| April 2, 2009 | to | April 3, 2009 |
PPS offers “Streets as Places,” a two-day transportation & Placemaking training seminar intended to introduce participants to new ways of thinking about streets and how Placemaking can be used to build great streets and great communities.
Click here for more information.
| April 16, 2009 | to | April 17, 2009 |
A two-day PPS training course on April 16-17, 2009, How to Turn a Place Around introduces new ways of thinking about public spaces and how Placemaking can be used to bring communities together and revitalize underperforming spaces.
Click here for more information.
DOT's sketches for the proposed redesign
Many more people will soon get their chance to be on Broadway. In a bold and exciting development, Janette Sadik-Kahn, the head of NYC DOT, announced that the city will close several sections of Broadway to car traffic as early as May. The street closures will be filled with tables, seating and other pedestrian amenities from 47-42nd St., and from 35-33rd St. The public space improvements are being billed as an experiment that, if deemed successful, will become permanent.
From the NYCSR exhibit, click for larger image
PPS and its partners in the New York City Streets Renaissance have advocated for a similarly bold vision for Broadway, one of the biggest opportunties for public space improvement in NYC. The concept of Broadway being built around destinations was something we originally introduced in the NYCSR exhibit in 2006, as well as in PPS’s New York City commentary. During the exhibit, we also held a panel discussion with a number of local visionaries including representatives from the 34th St. Partnership, and the Times Square Alliance. The Times Square Alliance subsequently hired PPS to perform the groundwork and initial visioning for today’s plan.
More information:
Streetsblog: The Great Pedestrian Way: First Look at the Car-Free Broadway Plan
NYT: Mayor Plans to Close Parts of Broadway to Traffic
Transportation for America, a broad coalition working towards transportation reform in the US, will be releasing their full campaign platform for the upcoming transportation bill this Thursday in Washington DC. If you are in the DC area, please join them for an entertaining, informative discussion on the future of transportation in America as their platform is officially launched.
Project for Public Spaces is a proud member of the T4America coalition, which seeks to align national, state, and local transportation policies with an array of issues like economic opportunity, climate change, energy security, health, housing and community development.
For more information on PPS’ transportation campaign, please click here.
What: A park with rose gardens and a greenhouse.
Why it Works:
Located in the culturally stimulating Latin Quarter of Paris, Jardin des Plantes is a hidden gem of a park, containing a spacious and well-plotted rose garden, as well as a very large tropical greenhouse. This is the type of place that one could spend a whole day in, for the sprawling grounds feature many user-friendly amenities, such as benches, food kiosks and climbable sculptures. Jardin des Plantes provides all the amenities one could hope for: food kiosks, public restrooms, a warm retreat (the greenhouse), and ample seating. As is the case with most Parisian parks, Jardin des Plantes is immaculately clean, with many wastebaskets scattered throughout. Due to its highly populated neighborhood, security is never an issue, and the park is open to foot traffic only.
Read the entire profile here.
Click here to nominate your favorite public space!
The new Gansevoort Plaza and the bollards some find unsightly
A partnership between PPS, Transit Alternatives and Streetsblog formed in 2005 called the NYC Streets Renaissance fueled a number of projects aimed at reclaiming street space for pedestrians. One project was the redevelopment of Gansevoort plaza in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Last month, NYC’s DOT hosted a meeting for community members to hear feedback on how the new plaza was fitting in. Some visitors had gripes with the bollords around the plaza which bear a striking resemblance to nipples. Others complained that it was too much of a nuisance to get home when traveling by cab or limo because now they had to get dropped off a little further from home. Still others supported the new plaza saying that it makes them feel much safer when crossing the street. One of the most popular and constructive pieces of criticism was the issue of livery traffic, and the popular support for taxi stands in the area to keep drivers from stopping around the plaza itself, which contributes to congestion. There are currently plans to add three taxi stands around the area.
Read more about the new Gansevoort Plaza at eyebeam.org or streetsblog.org
Read more about the New York City Streets Renaissance here and PPS’ work with Gansevoort Plaza by clicking here
PPS has just received the following information from the Center for the Living City:
JANE’S WALK USA 2009
The Center for the Living City in collaboration with the Centre for City Ecology in Toronto announces Jane’s Walk USA on May 2 and 3, 2009. The Jane’s Walk is an event to commemorate the birthday of Jane Jacobs and to celebrate our cities by organizing small groups to explore the areas of cities they love. This is the third consecutive year for Jane’s Walks in North America.
