A new way of thinking about communities, the environment, and public life is sweeping across North America--and the world. It's a grassroots phenomenon, one that you are more likely to hear about at your local coffee shop or neighborhood meeting than on CNN or the presidential debates. But it is gaining influence in small but important ways every day.

Some have begun to calling it a movement, although most folks see it simply as a set of fresh, common-sense ideas that can help us discover more pleasure and meaning in our daily lives. At the heart of this upsurge are growing numbers of people enthusiastically seeking places they can gather with others as neighbors and citizens. These people are hungry to instill a new sense of public spirit to their neighborhoods and towns. They want more and better parks, cafes, walkable neighborhoods, youth hang-outs, farmers markets, business districts, bike paths, community centers, locally-owned businesses, public transit, and playgrounds.

Even as a kid growing up in the Midwest, I was intrigued why some places filled me with wonder while others made me want to leave as soon as possible.

I am thrilled to sign on with this emerging movement as part of Project for Public Spaces, helping spread the word about the importance and potential of "placemaking" through this newsletter, other PPS projects, and the general media.

Though not trained as an urban planner, architect, or any kind of design professional, I've come to realize, since meeting up with the folks from PPS last year in the course of writing an article on walking for Utne magazine, that I am a placemaker--and have been one most of my life. Even as a kid growing up in the Midwest, I was intrigued why some places filled me with wonder--inviting me to feel relaxed, reflective, or reinvigorated--while others made me want to leave as soon as possible.

I was lucky enough to be able to pursue these interests during more than fifteen years as editor of Utne magazine, and even more now that I am executive editor of Ode magazine, a new international magazine of news and culture published out of the Netherlands in both English-language and Dutch editions.

This new movement is a startlingly diverse phenomenon, transcending conventional categories of left, right, and center.

But when the chance arose to be right at the center of the new placemaking movement with a part-time post at PPS, I jumped at it. So now, from my home in Minneapolis and various destinations around the world, I will be keeping tabs on exciting efforts everywhere to restore a sense of place to the modern world.

This new movement is a startlingly diverse phenomenon, transcending conventional categories of left, right, and center, and uniting people who fancy themselves avant-garde innovators and those who feel cozily at home in the middle of the mainstream. The idea of placemaking sparks waves of energy wherever it is discussed, and is beginning to influence business, government, the media, and the practice of various professions.

In many ways the placemaking movement is a natural outgrowth of the work of many other movements, and stands as obvious allies of neighborhood activists, historic preservationists, environmentalists, and New Urbanists as well as many advocates of public health, entrepreneurialism, community safety, social justice, and civic engagement. Architects, developers, urban planners, traffic engineers, and landscape architects are central to these efforts but the wider circle of placemakers include many business owners and managers, journalists, educators, clergy, social service providers, fitness promoters, mental health professionals, artists, and more. In fact, it's hard to conceive of any thoughtful people who wouldn't endorse the movement's main aim: fostering a vital and nourishing sense of place everywhere that people live, work, and play.

The dramatic rise of attention to issues of place shows that the subject can no longer be dismissed as a minor question of architectural aesthetics or civic do-goodism. America's alarming rise in obesity, for instance, is being blamed by authorities in many fields on the fact that fewer Americans today go out for a walk or other form of exercise. The chief reason is that there are few attractive or safe places to walk, run, bike, or play in our car-dominated communities. This problem has become a flashpoint for many newcomers to the placemaking movement; it's a potent symbol of what's wrong with how we look at places.

The issue of place is an idea poised to explode onto the public consciousness in ways that help transform debates about a whole range of issues.

At a time when serious concerns about political polarization and the fraying of our democratic traditions are in the air, a revival of public places offers hope that we can still engage with one another in civil, productive ways as fellow citizens. With the general decline of public venues, from the town square to the corner tavern, where folks meet to discuss questions of the day, political debate has shifted to impersonal forums such as talk radio, where bullying and theatrics often crowd out reasoned discussion. Perhaps even more troubling to the future of our democracy is the fact that more and more Americans can turn to the media for websites, radio stations, publications and cable shows that tell them exactly what they want to hear. In the absence of literal public places, where you come across people with other views, there is no engagement from different sides of political debates.

The rapidly-growing interest in placemaking over recent months has been likened to the dramatic upswell in environmental awareness that led to the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, a landmark event that involved tens of millions of Americans and gave birth to a powerful new political force. The issue of place, like conservation and pollution in the 1960s, is not a new idea at all. But it is an idea poised to explode onto the public consciousness in ways that help transform debates about a whole range of issues.

I am thankful to be part of it all as part of Project for Public Spaces, and will be writing about what I see and think in "Town Square" commentaries like this, which is the continuation of a column of the same name I wrote for many years in Utne.