The 3^rd Nordic Urban Design Association (NUDA) Summer School is set for June 15-16, 2009 in Bergen, Norway, and June 18-19, 2009 in Sandefjord, Norway. Fred Kent and Kathy Madden, experts in the field of public space and Placemaking, will facilitate the two trainings, introducing issues never before discussed within the Nordic countries. This is the first time that Project for Public Spaces will give a two day intensive training in Norway.

For more information, check out NUDA’s website at www.nuda.no.

A variety of vendors and shoppers makes the Berkeley Flea Market a center for civic life

At the Berkeley Flea Market, the vendors and shoppers are anything but shy.  Everyone’s up for a chat, over tables full of incense, secondhand cowboy boots, jewelry, records, Barack Obama merchandise and more.  The market was found to be one of the country’s most diverse, base on a study by PPS in the 90s.

On one end of the market, a large group of men had organically formed a drum circle to the delight of shoppers.

A diverse drum circle enlivens the Berkeley Flea Market

With its inception in the mid- 1970s and its basis founded on activism and social justice, the market continues to be a welcoming and active hub of life in Berkeley.

What: An 11-acre lake surrounded by a rugged landscape of woodlands and dramatic rock outcroppings.

Why it Works: The Meer (Dutch for “lake”) is the idyllic setting of the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center, one of the Park’s four visitor centers and home to a wide variety of the Central Park Conservancy’s free family and community programs. The serene naturalistic landscape of the Meer and stunning views of its picturesque surroundings entice visitors in from nearby Fifth Avenue and 110th Street and encourage them to linger, observe, and explore. Add to this the Dana Discovery Center, built in 1993, and you have the perfect complement to the 65-acre landscape: a focal point for information, amenities, and programs. By far the most popular activity of the Meer is unstructured enjoyment of the landscape: exploring nature, observing wildlife, picnicking and just relaxing along the shoreline. Many visitors consider the restored Harlem Meer one of the Park’s most beautiful landscapes, and great care has been taken in its restoration to encourage visitors to spend time there. Seating along the pathway that sweeps around the outside of the shoreline invites passers-through to sit and stay a while, and enables parents to enjoy the view while monitoring children in one of the perimeter playgrounds. The landscape itself is designed to be inviting and accommodating. The Meer is proof that places which inspire delight and curiosity bring people together.

Read the entire profile here.

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Perched near Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, once a desolate and polluted waterway and now a burgeoning arts neighborhood, Proteus Gowanus is a multidisciplinary gallery, shop and reading room. Each week, the gallery opens its doors for the Fixers Collective, a free community event where people bring broken objects they hope to fix.

Neighbors gather to help one another fix goods.

Per their website, “The Fixers Collective is a social experiment in improvisational fixing and mending. Our goal is to increase material literacy in our community by fostering an ethic of creative caring toward the objects in our lives. The Collective grew out of this year’s exhibition at Proteus Gowanus entitled MEND, presenting art, artifacts, books and events focusing on fixing, mending and remaking.”

Attendees patch a machine vacuum bag together

One might argue that The Fixers Collective is strengthening more than damaged objects. An open event such as this can bring a growing community together, teach new skills, and create new personal connections as well.

“Every Thursday from 5-8 pm, all are invited to bring their broken things to Proteus Gowanus, explains Director Tammy Pittman.  “If you can get it through the door, we will put it on our common fixing table, put our heads together and try to fix it or, perhaps, alter it if that seems more appropriate. A $5 donation is requested unless the attendee is a Fixers Apprentice (see the website for more info on the Apprentice program.)”

Hopefully, the gallery - and this event - will become more connected with the Carroll Gardens Greenmarket, bridging the adjacent neighborhood together.

The community comes together at Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn

It’s safe to assume that most drivers whizzing down the 101 freeway in southern San Francisco are unaware of the rows of fresh produce sprouting in their midst. But just a few feet away lies this remarkable urban farm, which empowers San Francisco residents, especially those in neighboring low-income communities, to grow their own food and participate in community agriculture.

