[Graph: Do the public spaces in your area meet the needs of your community?]

[Graph: What are the biggest societal issues affecting public spaces today?]

When our survey asked whether local public spaces were meeting the needs of the community, 32% of respondents said that public spaces were failing, while another 63% said they needed improvement. 

Only 5% of respondents said that public spaces are meeting community needs. 

This underscores the pressing need to rethink how our shared spaces are designed and managed, ensuring they fulfill their potential to support community health and well-being, strengthen resilience, and boost local economies. 

To dig deeper into why public space isn’t living up to its potential, we asked respondents to identify the biggest societal issues facing public spaces today. Here’s what they said.

When celebrated urbanist Jane Jacobs was invited to speak at the White House in 1964, she decided to focus on what she called “a great unbalance” between money for building things and money for running things. [Expand]

In the more than six decades since that speech, this dynamic has only become more noticeable as budgets for parks, libraries, and even infrastructure have shrunk significantly. As a result, nearly 12% of respondents identified “aging infrastructure” as one of the top issues facing public space. When we think of aging infrastructure, we may jump immediately to roads and bridges, but public spaces are our civic infrastructure—the networks of community places that support our public health, resilience, and local economies.

[Graph: What are the biggest practical issues facing public space?]

Now, it may not be surprising to hear from public space professionals that public space needs more support, but the question of how that funding shows up is as important as how much. The most successful public spaces rely on maintenance, small design improvements, programming, and deep community engagement—all activities that require relatively modest but constant and consistent funding. Yet, operation budgets for the public agencies and nonprofits responsible for these factors remain chronically underfunded, especially in rural areas, and additional government and philanthropic funding is often too project-based and unreliable to get ahead of the backlog.

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In the second most common response, 12% of respondents point to the crisis of homelessness, mental health, and addiction as severely impacting public spaces, leading to biohazards, maintenance issues, and reduced access due to encampments. [Perceptions of safety]

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• “There is a severe lack of green space in our city and practically, there are needs that we aren't able to address that are happening [in our park], like homelessness and other social services. Of course, we want everyone to be able to enjoy public space, but it does come up frequently and when our cities are pushing people out and not addressing affordable housing and crisis services, public spaces then are expected to take responsibility.”
  — Respondent in Pennsylvania

But as we know, battles aren’t often won on the frontlines. Often, as William H. Whyte observed in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, the efforts to displace people experiencing homelessness make our public spaces even more unwelcoming. Rather than addressing the root of the problem, hostile architecture and barriers transform a city’s public realm into what one survey respondent called “a city of fences.”

While there is broad agreement on the negative effects, the suggested solutions from respondents varied drastically, reflecting national political divisions. Some stressed the need to address the housing crisis and improve access to affordable housing and social services, while some emphasized personal responsibility and law enforcement.

• Brookings Metro, top-level findings
• PPS projects

With Access & Linkages being one of our four key elements of great public spaces, we are not surprised that access was top of mind for 11% of respondents. Factors like the distribution of public space, universal design, walkability, bikeability, micromobility, and transit connectivity. Some also pointed out issues related to cost barriers or physical obstacles designed to restrict certain uses of these spaces. 

You can’t spread great public spaces like peanut butter. [Network, hubs and connections]

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• Active Transportation, Transit, Land Use
• Unconventional spaces, streets vs. Bureaucracy
• Universal design
• Free programming, privatization

The concept of "Streets as Places" encourages communities to reclaim and enhance their streets by creating vibrant, multi-functional spaces that contribute to the overall well-being. The 34th Avenue Open Street in Jackson Heights, Queens—the longest open street in the U.S.—addresses a significant lack of open space head-on, by transforming a busy, densely populated area into a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly environment. Community organizers host English conversation classes, cumbia and salsa workshops, arts and crafts, clothing exchanges, and more, open to all and every neighbor. This initiative not only creates safer spaces for recreation and community activities but also fosters equity by providing accessible public areas for diverse groups, particularly in a neighborhood with limited access to green spaces.

Resources:

• https://nacto.org/ 
• https://www.pps.org/article/a-new-guide-to-balancing-mobility-and-humanity-on-main-street 
• https://smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-by-design/ 
• https://smartgrowthamerica.org/foot-traffic-ahead-2023/ 
• https://www.cnu.org/our-issues/transportation 
• https://www.strongtowns.org/about#about3 

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/11/4/5-things-for-the-next-president-to-do

In 2024, the US Surgeon General issued an alarming report on social isolation, which compares its health effects to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and recommends strengthening social infrastructure like parks, plazas, and public markets as its #1 solution.

Reflecting this growing recognition of our epidemic of loneliness in the United States and beyond, social isolation was identified by 11% of all respondents as a major societal issue negatively impacting public spaces.

