As part of a project Providence, RI, PPS lead a workshop of over 100 city officials, business owners, residents and representatives of nonprofit groups about potential improvements to the city's central plaza, Kennedy Plaza.

"All over the world, people are coming back to these great squares. Once you've got a great square, the rest of your city is going to fall into place," said Kent. He and PPS envision a Kennedy Plaza that is ringed by shops, full of attractions and serves as the hub for a different kind of transit system, one based on trolleys or trams.

Project for Public Spaces Vice President, Ethan Kent, writes about Melbourne's successful new public space development, Federation Square, and a Placemaking training course that he helped lead, which included many city staff, local developers and "place managers."

 

Three urban planners from PPS visited Churchhill County and Fallon, NV, in an effort to inventory and assess local gathering places and destinations around town. 

Phil Myrick, vice president of PPS, and Elena Madison, assistant vice president, presented a list of sites they felt could be better utilized in Fallon. The team, which also included farmers market expert David O'Neil, toured downtown and the county and polled local residents on needed changes or additions to bring people together and to the downtown area.

As cities are building new parks at a rate not seen for 100 years, the debate about what uses and activities to put in them is growing. 

Phil Myrick, a PPS Vice President, comments on how PPS helped create a program of uses for a new park in Houston that will generate buzz in a long-forgotten area of downtown, in this article from the Wall Street Journal.

 

Seattle's Occidental Square is making a comeback!

The square had long been an empty, dreary, underused space.  But recent renovations have brought new pavings, bocce ball courts, and a series of special events that are bringing people back to Occidental Square.

Read more about PPS's involvement in the turnaround.

Photo taken by Dan Gonsiorowski

Seattlest recently visited the square on a sunny afternoon.
 

Local politicians - lawyers among them - will be staging a mock trial Saturday on whether to set free a wooden bench near the Surrey Central SkyTrain and bus loop in Surrey, British Columbia.

The idea for the bench trial came about after public spaces guru Fred Kent, President of Project for Public Spaces, toured Whalley and spotted the bench, encaged by an iron fence, and marveled at the waste.

The City of Greensboro held a ribbon cutting ceremony on December 1, 2006, to celebrate the opening of the new Center City Park, and the park has already been widely accepted by the community, and host to several large events and festivals.

Read more on how PPS worked with the City and community members to create a vision for this new park.

Linda McIntyre, Detroit native and writer for Landscape Architecture, returns home to see whether Campus Martius lives up to its billing.

"If PPS ran television commercials for its philosophy of placemaking, one could be filmed at Campus Martius Park."

Kathy Madden, Senior Vice President of PPS, is participating in Planetizen's Interchange blog series.  In her second entry, Kathy answers the question, does a building need to be old or look historic to create a sense of place?

Kathy compares the ground floor design and management of Country Club Plaza in Kansas City and Rockefeller Center in New York.

This interview with Fred Kent appeared in the February 2007 issue of Urban Land:

"As an internationally known advocate for public spaces, Fred Kent, founder of the New York-based  Project for Public Spaces (PPS), sees cities - and the people who inhabit them - through the measured senses of an urban provocateur."

Although New York prides itself on its public life, New Yorkers inhabit a public realm that pales beside what it could become. "After working in cities around the world, we've developed a rich understanding of public spaces that begs to be put to use back in our home town," explains PPS President Fred Kent. "New York can benefit from our experience and become an even greater city in the 21st century."

Museum Mile Festival, 5th Avenue 

Read this special issue of PPS's newsletter Making Places, which includes the city commentary, New York great public spaces and hidden gems, and the places that provide the biggest opportunities for improvement.

Listen to Fred Kent discuss what makes a great waterfront on San Diego's KPBS.

Kathy Madden, Senior Vice President of PPS, is participating in Planetizen's Interchange series.  Read her first entry, which looks at several major new museums in European cities that are brutal, dehumanizing buildings surounded by dead spaces.

PPS staff members Fred Kent, Cynthia Nikitin and Ethan Kent traveled to Dubai to train a group of the city's leading real estate developers in Placemaking.  The largest city in the United Arab Emirates, Dubai has experienced explosive growth in recent years, emerging as the region's financial and cultural capital. Ethan explores the transportation situation in the rapidly growing emirate in this entry on Streetsblog.

Congratulations to the San Jose/Guerrero Coalition to Save Our Streets, co-recipient of the 2006 Grand Award, given by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in San Francisco.

The Coalition of neighborhood activists successfully transformed a dangerous 6-lane arterial into a traffic-calmed street with wide medians, safe pedestrian crossings, and bike lanes. PPS worked with the Coalition to create a Neighborhood Plan, to further redevelop the neighborhood's streets into great public spaces.

Read more about PPS's work with the San Jose/Guerrero Coalition to Save our Streets here.

Less room for cars translates to more room for bicyclists. (Photo: Noah Berger)

The City of Greensboro held a ribbon cutting ceremony on December 1, 2006, to celebrate the opening of the new Center City Park.

In 2003, PPS worked with the City and community members to create a vision for what this new park could be.  PPS facilitated a Placemaking workshop where participants developed a range of both short-term opportunities and a long-term vision plan. The new park was envisioned as an opportunity to revitalize Downtown Greensboro, and to create a community gathering place that will be a destination for residents.

 
Image (c) David Wharton 

Greensboro blogger David Wharton wrote a great description of the new park, comparing it to PPS's list of the ten qualities of a great park.