• 
  Together with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, PPS helps found the National Main Street Center, producing the original training manual for the Center and a companion film titled What Do People Do Downtown? Main Street in Focus.


• 
  PPS produces its first film for public distribution, Waiting for the Bus, beginning a longstanding commitment to promote the value of amenities in improving both streets and public transit.

• 
  PPS's report, Bryant Park, Intimidation or Recreation?, sets the park's storied turnaround in motion. See Greatest Hits.


• 
  Kathy Madden begins an epic trilogy of public restroom studies, evaluating use and condition of the facilities in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park.

• 
  PPS publishes its first "how-to" book detailing several techniques it developed to analyze public use of parks. Called User Analysis: An Approach to Park Planning and Management, the book caps off another fruitful partnership with the National Park Service.

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  Putting "Context-Sensitive Solutions" to use before the phrase has even been coined, PPS's streetscape improvements spur the dramatic comeback of New Haven's Chapel Street. See Greatest Hits.

In the News

Metropolis, March 1983.

The staff of PPS earn a new nickname, "The Space Doctors," drawn from the title of a profile published in Metropolis magazine.

• 
  PPS and its staff of 15 move to the curiously improbable corner of Waverly Place and Waverly Place in Greenwich Village (153 Waverly Place), where they will reside for the next 21 years.


• 
  PPS publishes Managing Downtown Public Spaces, one of the first-ever studies of public space management.


• 
  During a project to redesign the Times Square subway station, Kathy Madden completes the second installment in her triptych of public restroom studies, counting people and timing their length of stay.