ABOUT PPS
Project for Public Spaces' is a nonprofit technical assistance, research and educational organization. PPS' mission - to create and sustain public places that build communities - is achieved through programs in parks, plazas and central squares; transportation; public buildings and architecture and public markets;. Since its founding in 1975, the organization has worked in over 1,000 communities, within the U.S. and abroad, helping people to grow their public space into vital community places.


PPS' Approach
PPS helps accomplish these changes through a community/place-based approach to planning and decision-making that we have developed and broadened in the 25 years since our organization evolved from William H. Whyte's Street Life Project. This approach involves looking at, listening to and asking questions of the people in a community about their needs and aspirations. We work with them to create a vision around the places they view as important to community life and to their daily experience; and we help them implement their ideas beginning with small scale, doable improvements that can be phased in quickly and immediately begin to benefit a community.

This process is carried out with such tools as systematic on-site observations, time-lapse filming, customized interviews and user surveys, that allow us to go out to people in the places where they live, work and congregate to gather their input, document and analyze their activities, and reach those who otherwise might not participate in an improvement effort. The process also includes facilitated public forums, workshops, meetings and committees that give people an opportunity from the effort's outset to identify issues, contribute ideas and make decisions about improvements that can holistically address their manifold concerns and enhance the places where they live and work. Using this approach, we are able to help rebuild communities both in spirit and as places.

PPS Initiatives
PPS's "place-making" mission is reinforced on a broader level through three major programs: the Urban Parks Institute, an initiative to educate and involve people and promote public/private cooperation in improving urban parks through research, conferences, workshops, a web site, a newsletter and training sessions; the Public Market Collaborative, created by PPS in 1987 to further the preservation and establishment of public markets and to assist communities in market development, design and operations through technical assistance, an international market conference, publications, classes and forums; and Building Livable Communities through Transportation, an effort to advance the community building capacity of transportation, through workshops, an exchange program, educational outreach, research, information dissemination, policy discussion and demonstration projects.