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.
Stanford Town Center has long been a busy campus crossroads, a thoroughfare for cyclists, and a hub of outreach activities by student organizations. However, until recently, it remained a space people go through, rather than a destination. Students didn’t often choose it as a spot to linger or socialize, despite its central position near the library and on-campus cafés. Project for Public Spaces conducted site research and held visioning workshops with students and representatives from many university departments, highlighting that Stanford Town Center needed new activities to liven up the space. The workshops made clear that celebrating Stanford’s vibrant campus life with a new programming approach would be vital to making the space feel more welcoming.
To work through the complexity of this new programming, Project for Public Spaces also advised the client to create a new management entity with dedicated staff to oversee the space and its activities to ensure that its transformation would last far into the future. Project for Public Spaces gathered best practices and facilitated a workshop with the project partners to create a vision for how this new entity would make the space increasingly inviting and sociable through collaborative programming and maintenance. In helping the partners re-imagining what was possible for Stanford Town Center, Project for Public Spaces set the stage for this crossroads to become a well-loved gathering place.
Place Evaluation & User Analysis
Programming
Management Plan
