Fred Kent Featured on cdmCyclist Podcast
"Whenever you see a corner, think of it as a square, because that puts that corner into the public realm, rather than into the traffic realm." / Photo: Cher Amio via Flickr PPS President Fred Kent is...
View ArticleWant to Create Family-Friendly Places? Get the Kids at the Table!
Children play on the Museum of Art and History’s rooftop sculpture garden during a Placemaking workshop / Photo: Greg Larson In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake changed the face of downtown Santa Cruz,...
View ArticleHow to Bring Life to Vacant Lots
Demoiselle 2 Femme | Source: Terrence Antonio James, Chicago Tribune Robert Linn of the Southwest Detroit Business Association recently turned to the Placemaking Leadership Council’s LinkedIn group for...
View ArticlePlacemaking in Paris: How Politics Changed the Parisian Landscape
PPS has been learning from and advocating for better public spaces in Paris, a city that has quietly done more than any other in recent decades to increase livability. Around the time that Delanoë...
View ArticleDirecting Fun in Larkin Square: How Developer-led Placemaking is Building up...
In our Citizen Placemaker series, we chat with amazing and inspiring people from outside the architecture, planning, and government worlds (the more traditional haunts of Placemakers) whose work...
View ArticleThe Story of Congress Square Park: How A Derelict Plaza Got a New Identity...
An event at Congress Square Park draws a crowd | Photo by Friends of Congress Square Park Many great public spaces have grown out of communities resisting development. It is the evolution from...
View ArticleTransforming a Neglected Square: Bringing Arts and Culture Outside at the...
The Perth Cultural Centre | Photo by PPS Before its remarkable revival, the Perth Cultural Center (PCC) was a model of the brutalist architecture that defines many academic buildings of the 1960s and...
View ArticleHavana’s Public Spaces: Learning from and Enhancing a People-Centered City
In a historic move, the United States recently announced the opening of communication with Cuba making it easier to visit and explore the amazingly walkable cityscape that is Havana. In 2006, Ethan...
View ArticleMeet Me at The Plaza: New Seats, New Scene at Harvard University
The Plaza from above during its opening | Photo courtesy Harvard Campus Services It all started with the chairs. By simply placing some movable furniture in Harvard Yard in 2009, the University took...
View ArticleHappy Earth Day! Reframing the Environmental Movement
On this day in 1970, thousands of people gathered in New York City’s Union Square Park for the world’s first Earth Day celebration. Those of us organizing events in cities all across the country were...
View ArticleMore Great Public Spaces: Nominate Your Favorite Plazas and Parks
Paley Park in New York City, famously referenced in William H. “Holly” Whyte’s public life study | Photo by Sampo Siklo via Flickr Over the past few months, we’ve highlighted the world’s best streets...
View ArticleSanta Cruz Museum of Art & History Turns Abbott Square into Creative Public...
“Yes, art is placemaking. But art is also future making. Art rejects the limitations of what we are and what we have been. It inspires us to imagine what we will be.” –Nina Simon, Executive Director,...
View ArticleKaBOOM! National Campaign for Play announces Playful City USA
(Washington, DC) — The KaBOOM! National Campaign for Play today announced the 31 founding members of the Playful City USA initiative. Playful City USA is a national recognition program that honors...
View ArticleA Simple Path to Strong Neighborhoods
A Simple Path to Strong Neighborhoods Author Jay Walljasper Shows How Small Efforts Build Community Dave Hage of the Star Tribune has a Q&A session with Jay Walljasper, author of the The Great...
View ArticleIn Search of a Great Street
Inspired by Las Ramblas in Barcelona, this article discusses what makes a good street – how elements come together to make streets “the river of life.” Community is influenced positively with...
View ArticleHow Smart Towns Fight Dark Winter
Do plunging temperatures, gray skies and the year’s shortest days have to force us to huddle indoors? When we flick on the television, do we have to cringe at the weathermen’s dire warnings of monster...
View ArticlePPS In Providence: City told to think and dream big in reinventing plaza
As part of a project Providence, RI, PPS lead a workshop of over 130 city officials, business owners, residents and representatives of nonprofit groups about potential improvements to the city’s...
View ArticleSearching for the Soul of Times Square
You know that scene in the movie I Am Legend where Will Smith (playing the last man on Earth) and his German shepherd (playing the world’s last good dog) go deer hunting in a depopulated Times Square?...
View ArticleDowntown Ithaca is the ‘Community Hub’
There’s something special about having an authentic, real center of your community: a Main Street, a plaza or piazza, a town square or village four corners. I mean a real community center, a place like...
View ArticleParks and Squares Are An Essential Feature of Urban Infrastructure
“Public space is central to the political and social life of a city. Streets and squares are marketplaces for trade, places for discussion and demonstrations, for formal and informal meetings. Public...
View ArticleU.S. Presidential Candidates Ignoring Urban Issues
Despite the large number of Americans now living in cities, urban issues have been astonishingly absent from the U.S. presidential debates. PPS did a spoof article for Faking Places, the annual April...
View ArticleMontreal’s New Public Spaces
Montreal is a city with an interesting mix of old colonial squares and new corporate plazas. A new approach to creating vibrant public places seems to be brewing. The focus is on simple and flexible...
View ArticlePlacemaking Catalyzes New Life in Providence Square
Several months after a PPS Placemaking Workshop, Providence’s Kennedy Plaza is bustling. There are live Rhythm and Soul concerts every Sunday, a Farmeri’s Market Fridays and a Market Bazaar with...
View ArticlePlacemaking at Monument Circle
PPS is working with the grantees and partners of Inspiring Places Initiative of the Central Indiana Community Foundation to build capacity for Placemaking in the Indianapolis region. One focus of this...
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