The Placemaking Round-Up
A biweekly newsletter with public space news, resources, and opportunities.
The Biweekly Bazaar
A curated dispatch on all things public markets plus the latest announcements from the Market Cities Program.
A biweekly newsletter with public space news, resources, and opportunities.
A curated dispatch on all things public markets plus the latest announcements from the Market Cities Program.
PPS would like to thank Carolin Hagelskamp and Josh Lerner, whose work made "Placemaker Profiles" a reality.
To make great places effectively, it helps to know the thinkers and doers who have shaped the placemaking movement for the past 40-plus years. That's why we created our new "Placemaker Profiles" feature--to highlight individuals who have captured our imagination about creating great places in every community. By bringing together their compelling stories and insights, we hope to share their wisdom with our readers, honor their accomplishments, and acknowledge their profound influence on the placemaking movement.
Our charter group of placemakers includes 13 renowned figures (look for more profiles in the future), from pioneers like William H. Whyte to current thinkers and leaders like Roberta Brandes Gratz andEnrique Peñalosa. Some you may already be familiar with; others you may not have encountered before. Each profile is a virtual portal to a trove of valuable information. We've provided a glimpse into each profile below--we hope you'll be inspired to dig deep into each placemaker's ideas (bibliographies are part of each profile) and connect their work to your own.
"I end then in praise of small spaces. The multiplier effect is tremendous. It is not just the number of people using them, but the larger number who pass by and enjoy them vicariously, or even the larger number who feel better about the city center for knowledge of them. For a city, such places are priceless, whatever the cost. They are built of a set of basics and they are right in front of our noses. If we will look."
"Every building, every room, every garden is better when all the patterns which it needs are compressed as far as it is possible for them to be. The building will be cheaper; the meaning in it will be denser."
"People have always lived on streets. They have been the places where children first learned about the world, where neighbors met, the social centers of towns and cities, the rallying points for revolts, the scenes of repression... The street has always been the scene of this conflict, between living and access, between resident and traveler, between street life and the threat of death."
"Of the 1400 communities I have walked, I have not found one where designing for the car has made it a successful place. Indeed, the most successful villages, towns and cities in America are those designed before the car was invented, and where the least tinkering has been done since."
"In a Society becoming steadily more privatized with private homes, cars, computers, offices and shopping centers, the public component of our lives is disappearing. It is more and more important to make the cities inviting, so we can meet our fellow citizens face to face and experience directly through our senses. Public life in good quality public spaces is an important part of a democratic life and a full life."
"Inevitably, designers working over a drawing board fall prey to an illusion: They begin to think of the world or of the future as it were a piece of blank paper. The completed project, projected into the future, becomes the singular focus. The setting of the work, the existing conditions in the field, are often reduced to information at the margins of the paper. Everything else that might be happening at the same time is closed off from view as the engineer draws his or her finger along the project timeline."
"Conscious noticing of what we’re experiencing, once we get back the hang of it, can be a common denominator, a language of connectedness between social, environmental, and economic concerns… Using the things we know or sense about places but seldom put into words, we can bring all our minds to bear on the problems of how our communities, regions, and landscapes should change."
"It's no big mystery. The best streets are comfortable to walk along with leisure and safety. They are streets for both pedestrians and drivers. They have definition, a sense of enclosure with their buildings; distinct ends and beginnings, usually with trees. Trees, while not required, can do more than anything else and provide the biggest bang for the buck if you do them right. The key point again, is great streets are where pedestrians and drivers get along together."
"That the sight of people attracts still other people, is something that city planners and city architectural designers seem to find incomprehensible. They operate on the premise that city people seek the sight of emptiness, obvious order and quiet. Nothing could be less true. The presences of great numbers of people gathered together in cities should not only be frankly accepted as a physical fact... they should also be enjoyed as an asset and their presence celebrated."
"There's a reason that Elm Street and Main Street resonate in our cultural memory. It's not because we're sentimental saps. It's because this pattern of human ecology produced places that worked wonderfully well, and which people deeply loved."
"The problem is not that designers are lacking for creative ideas, but rather that they are frequently hampered by not having the time to search out appropriate people-based research… to take this step further: research based recommendation cannot substitute for public participation."
"The character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people's more serious involvement in other spheres. Though a radically different kind of setting for a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends…They are the heart of a community's social vitality, the grassroots of democracy, but sadly, they constitute a diminishing aspect of the American social landscape."
"We had to build a city not for businesses or automobiles, but for children and thus for people. Instead of building highways, we restricted car use... We invested in high-quality sidewalks, pedestrian streets, parks, bicycle paths, libraries; we got rid of thousands of cluttering commercial signs and planted trees... All our everyday efforts have one objective: Happiness."
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