Volunteers tend to the vegetables

Since it was founded in 1994 by members of the adjacent public housing community, Alameny Farm has grown by leaps and bounds. Formerly a place where people deposited trash, the farm is now home to a duck pond, a windmill, fruit tress, and of course, vegetables in various stages of cultivation. This has demanded serious dedication on the part of community members, who successfully revived the farm just a few years ago after its funding sources collapsed.

Participants of the public markets conference were lucky enough to get a tour of the farm from Executive Director Alice Caruthers and some very friendly volunteers. On the day we visited, the artichokes (pictured below) were just beginning to come into their own.

Begging to be doused in butter and lemon

For more info on the farm and to volunteer, visit www.alemanyfarm.org

When springtime comes, a middle-aged man’s fancy turns to bikes. 

‘Tis the season to skip out of work for a day or two, and log some serious mileage on the old two wheeler.

Here in Minneapolis, I can easily pedal around the city’s famed Lakes or cruise along the forested gorge of the Mississippi River in the comfort and safety of a specially designated bike trail.

In the middle of a metropolitan area of 3 million people, I can quickly find myself on a bike trail deep in the woods. Then, ready for some cosmopolitan excitement and a good lunch, I can head downtowns (either Minneapolis or St. Paul) on scenic riverfront trails free of auto traffic.

This extensive system of bike trails is great not just for recreational rides–it’s boosted biking so much that Minneapolis now trails only Portland in commuters who travel to work on two wheels. This surprises most of-of-towners who know us mostly for freezing winters. Yet I bike all winter for work and for fun, and can attest that bike paths are busy on all but the most severe cold, snowy or icy days.

Urban bike paths are becoming a trend across the continent. PPS helped out Indianapolis, a city most known mostly for racecars, in constructing the ambitious eight-mile Cultural Trail bike and pedestrian greenway right through the center of the city. Davis, California has been serious about building bike trails and bike lanes since the 1960s, and now boasts that 17 percent of its daily commuters travel by bike. Boulder, Colorado devotes as much as 15 percent of its transportation budget to bicycle priorities.

Like parks and lively shopping streets, bike paths are important public spaces that enhance the congeniality and community spirit of a town.  They not only provide people with transportation and exercise, but also with the pleasure of meeting up with their neighbors.  At their best, bike and walking trails become a kind of linear town square—the spot where people spontaneously gather after supper and on the weekends. 

Let me map out some of my most favorite afternoons here in Minneapolis.  I bike to Minnehaha Creek Parkway, a dozen blocks south of my house and head east on its winding, waterside path through city neighborhoods to Minnehaha Falls, made famous by 19^th Century poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in “ The Song of Hiawatha.” 

Watching the water tumble over a 50-foot wall of rock fascinates and relaxes me.  Then I amble over to Sea Salt, a independently-run café in a historic park building that serves topnotch fried fish, best enjoyed on the outdoor patio. Sipping a beer while waiting for my shrimp taco to arrive, I plot the rest of my journey. 

From here bike trails lead to historic Fort Snelling, the first white settlement in Minnesota and  Pike Island, part of a state park where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers meet. The Dakota (Sioux) Indians believe this confluence of rivers is the origin of the universe. On a bright spring morning I am convinced they’re right.

Or I can take the bike trail in another direction toward the downtowns of both Minneapolis and St. Paul along wooded riverbank most of the way. Another pleasing option is to tour Minneapolis’s fabled chain of lakes, six of which lie alongside the bike trail in rapid succession. 

While the Twin Cities are legendary for their great park systems, we are equally blessed with a superb network of trails—made possible by visionaries of the 19^th Century who fought to claim local lakefronts, riverbanks and creeksides for public use. These superb public assets have been expanded in recent years through the work of a new generation of visionaries. 

Many communities throughout the country large and small are now installing impressive trail systems and linear parks. Even densely packed Manhattan is thrilled to gain a new wonder—the High Line, an elevated freight train track now reclaimed as parkland.  Most new desirable suburbs now boast bike trails that don’t simply loop around a pond, but carry people to schools, recreation facilities, nature preserves, the local library, farmers markets, restaurants, or shopping districts.  People are no longer content to cycle in circles; they want places to go and things to do.

