Yet when we try to eliminate congestion from our urban areas by using decades-old traffic engineering measures and models, we are essentially using a rototiller in a flowerbed. And it’s time to acknowledge that the collateral damage has been too great.

Credit: Andy Singer

Credit: Andy Singer

First, an explanation of what I call the “deadly duo”: travel projection models and Levels of Service (LOS) performance metrics.Travel projection models are computer programs that use assumptions about future growth in population, employment, and recreation to estimate how many new cars will be on roads 20 or 30 years into the future.

Models range from quite simplistic to incredibly complex and expensive. Simple models deal primarily with coarse movements of vehicles between cities, while complex models deal with the intricacies of what happens on the fine grid of urban areas. To be truly accurate, growth projection modeling can be expensive. Therefore, absent compelling reason to do otherwise, most growth projections tend to be done using less expensive techniques, which usually lead to overestimates.

Levels of Service (LOS) is a performance metric which flourished during the interstate- and freeway-building era that went from the 1950s to the 1990s. Using a scale of A to F, LOS attempts to create an objective formula to answer a subjective question: How much congestion are we willing to tolerate? As in grade school, “F” is a failing grade and “A” is perfect.

Engineers decided that LOS “C” was a good balance between overinvestment in perfection and underinvestment leading to congestion. In urban areas, a concession was made to accept LOS D, representing slightly more restricted but still free-flowing traffic. LOS is commonly (actually, almost always) calculated using travel projections for 20 to 30 years into the future.

Using basic traffic models and LOS C/D to plan and design the interstate system was a no-brainer in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. When deciding how many lanes to build on a freeway connecting major cities, a sensitivity of plus or minus 10,000 trips a day could be tolerated, and the incremental difference in cost to plow through undeveloped land was relatively insignificant.

Good approach, wrong setting

I’m not going to look back and quibble with the general philosophy of how the interstates and the associated high-speed freeways were planned and designed. On many levels, the approach made sense.

But it became increasingly less persuasive when applied to the rest of our road network. Unlike interstates and freeways, most roads exist not just to move traffic through the area, but also to serve the homes, businesses, and people along them. Yet in search of high LOS rankings, transportation professionals have widened streets, added lanes, removed on-street parking, limited crosswalks, and deployed other inappropriate strategies. In ridding our communities of the weeds of congestion, we have also pulled out the very plants that made our “gardens” worthwhile in the first place.

It’s worth remembering, too, that not all congestion is bad. John Norquist, former Mayor of Milwaukee and current CEO and President of the Congress for New Urbanism, suggests that congestion is like cholesterol: there is a good kind and a bad kind.

What makes the prevailing situation even more troubling is that there are no comprehensive requirements dictating the use of either LOS or travel modeling in transportation planning and project design. The “Green Book” from the Association of American State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) (more formally known as “A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets”) clearly states that these are guidelines to be applied with judgment — not mandates. So does the Federal Highway Administration’s “Highway Capacity Manual.”

The idea that we must rid our roads of  any and all traffic congestion is, in fact, a self-imposed requirement. As Eric Jaffe wrote in an article for Atlantic Cities in December, 2011:

Although cities aren’t required to abide LOS measures by law, over the years the measure hardened into convention. By the time cities recognized the need for balanced transportation systems, LOS was entrenched in the street engineering canon.

Worse yet, many designers size a road or intersection to be free-flowing for the worst hour of the day. Sized to accommodate cars during the highest peak hour, such streets will be “overdesigned” for the other 23 hours of the day and will always function poorly for the surrounding community.

If that isn’t troubling enough, LOS is often calculated using traffic predicted 20 years into the future, even in urban settings. Until the forecasted growth materializes, the roadway will be overdesigned, even during the peak hour. Overdesigned roadways encourage motorists to drive at higher speeds, making them difficult to cross and unpleasant to walk along. This degrades public spaces between the edges of the road and the adjacent buildings, encourages people to drive short distances, and generally unravels a community’s social fabric.

Let me repeat: Contrary to what you may hear, there is no national requirement or mandate to apply LOS standards and targets 20 years into the future for urban streets. This thinking is a remnant from 1960s era  policy for the interstate system, and has erroneously been passed down from generation to generation.

There is no national requirement or mandate to apply LOS standards and targets 20 years into the future for urban streets. Credit: Andy Singer

So what are the right approaches?

Asking the simple question, “Do you want congestion reduced at a particular location?” is a question out of context. It’s like asking you whether you want to never be stung by a bee again. Of course, the answer will be yes. But what if I told you that to in order to never suffer a sting again, every plant within a several mile radius would have to be destroyed — and that you could never leave the area of destruction?

You would have a completely different answer, I’m sure.

The question that needs to be asked in urban settings is not whether you ever want to sit in congestion again. Who does? The question is whether you want to eliminate congestion on your Main Street 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year — knowing that the consequence would be a community with decimated economic and social value, increased reliance on car use, increased crashes, and, ultimately, more congestion.

Recognizing the need for balance, a number of entities are beginning to promote approaches sensitive to the context.

I was the New Jersey Department of Transportation’ s project manager for  the “Smart Transportation Guide” (STG), adopted jointly by the state DOTs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.   The STG directs DOT designers to consider the tradeoffs between vehicular LOS and “local service.” It goes on to say that if the street in question is not critical to regional movement, that LOS E or F could be acceptable — and that designers may actually need to design to slow down cars.

The Institute of Transportation Engineers, an “international association of transportation professionals responsible for meeting mobility and safety needs” also promoted this concept in its landmark “Context Sensitive Solutions Guidelines for Urban Thoroughfares.” Florida DOT has adopted multimodal LOS standards, and cities like Charlotte, N.C., have elevated pedestrian and bicycle LOS to the level of that for automobiles. We have a long way to go, but the door is opening.

Creating balanced standards for roadway design will benefit transportation as well. In the Netherlands, the “Livable Streets” policy led to a remarkable improvement in safety on their roadways. They started in the 1970s with a crash rate 15 percent higher than in the U.S., and now have a crash rate 60 percent lower.

Design with the community in mind

It’s time for communities and transportation professionals alike to accept that we have been using the wrong tools for the wrong job. LOS and travel modeling may be effective when sizing and locating high-speed freeways, but are totally inappropriate in every other setting. If travel modeling with high rates of growth is used to make street decisions, your community may be doomed to a series of roadway widenings or intersection expansions. If vehicular LOS C or D performance measures are adopted as non-negotiable targets, major road construction will be heading your way.

Village, suburban and city streets need to be designed with the community in mind using the PPS principle of Streets as Places to  create a vision for a great community and then plan your streets to support that vision.