Jane Jacobs was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to city building. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her 1961 treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, introduced groundbreaking ideas about how cities function, evolve and fail that are now common sense to generations of architects, planners, politicians and activists. Jane’s Walk honors her legacy and ideas as she supported the interests of local residents and pedestrians over a car-centered approach to planning.
Jane’s Walk is a series of free neighborhood walking tours that helps put people in touch with their environment and with each other, by bridging social and geographic gaps and creating a space for cities to discover themselves. Jane’s Walk helps knit people together into a strong and resourceful community, instilling belonging and encouraging civic leadership. Jane’s Walk raises urban literacy by combining the simple act of walking with personal observations, urban history, planning, design and civic engagement.
It is an opportunity to discuss the conditions within our communities that function well and those that do not function at all; to discuss ways in which to improve our cities for our mutually agreed upon collective futures and the means by which to execute these changes through bottom-up approaches and community involvement. It is a way to look critically at our cities through the lens of Jane Jacobs and to discuss change.
Jane’s Walk is open to all for participation. As well as being a walk, it may also be a roll; wheelchairs and bikes are encouraged to participate. While a biking tour may go further than a walking tour, the same idea of exploring communities is still at work and will be an enjoyable way for people to come together and feel a sense of community involvement, and highlight the need for first class mobility no matter what a person’s ability may be. Whatever your preference, the Jane’s Walk provides a multi-faceted approach to city exploration and celebration. Whether you’re a local activist, a community gardener, politician, preservationist or a simply a citizen who loves your community, participating in a Jane’s Walk is a great way to celebrate places and the legacy of Jane Jacobs.
The walking routes chosen are usually wheelchair accessible and generally about an hour and a half in length. If a Jane’s Walk is not scheduled in a particular place, communities are encouraged to find a tour guide for their area and create their own meaningful walks. In order to do this, the tour guide must go to http://www.janeswalkusa.org and fill out a simple form to register their tour.
This central website will promote Jane’s Walks throughout the United States, and will help generate interest among community stakeholders anywhere. Tour guides are generally those who are familiar with the area, can share their personal stories and serve as a catalyst for conversation among the participants.
Jane’s Walk USA is being managed by the Center for the Living City, a non-profit
organization operating out of The University of Utah’s Department of City & Metropolitan Planning. The Center for the Living City is linked in spirit and purpose with our sister organization, The Centre for City Ecology in Toronto. So far, Jane’s Walks have occurred in Toronto and New York in 2007 and in Ottawa, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Salt Lake City in 2008.
If you would like to be involved, receive more information or schedule an interview please email info@janeswalkusa.org or visit janeswalkusa.org
One of the tent vendors at the market
Why it Works: An amazing market by the Amazon River. The market has more than 2000 tents. It is a historical site, and was recently renewed. Located in the city center, the market is densely occupied with friendly people and local products. The market used to be relatively unsafe but since the revitalization project in 2000, the market is cleaner, safer and structurally in much better shape.
Read the entire profile here.
Click here to nominate your favorite public space!
Via Wired, a transportation planner makes an impassioned plea for overhauling our car-centric mindset. Our cities have become places where “cars have a right to housing and people don’t,” lamented Timothy Papandreau at a recent symposium called Expanding the Vision of Sustainable Mobility.
Just think of the space required to support our car habit, he said: “You have to have a place to park at home, a place to park at work, and a place to park at retail establishments.” Not to mention how inefficiently our freeways use space — the 200 people that are carried (on average) by 177 cars could be carried by just three buses instead. “All that road space could become something else,” he said, advocating for a comprehensive government initiative to disincentivize driving.
There’s a lively debate raging in the Wired comments section over that conclusion. It’s inspired plenty of fervent “hear, hear!”s, but also some skepticism over the wisdom of disincentivizing driving without first improving people’s alternatives. And improving those alternatives will be especially problematic outside of dense urban areas. “I have lived [in the Twin Cities] all of my life,” one commenter says, “and more than half of the work force drives in from over 30 miles away. You would need so many public depots… it would be insane.”
The latest in urban planning, placemaking and citizen action:
 |
 |
Recent Comments