On a recent Sunday, I headed to the Midtown Greenway, a rail-to-trail  bike and walking path  a dozen blocks north of my house. I followed it more than 20 miles west through the suburbs to Carver Regional Park—a glorious expanse of woods and prairie dotted by lakes and more bike trails. I also stopped in on a tavern and a deli in Victoria, a small town right on the trail.  When I first moved to Minneapolis from Iowa many years ago, I immediately loved life in the big city life—except for one thing.  I dearly missed being able to bike all the way out into the countryside.  The distance was too far and the roads too inhospitable. 

But now thanks to the citizen advocates and park officials in the Twin Cities  who have built an impressive trail system throughout the metropolitan area, that dream is now available any day I have a few hours to spare.

A portion of this article first appeared in Parks & Recreation magazine. Reprinted with permission from National Recreation and Park Association.

I was fortunate enough to moderate the “Marketing Your Market” session during the conference, where we hosted three leading market representatives in the US.  Each panelist provided a very unique perspective on marketing and creative ways to bring people to their markets.

Anna Curtin, Education and Events Manager for the Portland Farmers Market provided examples of the many audiences she markets to, including both vendors and shoppers.  Staff use the PFM website as a major tool in getting the word out to local shoppers, through features such as interactive market maps and an online learning center.  This outreach helps shoppers feel like stakeholders at each market.

Chris Curtis,  Director of the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance in Seattle, spoke of an innovative campaign to reach out to the “second-tier shopper,” those whose shopping concerns center more toward affordability and accessibility versus supporting local economy and sustainability.  The Alliance assembled statistics on shoppers and farmers, revamped their newsletter and worked with local officials to develop messaging to this audience.

Gail Hayden, Executive Director of the California Farmers Market Association, provided concrete tricks and tools for bringing people to the market.  My favorite?  Focus on the fresh fruits and veggies that taste the best fresh from the farm (as opposed to at the supermarket).  (To me, this was simple yet brilliant.  Peronally, I LIVE for home-grown tomatoes every year.)  She also included strawberries, corn and melons as examples of produce that drive people to buy fresh, local products.

These market professionals provided a wide array of tools for reaching many different audiences.  Have you implemented any of their suggestions yet?  If so, how were the results?

Food access, especially for lower-income neighborhoods, is a hot topic these days. Those of us who work in the field of markets and food issues know that there are many communities suffering from a lack of fresh, healthy food – especially fruits and vegetables. In return, these communities are experiencing rising rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity. To counter this problem, farmers markets and CSA’s have been started in many of these food-insecure neighborhoods, and while some have failed, many are thriving and developing into powerful community and economic development engines in their communities.

Three incredible people leading three of these successful organizations: Karen Washington of La Familia Verde, Bronx, NY; Daniel Ross of Nuestras Raíces, Holyoke, MA; and Jason Harvey of Oakland Food Connection, Oakland, CA spoke at the 7^th International Public Markets Conference and taught us that the old real estate mantra of “location, location, location” has been replaced by “community, community, community.” Karen, Daniel and Jason all credit their organizations’ longevity and success to their roots in the community. All three of their projects were started by people living in the neighborhood who knew that change needed to come, knew what to do to bring about that change, and most importantly, knew that only they themselves could bring about that change.

What makes these three organizations so fascinating is that they all have undergone a sort of evolution. What was once a simple community garden has now grown into a farmers market and a youth education program has spawned a youth-operated local foods café. Not content to simply come up with one solution, these three projects have set their sights higher and their work develops as their communities’ needs grow and change. Ultimately, it is their ability to be flexible and listen and react to the community’s desires that has kept their programs viable and sustainable. We can only hope that more cities around the U.S. and the world can grow and sustain their own versions of a La Familia Verde or Nuestras Raíces or Oakland Food Connection.

Fred Kent will be the keynote speaker for the 19th Annual Tornto Planning Gala Dinner at the Royal York Hotel.

Cynthia Nikitin will kick off a full-day workshop with an inspirational keynote on the importance of everyday walking and walkable communities. Included in the presentation will be examples of communities who have embraced walkability and placemaking, with a special emphasis on small, rural communities.

This particular workshop, being hosted in Blind River, is to serve communities scattered throughout Northern Ontario. Blind River is located on the north shore of Lake Huron, roughly half way between Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie.