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.

After funding the research that helped Jane Jacobs produce her landmark book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” nearly 50 yeas ago, the Rockefeller Foundation has inaugurated the first Jane Jacobs Medals.

Barry Benepe, the 79-year-old founder of Greenmarket, will receive the first medal for “lifetime leadership.” Omar Freilla, the 33-year-old founder of Green Worker Cooperatives in the Bronx, was named the winner of the first medal for “new ideas and activism.”

The medals will be presented in September in conjunction with the opening by the Municipal Art Society of an exhibit titled “Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York.”

Bogota, Colombia, has turned itself around by focusing on using the public realm to promote the greatest amount of happiness. First stop? Car-free days. The city’s campaign to return streets from cars to people is now a model for the world.

The quality of the typical New York City park is determined largely by whether it is in a wealthy or poor neighborhood, according to a study to be released by a private nonprofit group today. The report also indicated that despite budget increases in recent years, the Parks Department is not doing enough strategic planning to manage its parkland properly.

“About one of eight parks citywide is not in acceptable condition, and there is a significant correlation between a community district’s share of parks in unacceptable condition and its average income level,” according to the report by the group, the Citizens Budget Commission.

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.

The master plan for the development of University of Calgary’s West Campus was revealed at two open houses.  Bill Chomik, principal architect, said “It will be very mixed-use–everything will be there and it will have the flavour of a university town.”

After Toronto’s plan to add bike lanes falls behind schedule, cycling activists paint their own bike lanes.

“The city is taking way too long…Why don’t they just paint the bike lanes? People are dying.”

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.

FDR shaped the Pentagon, and two of the founding fathers were amateur architects who built their own residences.  Why haven’t more presidents taken an interest in architecture?

The five proposals for Governors Island hold clues to what’s right and wrong about how public space is designed.

“All five concepts are thoughtful approaches to a complex design problem. And the emphasis on public space is reassuring; responses to the agency’s earlier requests for proposals typically included more commercial development. But the five plans still fall short of the sweeping ambition such a unique parcel of undeveloped public land in New York City should inspire. We are mostly left with good intentions.”