Lets not be fooled by the appearance of science behind Levels of Service and Traffic Modeling. As I pointed out in an interview with Wayne Senville that was published in the November 2010 “Planning Commissioner’s Journal,” LOS standards are easy to understand — and that’s exactly what makes them so dangerous.

All images by Andy Singer.

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.

Project for Public Spaces and our partners at Livability Solutions are pleased to announce the 10 communities selected to receive free technical assistance this year, thanks to a grant to Project for Public Spaces from the United States Environmental Protection Agency Office of Sustainable Communities under their Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program.

These governments and organizations represent a diverse group of communities from across the United States, from large cities to rural counties. All have a strong commitment to sustainability and smart growth and are poised to implement positive change by making use of the assistance we are offering.

The communities are:

• University City District, Philadelphia
• West Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, Eau Claire, Wis.
• Lower Eastside Action Plan, Detroit
• Toledo-Lucas County Sustainability Commission, Maumee, Ohio
• Colfax on the Hill, Inc., Denver, Colo.
• City of Blue Springs, Mo.
• Charlotte County, Fla.
• Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention, Little Rock, Ark.
• Anthithesis Research, Wellpinit, Wash.
• Gulf Regional Planning Commission, Gulfport, Miss.

Each community will receive a one- or two-day training session with a livability expert from Project for Public Spaces or one of our Livability Solutions partners on the issue of their choice. Our partners who will be delivering technical assistance this year include:

• Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT)
• Congress for the New Urbanism
• Local Government Commission
• National Charrette Institute
• Reconnecting America
• Walkable Livable Communities Institute

Project for Public Spaces and our partners at Livability Solutions received 64 applications from local governments and community organization for this technical assistance. While all of the applications were worthy, the 10 communities selected represented the strongest commitment to, need for, and capability to achieve livability solutions using the tools we offer.

This technical assistance is made possible by a grant to Project for Public Spaces from the United States Environmental Protection Agency Office of Sustainable Communities under the Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program. The Building Blocks program funds quick, targeted assistance to communities that face common development problems. Three other nonprofit organizations – Forterra (formerly Cascade Land Conservancy), Global Green USA, and  Smart Growth America — also received competitively awarded grants under this program this year to help communities achieve their sustainable development goals.

We encourage interested communities to continue to check the Livability Solutions website for additional opportunities for technical assistance. We also welcome interested foundations, organizations, and individuals to contact us if they are interested in supporting assistance to one of the 53 other qualified applications we received.

Click here for information on other opportunities to work with Livability Solutions or here for training and technical assistance offered by Project for Public Spaces or our partners.

“It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people; what is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.” —William H. (Holly) Whyte

During the past two or more decades, communities around the country have fallen victim to the relentless machinations of a group of people with an overdeveloped, overspecialized “creative function,” who see themselves as experts rather than collaborators or service providers. In the face of these experts and their implicit authority, communities have been intimidated and made to feel impotent. The public has been convinced to leave the creative function solely in the hands of the specially trained—namely architects, artists, and designers—and to abdicate its role in nurturing the creative life of the city. As a result, the communal psyche has atrophied and the public realm has suffered. Projects—whether public art, public parks, or public transportation—designed without the community in mind have provoked fierce criticism by host communities. That criticism is based on, among other things, a lack of trust in the motives of the professionals involved, who often serve something other than the public good and whose priorities are often different from those of the community.

Favela Painting collaborates with communities to use art for transformation. (Haas&Hahn for favelapainting.com)

That’s the bad news. At the same time, there is more happening in public art today to engage with the public space in which works are sited. More than ever before, public artworks are stimulating and inviting active dialogue rather than just passive observation, thereby fostering social interaction that can even lead to a sense of social cohesion among the viewers themselves. Maybe this is happening because some planners, artists, and architects are no longer afraid to see themselves as resources, facilitators, and collaborators, rather than as experts. In such cases, the design of art in public spaces moves away from reverence for textbook ideals and toward flexibility, changeability, evolution, and an appreciation for humanity.

“…planners, artists, and architects are no longer afraid to see themselves as resources, facilitators, and collaborators…”

We salute this new paradigm, one in which designers actually welcome the opportunity to work with communities to open up places for new interpretations, creating more room for public art—especially in parks, transforming them from ersatz cemeteries and static sculpture gardens into great multi-use public destinations.

The group Civic Center, in New Orleans, has lead many participatory public art projects. (CivicCenter.cc)

The success of a work of public art relies heavily upon the design of the public space in which it is located. Many elements come together to improve or make a good public space. If you have a work of public art, but the site is not well maintained, people do not feel safe there. If there are no design amenities or elements like seating or shade, if there’s nowhere to eat or nothing to do once you get there, if you can’t walk to the site or park your car due to heavy traffic or a poor pedestrian environment or because it’s not connected to other places or destinations, people will not take time out to visit the work of art, and the artwork will have failed as a placemaker and a community enhancement.

A good public space, on the other hand, is not only inviting, but builds a place for the community around an artwork, or culture venue, by growing and attracting activities that make it a multi-use destination. Alone, no designer, architect, or artist can create a great public space that generates and sustains stronger communities. Instead, such spaces arise from collaboration with the users of the place who articulate what they value about it and assist the artist in understanding its complexity.

“Public art projects will be most effective when they are part of a larger, holistic, multidisciplinary approach to enlivening a city or neighborhood.”

Public art projects that engage the community in aspects of the art-making process can provide communities with the means to improve their environment and the opportunity to develop a sense of pride and ownership over their parks, streets, and public institutions. Ultimately, however, public art projects will be most effective when they are part of a larger, holistic, multidisciplinary approach to enlivening a city or neighborhood. In this way, public art can contribute both to community life and to the service and vitality of public spaces. This is the promise of the emerging “Creative Placemaking” movement.

Related PPS articles and resources:

• ‘Bring to Light’ Reimagines Public Space With Artistic Spectacle
• Design and Review Criteria for Public Art
• Funding for Public Art
• Using PR to Develop a Public Art Program
• How Art Economically Benefits Cities

Do you have a proposal for a presentation? The call for submissions is open; click here to find out all the details. The deadline is February 1, 2012.

Long Beach has been building a great network of bike lanes, making it a natural choice for the next Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference. Photo: waltarrrr via Flickr.

Pro Walk/Pro Bike is presented by the National Center for Bicycling and Walking (NCBW), a resident program of PPS.

This is a great opportunity to share the work you are doing to make communities safer and more attractive places for walking and bicycling. The conference will be attended by national leaders in the fields of transportation planning, engineering, health, advocacy, public policy, research, and more.

