Ethan Kent works to support Placemaking organizations, projects, and leadership around the world to build a global placemaking movement to build systemic change towards place-led urbanization. During over 20 years at PPS, Ethan has traveled to more than 900 cities and 60 countries to advance the cause of Placemaking and public spaces. Ethan has been integral to the development of Placemaking as a transformative approach to economic development, environmentalism, transportation planning, governance, resilience, equity and design. Ethan is currently researching the role that placemaking can play in creating equitable and effective Opportunity Zones.

Having worked on over 200 PPS projects, Ethan has led a broad spectrum of Placemaking efforts, providing comprehensive public engagement, user-analysis, planning and visioning for high profile public spaces on six continents. Utilizing lessons learned through his project work, Ethan regularly creates and conducts Placemaking training courses, including: city planning staff in Vancouver and Toronto; community development corporations in Detroit; public housing developers in Sweden; traffic engineers in New Jersey; the public works department of Quito, Ecuador; planners and developers in Pimpri-Chinchwad, India; the leadership of Durban, South Africa; and Main Street managers in Wyoming. He has also trained thousands of professionals across Australia and New Zealand, building the Placemaking movement there over the last decade.

In order to begin to institutionalize Placemaking in cities, Ethan has initiated and led local Placemaking Partnerships and Campaigns with public, private and non-profit leaders to build capacity on all levels, shift organizational culture, implement demonstration projects and develop local campaigns for Placemaking. Ethan has applied this strategy in a wide range of cities including: Chicago; Indianapolis; San Antonio; Baltimore; Seattle; San Francisco; Atlanta; Omaha; Flint, MI; Bridgeport, CT; Bristol, CT; Brunswick, ME; Bellingham, WA; Lafayette, IN; Mexico City, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; Nairobi, Kenya; Adelaide, Australia; Mississauga, Canada; and state-wide in Michigan. He leads regional campaigns in Australasia, Israel, Brazil, Canada, Europe, and Latin America.

This approach has had the most tangible effect in New York City where Ethan co-founded the NYC Streets Renaissance Campaign. The campaign and its demonstration projects led to a bold shift in NYC transportation policy including a Public Plaza Program, managed by former PPS staff, that is reclaiming street space for dynamic new public spaces throughout the city.

Ethan also forges major partnerships to advance public spaces and Placemaking, including leading the creation of the "Heart of the Community" program with Southwest Airlines, getting PPS selected to run the "Citizens Institute on Rural Design" for the National Endowment for the Arts, and fostering our Future of Places program to advance public space and Placemaking in the New Urban Agenda, and at Habitat 3, with UN Habitat and the Swedish Ax:son Johnson Foundation. To further establish, measure, and communicate Placemaking as a philanthropic cause Ethan has convened multiple Placemaking Funders Forums.

Placemaking Projects 

Major projects that Ethan has led have included: Times Square and Astor Place in New York; Parramatta Square, Sydney, NSW; Congress Square in Portland, ME; Kennedy Plaza in Providence, RI; Pompey Square, Nassau, Bahamas; Garden Place in Hamilton, New Zealand; and Sub Centro Las Condes in Santiago, Chile. He has also worked with some of the most high profile developments in the world to help maximize public space outcomes in Hong Kong, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Auckland, and Sao Paulo.

Education

Ethan studied sociology, environmental studies and economics as an undergraduate at Bowdoin College. He explored local development issues in the context of globalization during a year of travel around the world as a participant in the International Honors Program. Ethan did his graduate work at Antioch University Seattle's Center for Creative Change, in Environment and Community. He is a Senior Fellow with the Insitute for Place Management. He attributes his Placemaking education, and any miseducation, to the communities he has worked with, and to his father who founded PPS.