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Journalist Diana Lind has gone as far as to argue that following the Covid-19 pandemic, we may have entered a "Human Doom Loop," a cycle of increasing reliance on remote and virtual interactions that leads to a decrease in use and investment in the built environment. The end result is greater loneliness. 

In order to break this cycle, we must attack both sides of this vicious cycle. But public space professionals are best positioned to bolster use and care for our “third places,” the naturally occurring social infrastructure of our communities, from parks to coffee shops to community gardens. As a recent report by Gehl Architects observes, this can be done by identifying the networks of “havens, hubs, and hangouts” in our communities, initiating placemaking projects to fill the gaps, and measuring social connection as a key outcome.

By intentionally designing spaces where people can bond, interact across different backgrounds, and casually engage with one another, we can create environments that combat isolation and promote social health.

While only 9% of respondents rated climate change as one of their top issues, this proportion grew to more than 10% of women, North American people of color, people over 60, nonprofit and public sector professionals, and to 12% for international respondents. 

Public spaces are both affected by climate change, and can be critical parts of the solution.

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[Social Resilience] In his book, Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg argues that the future of democratic societies hinges on shared spaces like libraries, parks, and community centers where vital connections are made. He highlights how "social infrastructure" plays a pivotal role in addressing society’s most pressing challenges. Urban planning plays a crucial role in fostering community resilience and bridging societal divides and their intersection with social isolation and the loneliness epidemic. [Heat Wave] 

He was curious why some Chicago neighborhoods fared better in the deadly 1995 heat wave. What he found was that neighborhoods that had a public realm that was built for social life was better prepared to help the most vulnerable in times of need. Transition: It’s worth noting that Eric Klinenberg’s idea of social infrastructure has its roots in resilience: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo20809880.html 

[Physical Resilience] One reason flooding gets so bad in urban areas is because impermeable surfaces in the public realm cause water to accumulate and pick up speed. Permeable surfaces, and better yet, wetlands can help mitigate flooding.

Bad heat waves can make some public spaces unbearable, but increasing shade, especially from tree canopy, and replacing dark-colored surfaces with plantings can help reduce the urban heat island effect in cities overall. 

Public markets and urban gardens can help support food systems that are close to home, reducing vehicle miles traveled and vulnerability to global supply chain disruptions.

Rewilding can help increase the range of plants and animals that live in our communities (biodiversity), which makes our communities even more adaptable.

[Disaster Relief] When life-threatening events like heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, and earthquakes hit our communities, beloved public spaces often become makeshift logistics hubs to access and distribute goods and services to people who may be threatened, injured or displaced. These can and should be integrated into resilience planning.

New technologies for roadways and infrastructure materials could also help reduce the carbon footprint of public space.

A good source that covers a lot of the same ground I mentioned above: https://medium.com/reimagining-the-civic-commons/why-public-space-is-a-critical-tool-for-climate-resilience-9ebc4bfa82c

Gentrification and climate change go hand in hand: https://www.vox.com/policy/395261/california-wildfires-los-angeles-gentrification-displacement  

Echoing the concerns that people associated with “Access,” North American respondents who identified as people of color noted that public spaces and investment in upkeep and programming are not evenly distributed across neighborhoods, with communities of color receiving less ongoing funding and facing longer backlogs of disinvestment.

• https://americanprogress.org/article/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclusion-segregation/ 

However, many also passed on concerns from the communities where they work that reinvestment could trigger gentrification and displacement. Often the word “placemaking” itself can raise alarm bells for community members, leading to the newer term “placekeeping,” which emphasizes the value of sustaining existing communities and cultures through public space, rather than transformation.

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• “It's difficult to get the spaces the wider community needs because of NIMBYism, political conspiracy theories, and fear of other people (specifically poor people and racial minorities). Political conspiracy theories [are] probably the biggest issue right now, with fear mongering about housing issues and urbanism trends such as ‘15 minute cities’ being used as weapons against improvements that go against the status quo. Wealthier, whiter people have a concern about public space being used as an opportunity to invite those they see as ‘invaders’ into their neighborhoods.”

Cultural Displacement, and community engagement

• A classic from Setha Low: https://archive.nytimes.com/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/is-gentrification-transforming-the-citys-public-spaces/  
• Belonging, Juliet Kahne: https://placemaking-europe.eu/project/our-city/ 

Economic Displacement, and value capture/wealth building

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/five-ways-city-leaders-can-support-black-entrepreneurs-efforts-to-buy-back-the-block/

2025 Placemaking Inspirations 

Our respondents also recommended 375 public spaces and placemaking projects that inspired them, including parks, plazas, trails, streets, markets, public buildings, districts, pop-up projects and events, infrastructure reuse projects, and policies and programs.

[Link to Anniversary page]