Your proposal should reflect one of this year’s conference themes. Here they are:

• Invest + Govern. Bicycling and walking investments are ready to compete in the new cost-conscious reality and political climate in which we live. We encourage presentations that: quantify the benefits and cost savings to the individual and community; present the business case for supporting bicycling and walking; detail financing models for making investments; and other topics.
• Advocate + Include. When our transportation system is balanced, everyone can prosper; when transportation decision-making is inclusive, it builds community. We encourage presentations about: environmental justice achieved; outsiders’ perspective on our work; programs that engage low income and underserved communities; and other topics.
• Design + Engineer. New approaches to planning, designing, and building infrastructure are luring new people into cycling, and improving safety for all road users. We encourage presentations that: continue the professional development of planners and engineers; discuss the latest transportation engineering publications/manuals; and present best practices for finding flexibility within existing design standards.
• Healthy + Safe. Our neighborhoods can enhance our health and quality-of-life by facilitating social connections and by making walking and biking trips easy and convenient. We encourage presentations from public health professionals and others who have developed successful and low cost models/programs for physical activity/built environment focused interventions. Also included in this category: innovative injury prevention programs, food access programs, programs that address childhood obesity, and programs that prioritize populations experiencing health disparities.
• Plan + Connect. Changing demographics, emerging technology, and better collaboration across disciplines, agencies, and travel modes is moving us closer to seamless travel in many major cities. We encourage transportation planning related presentations on the following subjects: successful intergovernmental partnerships; exemplary public involvement practices; innovative and cost-effective applications of technology to improve service; and model bike/ped planning.
• SRTS + Beyond. For work that focuses on improving the safety, desirability, and ease of movement for young people walking or biking to/from school. We encourage proposals on the following subjects: best practices for including youth in planning; exemplary Safe Routes to School programs (K-12); developing schools as neighborhood assets/destinations; and developing community-wide youth mobility plans.

NCBW and PPS are excited about putting together what is sure to be a productive and thought-provoking conference!

Photo: waltarrrr via Flickr.

Have a seat and stay for awhile.

Establishments that apply to participate in the program have to meet design guidelines, but can spend as much or as little money as they want (cost has averaged at $10,000). The spaces must be maintained by the sponsoring restaurant and are open to all members of the public, regardless of whether or not they buy anything.

Take a look at the little time-lapse video below from the NYC DOT that shows a day in the life of one such pop-up café, on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village. The founding spirit behind our work here at PPS, William “Holly” Whyte, would surely have enjoyed observing the social life of this small urban space.

(h/t @MikeLydon)

Discussing the future of the BMW Guggenheim Lab space, in that space on October 12. Photo: Ken Farmer

The whole time the lab was open, people in the neighborhood and around the city were dreaming and planning about what would happen to the space after the lab’s scheduled departure on Oct.16 (it’s headed next for Berlin, then Mumbai and six other cities around the world). On Oct. 12, PPS partnered with First Street Green, a local neighborhood group, to host an event at the lab that looked to the future of what was once a rat-infested vacant lot.

First Street Green was in the mix throughout the lab’s tenure in the space, and led a full day of programming in September that included a “visioning wall” where community members could share their ideas.

Now the visioning wall will be back on display at the first event scheduled for the space since the lab left town. First Street Green is hosting an event billed as a “Holiday Wrap Up” at what is now called the First Park Art Park on Saturday, Dec. 10, from 2-5 p.m. They’ll be presenting some of the data they collected at the lab and encouraging attendees to create a “wishing wall” by attaching strips of fabric with wishes on them to a chain-link fence at the site.

This is just a precursor to full-fledged events that will be happening next spring, but if you’re interested in building the future of this innovative urban space, you should definitely make time to be there.

Colin Huggins and his piano in October. Photo: Sarah Goodyear

Today that same piano player is featured in a New York Times story about how the parks department is cracking down on performers in Washington Square, in the name of providing some peace and quiet for parkgoers:

[T]he city’s parks department has slapped summonses on … performers who put out hats or buckets, for vending in an unauthorized location — specifically, within 50 feet of a monument.

The department’s rule, one of many put in place a year ago, was intended to control commerce in the busiest parks. Under the city’s definition, vending covers not only those peddling photographs and ankle bracelets, but also performers who solicit donations.

Huggins has gotten nine summonses. His fines add up to $2,250.

The musicians are considering a lawsuit over the matter. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Mass protests against the domination of cars were one factor that led to the superb cycling infrastructure of today's Netherlands.

Given the reputation of the Netherlands as a cyclist’s paradise, you might think that its extensive cycling infrastructure came down from heaven itself, or was perhaps created by the wave of a magic wand. Not so. It was the result of a lot of hard work, including massive street protests and very deliberate political decision-making.

The video below offers vital historical perspective on the way the Netherlands ended up turning away from the autocentric development that arose with postwar prosperity, and chose to go down the cycle path. It lists several key factors, including public outrage over the amount of space given to automobiles; huge protests over traffic deaths, especially those of children, which were referred to by protesters as “child murder”; and governmental response to the oil crisis of the 1970s, which prompted efforts to reduce oil dependence without diminishing quality of life.

The Netherlands is often perceived as an exceptional nation in terms of its transportation policies and infrastructure. And yet there is nothing inherently exceptional about the country’s situation. As the narrator says at the end of the film, “The Netherlands’ problems were and are not unique. Their solutions shouldn’t be that either.”

You can read more on the blog A View from the Cycle Path.

And find out more about what we can learn from the Netherlands in these recent PPS posts:

“What Can We Learn about Road Safety from the Dutch?”

“Where the Sidewalk Doesn’t End: What Shared Space Has to Share”

“Exiting the ‘Forgiving Highway’ for the ‘Self-Explaining Road’”

These are just a few of the dozens of ideas that the people of San Antonio contributed by visiting the online PlaceMap that PPS created as part of an ongoing engagement with the city’s government and citizens to to help them bring back downtown as a vibrant, livable place for a new generation of residents. This interactive map, based on PPS’s core “Power of 10” principle, called on citizens to “Re-Imagine the Heart of San Antonio.” And they proved ready for the challenge.

It’s all a great illustration of the way that online community engagement — Digital Placemaking — expands and enhances the work that PPS does face-to-face with community members and municipal officials to create great places and to plan for more livable, sustainable communities.

San Antonio's downtown is filled with unrealized Placemaking potential. Photo: Matthew Egan via Flickr.

The PlaceMap was launched in June as one element of PPS’s “Placemaking Academy” for San Antonio city officials. Acting as strategic advisers, PPS led the city’s staff to completely rethink the way they think about planning — not only in terms of community outreach, but in the way they work together, and also in the way they see the places around them.

“PPS has really helped us to get our staff excited about Placemaking,” says Lori Houston, assistant director of the Center City Development Office for the City of San Antonio. “They’ve done a great job with that.”