Outside Interviews and Articles

• “Tourists should not dominate public spaces”, Interview in El Pais, Spain
• Can pop-ups pave the way to thriving public space in world's cities?, (WUF9 article and video) This Is Place, Thomson Reuters Foundation
• ‍Creating Public Spaces as a Transformative Process, City Works (X)PO
• Placemaking and Creating Better Cities, ABC Radio, Australia
• Transforming Your City with Placemaking: An Interview with Ethan Kent
• Placemaking as a Fulcrum for Innovation, Intersector Project
• The Power of Placemaking, SFU Public Square
• What Makes a City Great? It's not the Liveability but the Loveability, Carnagie Council
• Social Capital and Placemaking, Nature Sacred
• “We didn’t create public spaces we love because we are rich. We became rich because we created these places”, Strongtowns
• The Power of Public Space, Guggenheim BMW Lab
• Several articles for New Start Magazine
• Various articles to help launch Streetsblog NYC

Keynotes

An inspiring and persuasive speaker, Ethan has brought PPS' Placemaking message to many groups around the world. Ethan's recent keynote presentations include:

• Making Places Symposium, Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore
• Placemaking for Safety and for BIDs, Safer Sweden Foundation and KTH Center for the Future Of Places, Almedalen, Visby, Gotland, Sweden
• Week of plenaries and workshops in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Haque, in the Netherlands including WeMakeThe.City plenaries on Making Places and Co-Creating the City.
• A range of keynotes, trainings and workshops building a placemaking campaign for Brisbane, with Brisbane Council, Place Design Group, Dexus, Committee for Brisbane.
• “What if We Built Melbourne Around Lovable Places?, Many talks and worhshops as part of Place Week Melbourne, Australia
• What if We Built Canberra Around Places? Canberra Renewal Authority, Canberra, Australia
• "Espacios Publicos Que Construyen Ciudades", Imagina Madrid, Spain
• What if we build Valencia's waterfront around places?, La Marina De Valencia, Valencia, Spain
• "Placemaking with the Crowd", Crowdsourcing the City, New Cities Foundation, London, England
• What If We Built Smart Cities Around Places? Placemaking for Social Innovation, Smart City Expo Casablanca, Casblanca, Morroco
• Placemaking as a Tool for Economic Development, Montgomery County Planning Department, Silver Spring, MD
• Systemic Change for the New Urban Agenda through Placemaking, World Urban Forum 9, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• What If We Built Singapore Around Places? Singapore Design Centre, Singapore
• Innovación Urbana Ciudadana por Lugares: Creando Ciudades, Culturas, y Economias con Placemaking; Placemaking Latinoamerica: Encuentro Innovación Urbana Ciudadana, Valpariaso, Chile
• Introduction and closing to the global day of PPS's Placemaking Week, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• What If We Supported Social Movements with Public Spaces? Driving Social Change with Placemaking; Public Spaces, Social Movements: How Planning and Design Shape Public Discourse, Center for Architecture, NYC
• What If We Built Cities Around Place Management?, 4th International Institute of Place Management Biennial Conference, “Inclusive placemaking”, Institute for Place Management Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, England
• What If We Built Georgia’s Local Economies Around Places? Georgia Economic Development Association Conference, Atlanta, GA
• Implementing the New Urban Agenda through Placemaking, Making Cities Together: Creating Safe, Inclusive & Accessible Public Spaces, UN Habitat Urban Thinkers Campus, Nairobi, Kenya
• Barriers to Social Research in Practice, Center for Architecture, NYC
• Placemaking for Innovation, Global Innovation Summit, Macquarie Park, NSW, Australia
• Annual Downtown Meetings Winston-Salem and Greensboro, NC
• Supporting the Implementation of the New Urban Agenda through Placemaking, Habitat 3, Quito, Ecuador
• How a Focus on Place Transforms the Shaping of Cities, City Works (X)PO, Roanoke, VA
• Introduction to the Placemaking Leadership Forum,
  1st Placemaking Week, Vancouver, Canada
• What if we built SE Queensland around places? Brisbane, Australia
• What if We Built Media Architecture Around Places?, Media Architecture Bienalle, University of Sydney and Vivid Sydney, Sydney NSW
