At the heart of every great community lie good parks, plazas, squares, or open spaces where people can get together. These spaces give towns and cities their identity and offer immeasurable value as "places to go." In 1975, PPS initiated our urban parks program with a project funded by the National Park Service in which we applied our methodology to heavily used areas within national parks, such as visitor centers, museums, concession areas, and trailheads, in both urban and non-urban areas. Since that time, PPS has undertaken hundreds of urban park and civic square projects throughout the United States and abroad.

In 1993, the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund sponsored PPS to undertake a major parks initiative that established a national resource center on urban parks. As part of this program, PPS has organized 13 conferences (two international, seven national, and four regional) on urban parks that over 2500 people have attended overall. In addition to the conferences, our Urban Parks Online website and our Urban Parks Listserve continue to help people exchange ideas and learn about current issues in urban parks.

Today PPS's urban parks program, "Placemaking for Parks and Civic Squares," focuses on the following goals:

• Promoting a community-based process to achieve great urban parks, through both training programs and technical assistance;
• Demonstrating the catalytic role that successful urban parks, civic squares, and community gathering places can play in community revitalization;
• Illustrating examples from around the world of where this role is being fulfilled;
• Providing resources to both communities and professionals involved in urban parks.

With these goals in mind, PPS provides the following services:

• Technical assistance to people either developing new parks and squares or retrofitting existing ones. Working with both public and private sector partners, PPS elicits stakeholder ideas for the park or square, translates them into conceptual plans reflecting the community's vision, and structures a management program accordingly.
• Education, training, and conferences for both communities and professionals. This includes the well-known Great Parks/Great Cities conferences (held in London this year), but also special trainings for state or local parks agencies, citizens groups, or any combination of organizations.
• Research into models and practices that can advance the understanding of what works for parks and what doesn't. In 2000, PPS released Public Parks, Private Partners, a book of case studies on how partnerships have worked to revitalize urban parks in the US. Previous publications include, from our partnership with the National Park Service, User Analysis: An Approach to Park Planning and Management and Film in User Analysis.
• Web-based resources. With help from a $1.6 million grant from the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, PPS developed Urban Parks Online, a major parks resource center that reaches thousands of individuals, nationally and internationally, each year.

In order to develop great parks, PPS's parks program is integrated with our other program areas--transportation, public markets, and buildings--and we work together with partners from different disciplines. PPS is now working to establish partnerships with a variety of civic and parks organizations, including the National Park Service, the International Downtown Association, the Environmental Partnership for Central and Eastern Europe, the City Parks Alliance, and others. We strongly believe that by working together, we and our partners will strengthen the essential role of public spaces as catalysts for community revitalization.