In August, the first phase of the PlaceMap project ended with citizens coming together in meetings at the library and at a “Views and Brews” event hosted by Texas Public Radio (TPR) to discuss the results. Participants sifted through, discussed, refined, and expanded on the varied concepts that had come up, including many that fit into the “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper” (LQC) category.

Now TPR is planning a new campaign to solicit more LQC ideas via the PlaceMap, then have a vote on which one should be implemented, find a sponsor, and make it happen.

More and more cities are looking to enhance and open up their planning process, and Digital Placemaking is a great way to achieve that. In Baltimore, PPS added online mapping to the outreach mix to connect with a wider circle of voices, while making the community process more transparent. With the Institute for Urban Design in New York City, PPS launched a version of the PlaceMap that gathered ideas and raised awareness of urban design by leveraging the inherent “place-context” of online mapping.

For San Antonio, getting to the next level of public involvement in planning is key. The PlaceMap is part of an overall strategy to achieve the city’s goals of revitalizing its downtown in a holistic, community-led way. “I really think that the PlaceMap has given us an interface with the public that allows them to participate meaningfully,” says Houston.

She adds that having an online option expanded the city’s ability to include people beyond the usual suspects. “It allows people to come to the website on their own terms,” she says. “It allows for more thoughtful presentation. Public meetings are not convenient for everyone. You typically get the same stakeholders.”

Houston added that being able to submit pictures was another real plus. By uploading images to the map, users can share their vision for the city’s public spaces in a very concrete way.

Many of the San Antonio PlaceMap users illustrated their ideas with photos — some from the streets they wanted to see improved, some from other communities whose successes they’d like to emulate. “People are saying, ‘I saw this in another city,’” says Houston. And if other cities can have these things, the implication is, why can’t San Antonio?

The possibilities of Placemaking in San Antonio were clear to Janet Grojean of Texas Public Radio as soon as she heard a presentation from PPS’s Phil Myrick back in June. “I really liked what Phil was saying, when he was talking about Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper particularly,” says Grojean, the station’s director of corporate and community outreach. “I raised my hand and said, You can count on your local public radio station. We’re in.”

Grojean is a lifelong San Antonian, and she is well aware of the problems faced by her city’s downtown. It’s a place that has for a long time held little appeal for residents. “Locals only go downtown when there are relatives in town who want to see the Alamo or the Riverwalk,” says Grojean, with a laugh.

The nature of the problem — a city that had its heart hollowed out — made a Placemaking approach resonate with Grojean. “That’s what Placemaking is, right?” she says. “Taking something that isn’t and trying to turn it into something that is.”

PPS’s Myrick says that the PlaceMap was a great way to spread the news about the Placemaking approach to revitalizing San Antonio’s downtown — an effort that PPS has been involved with for several years now.

“We wanted to use the Power of 10 as one of the ways to talk about downtown strategy,” says Myrick. “We liked the idea of having an online component that invites the community to participate. It’s simple but structured. It’s a way to get community input into a variety of planning initiatives. I’d recommend it as a framework even on a regional planning level — it helps communities have concrete conversations about where investments and growth should occur, in ways that puts the sense of place back in our most cherished places.”

Grojean says that for her and her colleagues at TPR, the community-led Placemaking process, enabled in this case by the PlaceMap, is a natural fit.

“Radio is community,” says Grojean. “Placemaking resonates with who we are. We are community, trying to make a difference.”

We’ll be watching to see what the San Antonio community and TPR come up with in months to come, and we’ll keep you posted!

Contact Phil Myrick or Dan Latorre if you’re interested in incorporating Digital Placemaking into your community’s Placemaking practice.

Photo: Matthew Egan via Flickr

The “complete streets” movement has taken the United States by storm, and has even taken root in countries such as Canada and Australia. Few movements have done so much to influence needed policy change in the transportation world. As of today, almost 300 jurisdictions around the U.S. have adopted complete streets policies or have committed to do so. This is an amazing accomplishment that sets the stage for communities to reframe their future around people instead of cars.

But communities cannot stop there. Complete streets is largely an engineering policy that, according to the National Complete Streets Coalition website, “ensures that transportation planners and engineers consistently design and operate the entire roadway with all users in mind — including bicyclists, public transportation vehicles and riders, and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.”

Getting transportation professionals to think about including pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users is a key first step in creating great places and livable communities. But that is not enough to make places that truly work for people — “streets as places.” The planning process itself needs to be turned upside-down.

We at PPS like to say that engineers can ruin a good street, but they cannot create a good street — a street that is truly complete — through engineering alone. A small but growing group of communities have recognized that to really “complete their streets,” they need genuinely place-based and community-based transportation policies that go beyond routine accommodation.

“The design of a street is only one aspect of its effectiveness. How the street fits within the surrounding transportation network and supports adjacent land uses will also be important to its effectiveness.” — Charlotte “Urban Street Design Guidelines”

This illustration from Indianapolis's "Multimodal Corridor and Public Space Design Guidelines" reflects how the new wave of street policies specifies Placemaking guidance as well as how to accommodate all modes.

Communities such as Indianapolis, Charlotte, Savannah, San Francisco, and Denver have created community-based street policies that turn the transportation planning and design process upside-down, acknowledging that the role of streets is to build communities, not the other way around. The example from  the Indianapolis “Multimodal Corridor and Public Space Design Guidelines” illustrates how this new genre of street policies specifies Placemaking guidance as well as how to accommodate all modes.

PPS is helping communities realize a different vision of what transportation can be. We’ve worked in small communities in rural areas, such as Brunswick, Me.; Newport, Vt.; and Tupelo, Miss. We’ve gone to larger communities such as San Antonio, Tex., Los Angeles, and San Francisco. On our travels, we’ve conducted capacity-building  workshops, helped develop street typologies, created visions for right-sized streets, and worked on community-based transportation policies.

Place-based plans, policies, and programs allow downtown and village streets to become destinations worth visiting, not just throughways to and from the workplace or the regional mall. Transit stops and stations can make commuting by rail or bus a pleasure. Neighborhood streets can be places where parents feel safe letting their children play, and commercial strips can be designed as grand boulevards, safe for walking and cycling, allowing for both through and local traffic.

Countries outside the U.S. are not immune from focusing on street design as an isolated discipline. After World War II, many countries around the world became enamored of a planning approach that was driven by traffic engineering. Some, like the Netherlands, reversed course relatively quickly and returned to community-based, livable street design. Ultimately, the Dutch went even further in the right direction, in part thanks to the influence of the legendary Hans Monderman (himself a traffic engineer), who developed and promoted the concept of “Shared Space.” Monderman’s designs emphasized human interaction over mechanical traffic devices. By taking away conventional regulatory traffic controls, he proved that human interaction and caution would naturally yield a safer, more pleasant environment for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.

