating data around women’s safety to federal and state governments, local authorities and decision and policy makers.  Both are valuable, necessary approaches. However, when linked with designing, building, programming, managing and supporting the upgrading of public spaces, the safer cities initiatives themselves can become more effective more quickly .

Placemaking Dispatches from Cairo

I got to share Placemaking with a lot of amazing people involved in Safer Cities Initiatives.  Great walk around the markets and new parks with UN-HABITAT gals and a Cairo urbanologist/architect whose staff is crazy about us: Dina Shehayeb has done housing upgrade projects working with local residents and was part of the team that turned a landfill in Cairo into an amazing park, called Alazhar Park. Perhaps one of the best in the Arab world? See for yourself.

L to R: Cecilia Anderson, UN Habitat, Nairobi; Katja Schaeffer, UN Habitat, Cairo; Me; Dina Shehayeb, Researcher, Community Planner, Author; with Ahmad, whose father owns the shop behind us, and his friend.

Why does it take a hurricane, a terrorist attack or a revolution to get people to cooperate with their neighbors?

Barcelona, Spain

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

Cynthia Nikitin

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

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

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

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

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

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

Las Ramblas at night (Barcelona, Spain)

Next Steps

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

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Meg MacIver contributed to this post.