Current Projects: United Arab Emirates

City: Dubai
Project Name: Dubai Placemaking
Client:
Project Manager: Fred Kent and Phil Myrick
Brief Description: PPS is working with a new development project in Dubai, U.A.E., to develop public space design and program recommendations. The project is intended as a major new downtown district for Dubai. Until now, development in the Gulf state has proceeded almost entirely without mind to regional integration or the provision of public space, and as a result, the newer parts of Dubai currently lack a city center. Private spaces, like malls, hotels and fantastical entertainment palaces, have become ersatz Main Streets and plazas for a privileged subset of the population, while the working classes have been relegated to crowded residential compounds at the periphery of the sprawling city. PPS is attempting to right some of these injustices by advocating for real public spaces and human scale development within the mixed-use, transit-oriented development with which we are involved. In addition to leading the concept design of the public spaces, PPS is inventorying the world's best public spaces and to apply their lessons to Dubai. While our work in Dubai represents a departure from the types of projects with which PPS is usually associated, our role as proponents of placemaking within it remains the same.

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