We are poised to create a future where priority is given to the appropriate mode, whether it be pedestrian, bicycle, transit, or automobile. Cars have their place, but the rediscovered importance of walking and “alternative transportation modes” will bring more people out onto the streets — allowing these spaces to serve as public forums where neighbors and friends can connect with one another.

In order to truly complete our streets, they need to be planned and designed appropriately, using the following guidelines.

Rule One: Think of Streets as Public Spaces

Not so long ago, this idea was considered preposterous in many communities. “Public space” meant parks and little else. Transit stops were simply places to wait. Streets had been surrendered to traffic for so long that we forgot they could be public spaces. Now we are slowly getting away from this narrow perception of streets as conduits for cars and beginning to think of streets as places.

A street in Amsterdam.

Streets and parking can take up as much as a third of a community’s land, and designing them solely for the comfort of people in cars, and then only for the most congested hour of the day, has significant ramifications for the livability and economics of a community. Under the planning and engineering principles of the past 70 years, people have for all intents and purposes given up their rights to this public property. Streets were once a place where we stopped for conversation and children played, but now they are the exclusive domain of cars. Even when sidewalks are present along high-speed streets, they feel inhospitable and out of place.

The road, the parking lot, the transit terminal — these places can serve more than one mode (cars) and more than one purpose (movement). Sidewalks are the urban arterials of cities. Make them wide, well lit, stylish, and accommodating. Give them benches, outdoor cafés, and public art. Roads can be shared spaces, with pedestrian refuges, bike lanes, and on-street parking. Parking lots can become public markets on weekends. Even major urban arterials can be designed to provide for dedicated bus lanes, well-designed bus stops that serve as gathering places, and multimodal facilities for bus rapid transit or other forms of travel. Roads are places too!

Rule Two: Plan for Community Outcomes

Communities need to first envision what kinds of places and interactions they want to support, then plan a transportation system consistent with this collective community vision. Transportation is a means for accomplishing important goals — like economic productivity and social engagement — not an end in itself.

Great transportation facilities truly improve the public realm. They add value to adjacent properties and to the community as a whole. Streets that fit community contexts help increase developable land, create open space, and reconnect communities to their neighbors, a waterfront, or a park. They can reduce household dependency on the automobile, allowing children to walk to school, and helping build healthier lifestyles by increasing the potential to walk or cycle. Think public benefit, not just private convenience.

Due to peak-hour design, Speer Boulevard in Denver limits the northward expansion of downtown Denver while remaining empty at midday. Instead of adding value to the community, it actually limits the city economically, socially, and in every other way. It doesn't even do what it was designed to do: solve congestion during peak hour. I-25, just to the north at the top of the photo, is bumper to bumper during peak hours. The 10-lane cross-sections become a mere parking lot.

Designing street networks around places benefits the overall transportation system. Great places — popular spots with a good mix of people and activities, which can be comfortably reached by foot, bike, and transit — put little strain on the transportation system. Poor land use planning, by contrast, generates thousands of unnecessary vehicle trips, clogging up roads and further degrading the quality of adjacent places.

Transportation professionals can no longer pretend that land use is not their business. Transportation projects that were not integrated with land use planning have created too many negative impacts to ignore.

Transportation — the process of going to a place — can be wonderful if we rethink the idea of transportation itself. We must remember that transportation is the journey; enhancing the community is the goal.

Rule Three: Design for Appropriate Speeds

Streets need to be designed in a way that induces traffic speeds appropriate for that particular context. Whereas freeways — which must not drive through the hearts of cities — should accommodate regional mobility, speeds on other roads need to reflect that these are places for people, not just conduits for cars. Desired speeds can be attained with a number of design tools, including changes in roadway widths and intersection design. Placemaking can also be a strategy for controlling speeds,. Minimal building setbacks, trees, and sidewalks with lots of activity can affect the speed at which motorists comfortably drive.

Speed kills the sense of place. Cities and town centers are destinations, not raceways, and commerce needs traffic — foot traffic. You cannot buy a dress from the driver’s seat of a car. Access, not automobiles, should be the priority in city centers. Don’t ban cars, but remove the presumption in their favor. People first!

Moving Beyond Complete Streets to Build Communities

Complete streets policies support these three rules. More importantly, they open the door for new ways of thinking about how the transportation profession should approach streets. But communities cannot get complacent and expect transportation planners to carry the whole load of creating great places. Instead, community leaders and advocates need to collaborate with the profession to tap their engineering skills to help build streets that are places.

Using an “upside-down planning approach,” this new collaboration can help the United State achieve success in tackling public health problems, climate change, energy consumption, and a failing economy. We can once again foster streets that are the cornerstone of great places.

To see the palette of PPS tools that are available to help you create streets that are places and foster “Building Communities Through Transportation,” visit our transportation services page.

A smooth ride.

Not all POPS are outdoors. Today we came across a very interesting video of skateboarders and roller skaters using indoor space in an East London shopping mall after hours. From Tim Gill’s intriguing blog Rethinking Childhood:

I’d been tipped off about the spectacle by Eleanor Fawcett at OPLC, who regularly walks through the mall in the evenings. She tells me there can be as many as 20 skaters on some nights: male and female, different ages, and a culturally diverse crowd too (reflecting this part of East London).

Apparently the route through the mall is a 24-hour public right of way. The site security seems relaxed about its nocturnal uses. This may be all to the good. It is certainly Eleanor’s view that they make the place feel safer for her, as someone who often has no choice but to come through the mall late at night on her way home.

Skateboarders are often the people who “activate” underused public spaces in downtowns. A lot of the time, they’re seen as a public nuisance and chased away by security and police, so it’s interesting to see this type of use tolerated in a mall. It’s also telling, given the bad rap that teenagers often get, that the woman who reported the use felt that the skateboarders increased her safety, rather than threatening it.

Photo: Sarah Goodyear

Police were keeping people out of the park after clearing it of occupiers, despite a temporary restraining order requiring that the park be reopened to protesters.

One police officer told me the park had sustained structural damage, but aside from one missing railing on the park’s eastern steps, I couldn’t see any.

The police action here, as well as the actions breaking up other Occupy encampments, will no doubt keep the spotlight on the use of public spaces for political expression. Last week, PPS’s Fred Kent talked about the issue of privately owned public spaces like Zuccotti Park on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show. You can listen to that discussion here.

Photo: Sarah Goodyear

Click here to view the archived webinar.

