A new urban park officially opened in Gainesville, FL, on April 26. The new 30-acre Cofrin Nature Park is located in the Western part of the city, and offers “an enchanting greenway of trails and woods.”

Gainesville Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan addressed a crowd gathered to open the park:

“These little urban parks are critically important - they are nature’s ambassadors. People learn to love the land by playing in the woods, working in the creeks, just as I’m sure the Cofrin children did.”

Working on two prominent Seattle parks, PPS is in the thick of community efforts to help the city’s public spaces fulfill their promise.

“The vendors set up their wares in the early morning. Trucks laden with fresh produce, plants or pies are emptied onto tables for shoppers hungry for fresh bounty.

…But not all “farmers markets” are created equal.

There might not even be a farmer among the vendors at a farmers market.

Much to the dismay of farmers, the name has evolved into a generic term for outdoor markets that pop up from May through October.”

This Neal Peirce column showcases Littleton, NH’s efforts at creating and maintaining an economically viable and locally genuine downtown.

PPS has had the pleasure of working in and around Littleton for the past two years as part of the Littleton Places project. For more information, check out Littletonplaces.com or our Project Experience page.

In this month’s KLM “Holland Herald,” Fred Kent answers the question: “What makes us return to a city?” In short, local flavor, small businesses, and great neighborhoods distinguish truly great places from one-trick ponies.

This begs the question: What is the world’s most re-visitable city (and why)?

(for inspiration, try our Great Public Spaces site)

“Donald Shoup is a professor of urban planning at UCLA and the author of a recently published book, The High Cost of Free Parking.

…He argues that the conventional decades-old urban policy of providing free or subsidized on-street parking and requiring off-street parking for new development contributes to congestion and discourages alternatives to automobile transportation such as mass transit, walking and bicycling.

He suggests allowing developers to take a free-market approach to how many off-street parking spaces they provide for apartments and businesses, and increasing the cost of metered spaces so that they equal the cost of parking garages.”

Placemaking 101 for Young Leaders:
An Interactive Workshop on Creating Great Public Spaces

This invigorating Young Leaders Group workshop with Ethan Kent, Project Manager with Project for Public Spaces and “Young Leader,” will examine the state of Seattle’s public spaces. Small groups will identify “successful” public spaces in Seattle and those not performing to their potential. We will define challenges, identify potential improvements, brainstorm programs, and clarify next steps. Particular emphasis will be given to projects that can be accomplished in the short term as part of longer-range objectives. We will discuss strategies concerning how to implement changes.

To facilitate this process, Ethan will provide a presentation illustrating examples of what other cities and towns have done in contexts similar to Seattle’s. Presentation of visual examples that relate to our challenges provides a point of reference that stimulates discussion and kindles ideas.

Participants will leave this workshop with enhanced skills in what makes a public space work for the community. This workshop is intended as a stimulating introduction to placemaking and the beginning of a ULI Seattle YLG collaboration with Ethan and the Project for Public Spaces. This event takes place on April 27 in Seattle, WA.

Ethan is also presenting a second talk on April 27th sponsored by the Northwest Center for Livability titled “Placemaking: Why Planners and Designers Can’t Create Successful Public Spaces and How They Can.”

“Among the trees grows a city.”

The marketing slogan that helped bring Atlanta the Centennial Olympic Games belies the city’s surprising lack of public park space. Atlanta’s forested landscape helps define it, yet the metropolis ranks near the bottom of major American cities in public green space and recreational space-just 7.8 acres per 1,000 residents.

A decade after the Olympics, the city has another great opportunity to redefine itself, one that draws on Atlanta’s heritage as a rail hub to add a substantial tract of new public parkland. The Atlanta Belt Line, a series of long-abandoned rail corridors forming a 22-mile oval loop around the city core-could become “the first great American urban park of the 21st century,” according to a recent study by the Trust for Public Land (TPL) Georgia.

Fred Kent, addressing the JaxPride Ideas & Action forum in Jacksonville, offered this advice: “Whatever a traffic engineer says, do the opposite.”

Demolition of the original Penn Station in 1963 lead to the creation of New York City’s Landmark Preservation Commission. Since then, however, numerous buildings that once were cherished have been razed. This article in the New York Times highlights 13 such treasures that have been lost, and are missed.