• Visioning for Haywood Street, Ashville Community Design Center, Ashville, NC
• Urbanscapes Symposium: Public Spaces for City Transformation, World Bank, Washington, DC
• Cincinnati Neighborhood Summit Kick-off Dinner, Cincinnati, Ohio
• What If We Built the Miami River Around Places?, River Summit, Dayton, OH
• Placemaking Para El Rescate de Espacio Publico, Lab CDMX, Mexico City, Mexico
• What If We Built Smart Cities, and Citizens, Around Places?, Urban Thinkers Campus, UN Habitat, Dubai, UAE
• Turning Philanthropy Upside-down with Placemaking, On the Ground with Grassroots Grantmakers and IOBY, Brooklyn, NY
• A Thriving Future of Places: Placemaking, Governance and the Future of Cities, Future Cities Collaborative, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
• Building on Adelaide's Placemaking Momentum, Property Council of South Australia and Renewal SA, Adelaide, Australia
• Building Communities around Great Places, Stadsbyggnadsdagen 2015, Upplands Vasby, Sweden
• Providence Riverfront I-195 Land Forum (City Park or Baseball Park), Leadership RI and Harvard Business School, Providence, RI
• Quito Manejo de Espacios Publicos, Quito Municipality, Quito, Ecuador
• Placemaking Week, multiple public keynotes around Israel
• Placemaking: Why It Matters, Wilmington Downtown Renaissance, Wilmington, DE
• State of Downtown Hampton, Hampton, VA
• Placemaking 4 Cities, URBACT, EuroFound, Dun Laoghrie, Ireland
• San Francisco Placemaking Summit, SF AIA
• Safe Streets through Placemaking - What if We Built Broward Transit Stops & Streets As Places. Safe Streets Summit, Fort Lauderdale, FL
• Successful Public Spaces as the New Anchor Tenant, Chief Planners Roundtable, Toronto, Ontario
• What if We Built NYC Around Places?, NYC Planning Department Lunch and Learn, NYC
• From Place to Place: Shifting the Transportation Paradigm, ProWalk ProBike ProPlace, Pittsburgh, PA
• Placemaking as a Transformative Agenda for Parks, Cairns, Australia
• "What If We Built Oslo Around Places?" Oslo Urban Arena, Oslo, Norway
• "Re-Imagining People-Centered Public Spaces" UN Habitat, UCLG Learning Exchange, Durban, South Africa
• Shifting the Transportation Paradigm with Placemaking, Velo-City Global, Adelaide, Australia
• Social Innovation Through Placemaking Seoul Social Economy Center, Seoul, South Korea
• Urban Equity Through Placemaking, Innovative Americas by Next City, Ford and Kresge, World Urban Forum 7, Medellin, Colombia
• Building Communities Around Great Places, Metropolitan Planning Council, Chicago, IL
• What if We Built Architecture Around Places, Norwegian Architects Association and The Oslo School of Architecture an Design, Oslo, Norway
• Placemaking as a Social Movement, Sydney Ideas & Future Cities Collaborative, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
• Building A Great Square for Parramatta, Parramatta, NSW, Australia
• What if We Built Pawtucket Around Places? Pawtucket Foundation, Pawtucket, RI
• What if We Redefined Mumbai Around Places?, The Urban Vision Study Tour, One Bryant Park, NYC
• Place Capital: The Shared Wealth that Drives Thriving Communities, Place Leaders Assoc., Sydney, Australia
• ¿Moviéndonos hacia TOD verdes y Placemaking?, BRTs, ¿Qué sigue?, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
• What If We Built Westchester Around Places?, Westchester County Association, Tarrytown, NY
• Charting a New Direction for Congress Square Park, Friends of Congress Square Park, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
• Placemaking and the Power of Preservation, North Little Rock, AR
• Future of Place, Placemaking Conference, Institute for Quality Communities, Norman, Oklahoma
• Auckland Conversations, Auckland, NZ
• Placemaking and the Future of New Urbanism: Localism, Shared Responsibility and Citizen Empowerment, Ax:son Johnson Foundation, Engelsberg, Sweden
• Board of Commissioners Retreat, Bridgeport Downtown Special Services District, Bridgeport, CT
• Placemaking Leadership and Strategic Planning Forum, Pimpri-Chinchwad, India
• Toronto Building Industry and Land Development Assoc
• What If We Built Australasia Around Places? International Cities & Town Centres Conference, Gold Coast, Australia
• Shifting the Focus to Placemaking, Adelaide, Australia
• Transforming Parramatta Through Placemaking, Parramatta, Australia
• "What if the Place Leaders Led with Place?", Place Leaders Association, Sydney, Australia