PPS is proud to be one of four recipients of grants from the United States Environmental Protection Agency under their Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program. The Building Blocks program funds quick, targeted assistance to communities that face common development problems. Three other nonprofit organizations have received competitively awarded grants under this program this year to help communities get the kinds of development they want – Forterra (formerly Cascade Land Conservancy), Global Green USA, and Smart Growth America.

This grant will enable us and our partners at Livability Solutions to offer FREE technical assistance to communities that have set goals for achieving improved livability, smart growth, or sustainability, but have run into barriers in achieving these goals. You can read more about the opportunity and see the application here.

The deadline for applications is coming up. Candidates must complete and submit the application by Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 8pm EST. Late applications will not be accepted.

PPS’s Fred Kent joined Brian Lehrer and New York World reporter Yolanne Almanzar for the segment, which you can listen to in its entirety below.

The scene at Zuccotti Park back in October. Photo: Sarah Goodyear

Here’s some of what Fred had to say about the Occupy Wall Street presence in Zuccotti: “We need those places to express ourselves without any hesitation…. We’re moving through an era right now of massive change in a wonderful way. And the feelings that they have are manifested all over the world. It’s a great time. What do we get out of it in the end is what we’re trying to figure out.”

Fred suggested that if the park’s occupation is creating a need for more public space in the area, perhaps nearby streets should be closed to create that.

The founding inspiration behind PPS is the work of William “Holly” Whyte, whose 1980 book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces revolutionized the way people saw the parks and plazas around them. Here’s what Whyte wrote about the public’s right to use those spaces — words that have often been quoted since the Zuccotti occupation began:

The public’s right in urban plazas would seem clear. Not only are plazas used as public spaces, in most cases the owner has been specifically, and richly rewarded for providing them. He has not been given the right to allow only those public activities he happens to approve of. He may assume he has, and some owners have been operating on this basis with impunity. But that is because nobody has challenged them. A stiff, clarifying test is in order.

One disturbing finding that has emerged as the result of the reporting done by WNYC and the New York World: it is very difficult to get information about exactly what benefits developers have gotten in return for the public spaces — some of which are not very accessible or pleasant to use. It is as true now as it was more than 30 years ago, when Whyte wrote those words, that “a stiff, clarifying test is in order.”

You can read an in-depth account of what the New York World found in the course of their reporting here. They’re going to keep digging, and we’ll keep you in the loop.

Neighborhood residents had no shortage of suggestions for ways to make this a better place.

PPS knew that engaging the neighborhood in Placemaking would take more than just a workshop. So, with the support of the Kresge Foundation and working with the Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corporation (CDC), we decided to do a fun harvest festival that would demonstrate the neighborhood’s potential. It would also be a way to get more Placemaking ideas from people who would be unlikely to show up a community meeting.

And it worked. On October 29, PPS was thrilled to be part of a very successful harvest festival outside the wonderful neighborhood produce market Peaches & Greens, which is celebrating its third anniversary. Although flanked by vacant lots, Peaches & Greens proved to be the right spot for the festival — and the event showed how this could evolve into an even better place for the neighborhood to come together.

(Check out this great CBS News report about Peaches & Greens’ truck delivery service, which brings produce to the doorsteps of Detroiters who otherwise would have no access to fresh food.)

The rain held off and it turned out to be a great day, filled with games, horse-drawn hay rides, marshmallow roasting, and lots of Placemaking suggestions offered in PPS’s “Placemaking in Detroit” tent.

This is a neighborhood with a lot of basic needs. Many residents are out of work. Many don’t own cars, and the public transit system is utterly inadequate. Safety and security are a major concern — the city can’t even keep up with repairing broken streetlights. A lot of houses are abandoned and occupied by squatters.

The term “food desert” has become well known, but this part of Detroit might also be called a “place desert.” As the city’s population has shrunk, neighborhoods like Central Detroit have lost not just people and homes, but places to come together. Still, a lot of assets remain, including some beautiful housing stock and strong community organizations such as CDC. Importantly, the city has designated this as one of the communities where resources are going to be focused in the future.

The tough conditions faced by local people made the response to the festival even more heartening. People were ready to jump right in and become part of something more meaningful. They provided a lot of practical ideas for activities could be taking place around Peaches & Greens on a more regular basis. One thing we heard from a lot of local residents was that they are eager to see more community-building events in the neighborhood. Lots of people stuck around after the festival was over to help clean up.

One of the day’s high points came when we announced the winner of a bicycle we were able to raffle off. The woman who won it told us that she wasn’t going to keep it herself — she was going to give it to her grandson, who just turned 18, so that he could look for a job.

This is just a pilot for what we hope will be many more events in the neighborhood, along with some “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper” improvements that will make people’s lives better in the short term.

Big thanks to our partners at CDC and Kresge for making it possible.

This grant will enable us and our partners at Livability Solutions to offer FREE technical assistance to communities that have set goals for achieving improved livability, smart growth, or sustainability, but have run into barriers in achieving these goals. You can read more about the opportunity and see the application on the Livability Solutions website.

Interested in applying, but have questions? We’re pleased to announce an upcoming webinar that will provide a forum where you can get answers. From Smart Growth America’s blog:

Upcoming webinar on Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities
Want to learn about all the available resources under the Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program? Confused on what types of tools are being offered and the deadlines for each? Join the EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities and the four nonprofits providing technical assistance for a webinar on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 2:00 PM EST. The webinar will explain the programs, their processes and timeline. Participation is free, but advance registration is required: click here to register.

We look forward to answering your questions!

Houston’s Market Square Park

In September, I was interviewed for a piece in The Atlantic, in which I was able to speak to a wider audience about the power of Placemaking. We at PPS also were part of a big article in New York magazine about imagining a better New York. It was great to be able to get these ideas out for discussion.

A new radio show and podcast called “Place Matters,” hosted by Dr. Katherine Loflin, deals with the role of Placemaking “in building next generation cities that are economically successful, talent magnets and destinations where people want to come to live, work and play.” Our work at PPS was featured in the first episode.

There is definitely something brewing out there — a general realization of the importance of place on all sorts of levels, including the impact on the economy and the environment. And the response we’re getting when we go out into the field is phenomenal. We just got back from a trip to Perth, Australia, where a Placemaking approach is completely revolutionizing their cultural center. It was exhilarating to see (and we’ll be telling you more about it in the future).

One of the things we’ve read and appreciated the most in the last couple of months is a terrific article by Chris Turner at Mother Nature Network about Frank Gehry’s new buildings in Düsseldorf, Germany, and the destructive effect that starchitecture can have on streetscape. This is a topic we’ve talked a lot about in the past — Turner references our semi-infamous  ”smackdown with Frank Gehry” from the Aspen Ideas Festival back in 2009, an occurrence that was enlightening for the huge amount of debate and engagement that it engendered.

