Dear Friends of PPS:

In looking back at everything Project for Public Spaces has accomplished since 1975, as I did recently at a sidewalk café near my home in Brooklyn, it has never been more clear that when you focus on the idea of “place,” everything changes. Paying serious attention to places represents a breakthrough for our society, which can spark genuine progress in how we govern ourselves, how we are involved in our communities, how streets and public spaces feel to us, how we shop, work, play and socialize with our friends.  If regular folks are encouraged to make the key decisions about their own neighborhoods, towns, cities and regions, a remarkable wave of citizen activity will flourish that can transform our communities in positive ways.

Of course, these hopes live under the shadow of our current economic crisis. But the idea of place offers solutions there, too.  As we detail throughout this newsletter, a Placemaking approach to development is emerging as a cost-effective way to revive prosperity in communities across the U.S. and the world. It marks a fresh alternative to the way economic growth and urban growth have been approached over recent decades.

Placemaking is based on two simple principles.  First: with the right tools and guidance, community members can initiate and implement changes on their own. Second: Placemaking draws on the unique assets inherent in each and every community.  It recognizes citizens’ deep knowledge about the place they call home, ushering in a sense of collective pride and ownership.  Using these strengths to work toward common goals involves everyone in the process and results in high quality projects that succeed both commercially and socially.

Project for Public Spaces is dedicated to promoting the ideas of Placemaking in our work in the field all over the world, as well as through our ambitious public education, training and publishing programs. We have never been more optimistic about opportunities for community improvement than we are today. Tough times often produce creative citizen-led solutions, and PPS publications such as The Great Neighborhood Book, the new Guide to Placemaking in Chicago, and the upcoming Streets as Places and the Citizen’s Guide to Creating Better Streets offer inspiration and instruction to thousands of local activists.

The PPS website serves as a destination and virtual forum for everyone interested in the potential of Placemaking to change the world.  More than 30,000 people now receive the PPS newsletter, (one-third of whom now live outside the U.S.), and our training courses have expanded significantly, giving thousands of people an immersion in the basics of Placemaking last year.

In the coming year, we are reorganizing and expanding our online resources to make the website even more interactive and valuable.  We have just launched Making Places, the lively PPS blog that explores the ins and outs of place issues, and are set to debut The Placemaking Movement, a social networking site that features user-generated discussion forums, member profiles and user-created networking groups.  We have also launched a public group on the popular photography-sharing site flickr.com to collect photos of great public spaces from around the world, as well as share some of our favorite photos with a wide international audience.  These new interactive opportunities for networking will greatly expand the capacity to share stories and images about exciting Placemaking initiatives, as well as create an online town square for Placemakers to tell their stories and make connections with one another.

You’ll also see an expansion of our state-of-the-art web technology to include webcasts and webinars focusing on key community issues, as well as downloadable podcasts that focus on community stories and sense of place.  Finally, we are at work on a relaunch of the Great Public Spaces section of our website that will encourage you to rate the strengths and weaknesses of virtually every important public space throughout the world.

In order to accomplish these goals, we need the support of everyone who cares about the future of the world's places, both by giving us a financial contribution and by promoting Placemaking in your community and through our growing network of activists. Develop a Placemaking agenda in your own community, starting now:

• Pledge a tax-deductible donation to support community and leadership training, fund vital public space research and support our Building Communities through Transportation campaign, which advocates for new street and transit designs centered on serving people and communities. No amount is too small…or too large.
• Send our newsletter to your friends or purchase a gift membership for Placemakers you know.
• Lead a grassroots Placemaking movement in your neighborhood, set up a networking group on The Placemaking Movement to facilitate discussion and cooperation in your own community and nominate your community’s best public spaces, along with those most in need of improvement.

Your investment in PPS is an investment in your local community and communities world-wide. In these uncertain times, it is the best investment you can make.

Fred Kent Founder, President, Project for Public Spaces fkent@pps.org

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