• Myrtle Avenue BID Annual Meeting, Ridgewood, Queens, NY
• "What if We Built Michigan Around Places?", Placemaking Leadership Forum, Lansing, MI
• "Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper", University City District, Philadelphia, PA
• Mayor's Pedestrian Advisory Council, Chicago, IL
• "What if We Built Adelaide Around Places?", Smart Start, Adelaide, Australia
• "Inclusive Spaces for a Sustainable City", Training Workshop, Ministry of Social Development, Public Space Recovery Program and UN Habitat, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
• COM:PLOT 2011:Código:Ciudadano, Guadalajara, Mexico
• "What if We Built Stockholm Around Places?", City of Stockholm Stratgic Planning, Stockholm, Sweden with SpaceScape
• Ruas que constroem comunidades, Workshop Inserção do Transporte Sustentável no Morar Carioca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Villes et territoires en mutation, L'Ordre des urbanistes du Québec, Montreal, Canada
• Streets as Places, Historic Preservation and Downtown Conference, Poultney, VT
• Pavement Politics: Times Square and the Changing Face of New York's Streets, Urban Design Week, Times Square Alliance, New York, NY
• NextGen Pre-conference, Congress for New Urbanism, Madison, WI
• America's Cities: The Burden of the Past, or the Promise of the Future?, NYU Law F0rum, New York, NY
• Retrofitting and Planning Sustainable Suburbs, Toronto, Canada
• Libraries as Catalysts for Placemaking, Melbourne, Australia
• What if We Built Sydney’s Waterfront Around Places?, Sydney, Australia
• Destination Downtown, Delta Rgion Main Street, New Iberia, LA
• Ambiente y Espacio Público, Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Virginia's First Cities Annual Meeting, Portsmouth, VA
• Rural Community Development, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Oneida County, NY
• Placemaking and Preservation, Annual Meeting of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington, DC
• Urban Land Institute and Kamehameha Schools, Honolulu, HI
• Spirit and Place Festival, Indianapolis, IN
• Mayoral Conversations, Hamilton, New Zealand
• Arlington Street Infrastructure Forum: Envisioning the Future of Arlington's Streets Y2100, Arlington, VA
• Investing In Our Existing Neighbourhoods, Prince Albert, SK, Canada
• What if We Built Melbourne Around Places?, Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia
• Public Spaces Seminar: Equity and Social Integration, Chilean Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and UNDP, Santiago, Chile
• Sustainability Series, Bismarck, ND
• What If We Built Richmond's Waterfront Around Places?, Richmond, VA
• Moving the Economy, Toronto, ON
• Executive Director Retreet, Neighborworks America, Old Saybrook, CT
• International Forum on Public Spaces and Sustainability, Bogotá, Colombia
• The Sustainable Tourism Planning & Development Laboratory, Pawtucket, RI
• Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation, Brooklyn, NY
• Center for Architecture and the Built Environment, London, UK
• NY State Chambers Alliance, Albany, NY
• Strategic Thinking Forum - City Safety Commission, Melbourne, Australia
• Neighborhood Summit, "Great People, Great Places, Great City", Garland, TX
• International Cities, Town Centers and Communities Society, Auckland, NZ
• Foro Internacional de Parques, Bogotá, Colombia
  
• Ethan also has given keynotes, workshops, and panel presentations at conferences of the Center for Architecture, The Urban Vision, The BMW Guggenheim Lab Mumbai, ProWalk/ProBike, CommunityMatters, Urban Land Institute, Local Initiative Support Corp., Civic Tourism, Placematters, CAPACD, Bronx Parks Speak-up, Planners Network, Eco Metropolis, Car Free Cities, NYS Planning Federation and the World Social Forum and to many university audiences including at Cornell, Yale, Columbia, Reed, NYU, Bowdoin, New School, Pratt, Hunter, University of Toronto, University of Washington and Harvard.

Volunteer Affiliations

Advisory Board for Research into Action, The Journal of Public Space,
Senior Fellow, Institute for Place Management, Manchester University, UK
Expert Group, UN Habitat Public Space Expert Group
Steering Committee Member, The Future of Places Conference Series 
International Advisory Board Member, 8-80 Cities 
Board Member, Warren Place Association
Board Member (06-09), Make Music New York