In his piece, Turner really gets to the heart of why urban designers are losing credibility: Urban design has been taken away from its connection to communities by designers who are imposing their own brand on people and neighborhoods. He doesn’t have anything against Gehry’s buildings per se — he thinks they’re great to look at — but he noticed immediately how dead the space around them was:

Wealthy, ambitious Düsseldorf has surrounded Gehry’s slouching cones and boxes with a showcase of iconic design and outlandish form: everything from a technicolor tower by Will Alsop to a sleek hyper-modern abstraction by David Chipperfeld to a plain old office building scaled by dozens of primary-colored stick figures. It’s stunning in photos, and it’s a fascinating neighborhood to walk around during the day. There’s even a stylish café cantilevered off the side of a pedestrian bridge in the middle of the harbor when you need a rest.

I was in Düsseldorf with a handful of journalists and designers on a tour, and we stopped in at the café for a midafternoon coffee-and-cake break. It was a fine summer day, a weekday, the offices around us full of busy workers. The café was empty. So were the streets and laneways in and around most of the iconic buildings. If you moved a block or two off the harbor, you found a few busy shops and restaurants, but Medienhafen itself was cold in that stage-set way starchitecture often is. It was a collection of exquisite sculptures with some offices inside, a magnificent art gallery and probably not such a bad work address, but it was not a place, not a neighborhood or real urban district.

In contrast, the older streets of Düsseldorf are magnets for people.

Powerful stuff. It speaks to an idea we’ve exploring here at PPS, the “Architecture of Place.” We think the design profession is ready for a new direction, away from the iconic buildings that have had the same deadening effect on streetscape as the Brutalism of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Instead we need an architecture that recognizes that a community’s people are the true urban designers, and what happens where the building meets the street is critically important to the health of our neighborhoods.

Another article that got us talking around the office appeared in The Line, a publication based in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Titled “What’s Working in Cities: Placemaking,” it focuses on Detroit’s enormously successful Campus Martius project. The reporter, Michelle Bruch, talked to me and PPS vice president Ethan Kent about why Placemaking is becoming a new economic development strategy in cities (a trend we’ve seen most recently in Houston, which we named “North America’s Placemaking Capital”).

Here’s an excerpt:

 

Detroit’s Campus Martius Park

The strategy that built Campus Martius is called “placemaking,” and it’s a development approach gaining momentum across the country. The strategy gives local residents and stakeholders a major voice in shaping new development.

In the case of Campus Martius, the locals pressed for a park they could use all year long. They created a park with wireless Internet, 1,500 movable chairs, and more than 200 events per year, such as concerts, film festivals, and bocce ball tournaments…

Detroit’s $20 million park investment has paid huge dividends, according to Gregory, the Campus Martius president.

A software company called Compuware constructed a one-million-square-foot headquarters at the fringe of the park. Several hundred units of new housing went up a block-and-a-half away. Quicken Loans’ new headquarters arrived with 1,700 employees, the Westin renovated a historic vacant hotel, 35 retailers opened near the park, and the Ernst & Young accounting firm anchored the construction of another new 10-story building.

“$750 million in new development has happened around Campus Martius,” Gregory said. “And there is more coming.”

It’s not just Detroit and Houston that are seeing this type of effect. The article also looks at the positive impact Placemaking has had in Pittsburgh and in Bristol, Conn.

As you can see, it’s a great time for Placemaking! We’ll be keeping you up to date on future news and developments.

Photo of Gehry buildings in Düsseldorf: ign11 via Flickr. Photo of Düsseldorf street scene: maccusphoto via Flickr.

The surprise winner: The Circle in Normal, Ill. Photo: HOERR SCHAUDT landscape architects

Chances are you didn’t flash on The Circle in Uptown Normal, Ill., which came out on top in the crowd-sourced poll the folks at Planetizen conducted with our help. As Tim Halbur wrote at Planetizen, “Passion was the rule of the day for our Top 100 Public Spaces survey project,” and the people of Normal turned out to be surprisingly passionate. (For the record, Central Park placed at #32, Rittenhouse Square at #17, and Stanley Park at #59.)

Let’s take a closer look at the not-so-obvious #1, which obviously inspires quite a lot of local passion. Normal’s Circle isn’t just any old roundabout. It’s a multifunctional shared space that provides entertainment and activities for the community and visitors alike all year long. The Circle also has sustainability cred: It recycles stormwater, recirculating it into the public drinking fountains and irrigation system. It’s a pleasant place to sit and relax, and it’s home to  a farmers market as well.

Here are the rest of the Top 10:

2. Temple Plaza, New Haven, Conn.
3. Campus Martius Park, Detroit, Mich.
4. Cal Anderson Park, Seattle, Wash.
5. CityArt Walking Sculpture Tour, Mankato, Minn.
6. Bryant Park, New York, N.Y.
7. Pittsburgh Market Square, Pittsburgh, Pa.
8. Arts District at Bay Street, Bellingham, Wash.
9. Balboa Park, San Diego, Ca.
10. Church Street Marketplace District, Burlington, Vt.

Many of the spaces in the top 10 are projects that have been redeveloped in recent years in order to create a balance of form and functionality that serves the community, giving residents a sense of pride in and excitement for their neighborhoods. They are also places that serve as destinations, attracting visitors from outside the community. They will likely continue to thrive and evolve over time.

Some of the places on the list have been integral parts of the community for over 100 years, but it was only after they were redeveloped with an eye toward Placemaking that they found new life — Pittsburgh’s Market Square (#7) is one such example. After many redevelopment attempts over the years, the latest refurbishment of Market Square has finally landed on a successful combination — embracing historical elements of the original square, while at the same time redesigning aspects that were less successful. It is now a safe place for children to play, an appealing spot for workers from surrounding buildings to take a break, a venue for community-wide events, and much more.

The Planetizen survey points to the success of revitalization projects that are bringing neighborhoods all over the world back to life. Perhaps it’s a sign of yet more positive things to come.

For the full list and more in-depth information, head over to Planetizen.

We're hitting the road in rural New Mexico. Photo: Wolfgang Staudt via Flickr

What does rural livability look like? What can small towns in New Mexico do to give their residents a better quality of life? And how can the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) help to implement meaningful solutions?

Those are the types of questions that we will be exploring in a series of workshops with the New Mexico Department of Transportation, and FHWA, over the next week as we travel through rural areas and small towns in New Mexico. The FHWA workshops, administered by PPS with support from the Local Government Commission, will bring together a wide range of stakeholders, including Main Street associations, tribal groups, transportation agencies, and other local organizations, and present to them how context-sensitive solutions (CSS) can help communities achieve their environmental, economic, and mobility goals.

CSS advocates a collaborative interdisciplinary approach that seeks to provide safe, sustainable, and efficient transportation facilities that fit their setting while preserving cultural, historic, aesthetic, community and environmental resources.

The workshops will include presentations, group discussions, visioning exercises, and an on-site analysis activity.

Workshops are scheduled for three locations:

• Nov. 2, 8:45am – 4:30pm MT

Morgan Hall, 109 E. Pine St, Deming, N.M.

• Nov. 3, 8:45am – 4:30pm MT

Belen Public Library, 33 Becker Ave, Belen, N.M.

• Nov. 7, 8:45am – 4:30pm MT

Taos Convention Center, 120 Civic Plaza Drive, Taos, N.M.

If you’re interested in attending, contact Bill Hutchinson at Williams.Hutchinson@state.nm.us.

More information about the workshops will be posted on ContextSensitiveSolutions.org in the near future.

Photo: Wolfgang Staudt via Flickr.

But Zuccotti Park is just one of dozens of POPS around the city.  Just how public are these places? How accessible and welcoming? How pleasant and well-maintained?

Now The New York World, an online publication just launched by the Columbia School of Journalism, is partnering with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show to do a crowd-sourced map that will look into exactly those questions. Each of the city’s POPS is marked on the map and given a number; citizens are encouraged to visit the places and report back on what they see, noting also what time of day and day of the week they went.

To judge by some early reports, not all of these “public” places are quite as public as they are supposed to be. Here’s what a user named Charles had to say about the Broadway Atrium in Lower Manhattan:

I’ve tried several times to walk through this lobby (to avoid having to detour around it) and have been stopped and instructed to provide ID, which I regard as an inappropriate infringement. I’ve also asked if, in future, I would be permitted to walk through with a bicycle, and have been told No…Do I not have the right to walk through (with or without a bicycle), unimpeded?

And here’s what a user named Julia reported about East Winds, a space on East 80th Street:

Does not appear to be a public space at all. Seems to be simply ingress and egress to the building. I walk by this corner daily (numerous times) for over a decade and had never known it was public at all…There is no seating and no reason to believe it is public.

Other spaces got better marks. Dianne wrote this about the plaza outside the Claridge House apartments on the Upper East Side:

This is a really nice little space that is used and enjoyed by a diverse group of locals — nannies with baby carriages, young people gathering after school, people eating lunch, dogs and their humans. It is kept clean and the Claridge doormen keep an eye on things.

The project runs through November 9. If you’re in New York, get out there, investigate and contribute. It’s easy.

And it’s important, too. If we’ve learned anything from the last few weeks in Zuccotti Park, it’s the power of a truly public POPS.

Are you running into barriers in achieving these goals?

Applications for free technical assistance are now available on the Livability Solutions website!

PPS is excited to announce that applications for free technical assistance to address this challenge are now available on the Livability Solutions website. We will be offering this technical assistance with our partners at Livability Solutions thanks to a grant from the EPA Office of Sustainable Communities’ Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program.

We are looking for applications from communities with a strong interest in and commitment to livability, smart growth, and sustainability principles, but who face a significant challenge or barrier to moving forward. This targeted technical assistance will provide selected communities with tools and improved capacity to achieve the livability, smart growth, and sustainability goals they have set, and engage them with a network of other communities working toward similar goals and facing similar challenges.

We will be working with our partners at Livability Solutions to lead one- and two-day workshops to assist selected communities in implementing sustainable and smart growth development and programs. We’ll be using time-honored approaches — such as our Power of 10 method of inventorying and mapping a community’s place-based assets — as well as innovative new strategies for transportation and land-use planning that create better places, such as the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Housing and Transportation (H+T®) Affordability Index. With our unique suite of tools, we can help communities through the process of implementing better places to live that are also more sustainable. For more information on this technical assistance, and instructions for how to apply, please see the Livability Solutions website. For inquiries, contact livabilitysolutions@pps.org.

This assistance is funded by US EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities under their Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program. The Building Blocks program funds quick, targeted assistance to communities that face common development problems. Three other nonprofit organizations have received competitively awarded grants under this program this year to help communities get the kinds of development they want –Cascade Land Conservancy, Global Green USA, and Smart Growth America.

Our partners in this project are the members of Livability Solutions, a coalition helping communities succeed:

• The Center for Neighborhood Technology
• Reconnecting America
• The Walkable and Livable Communities Institute
• National Center for Biking & Walking
• The Local Government Commission
• The National Charrette Institute
• The Congress for New Urbanism
• Paul Dreher of the Newport City Renaissance Corporation
• Leigh Lane of the Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) at NC State University
• The Surface Transportation Policy Partnership

For more information on PPS’s other technical assistance and training programs, visit our website.

Last week, 1,200 transportation enthusiasts, planners, engineers, and community leaders – call them “Rail~volutionaries” — descended on Washington, D.C., for Rail~Volution 2011, to hear about the latest TOD methodologies and implementations, swap war stories about community opposition, share successful case studies, and schmooze with other people who view compact development around transportation nodes as a necessary aspect of any future growth model.

This being my first Rail~Volution conference, I didn’t know what to expect. But during the first plenary, when Christopher Leinberger of the Brookings Institution spoke of nearby Tysons Corner, Va., as “44 million square feet of unmitigated hell,” I knew I was among friends.

Tysons Corner holds a special place in my heart: My experience consulting there in a previous career was instrumental to my pursuit of a degree in planning. An ill-conceived attempt at walking the half-mile between my hotel and office led me to wonder: What had allowed this sort of human-hostile development to occur?

Fairfax County’s bold comprehensive plan for Tysons Corner, “Transforming Tysons,” was intently discussed at the conference, and lavished with well-deserved praise. But it’s not the only innovative transportation-led plan in the region. The Washington metro area is home to more examples of walkable urban places around TODs than anywhere else in the country, according to Leinberger.

Yet I came away from the myriad descriptions of well-designed, pedestrian-oriented, multi-modally connected developments feeling like something was missing amidst all the TOD fervor. There were few images or descriptions of people outdoors, simply enjoying their newfound central public spaces – let alone any talk about great spaces that non-locals are excited to visit.

In his session “The Fundamentals of Greatness: TOD + Transit,” G.B. Arrington, vice president of Parsons Brinckerhoff’s Placemaking Group, spoke of TODs needing “friction” to make people stop and notice the amenities, so that they aren’t simply transfer points between modes.  Placemakers have the tools to create great places — where people stop, linger, converse, and enjoy the company of others.  It’s these kinds of places that will bring blinder-wearing commuters out of their stupor. Placemakers need to be playing a larger, complementary role in the creation of TODs, because creating better places will benefit everyone involved.