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Since publishing The Great Neighborhood Book, we have continued to receive inspiring stories about how people are creating places in their communities. We plan to share these stories periodically on our blog.

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Volunteers get to work at Drake Garden.

For over a decade, Drake Garden has been giving Chicago residents the opportunity to get their hands dirty and get to know their neighbors. Located in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago, the garden offers a green, outdoor sanctuary that attracts people from all over the city, whether to work or relax in the garden.

In the 90s, the community decided that a vacant lot that was formerly the site of a synagogue could be put to a better use. Motivated and engaged community members created the Drake Garden Volunteers and worked to turn the lot into a community garden. NeighborSpace, a Chicago-based non profit that supports community-based gardens and open spaces, helped the Albany Park residents secure the land for the garden. NeighborSpace primarily works with community groups that have already established parks or gardens so that the land can be owned by an existing non-profit and can be protected against future redevelopment.

Drake Garden and the work of NeighborSpace help illustrate one of the core tenets of Placemaking: the community is the expert. Community residents did not need outside “experts” to decide what would be the best use of the land that became the garden. Residents took action and created a thriving public space. The garden has been a true success by acting as a community anchor that brings together neighbors who had never even met before in the middle of a dense, ethnically diverse neighborhood.

Local youth love using the Garden as well.

A large sign at the gardens’ entrance increases the site’s presence on N. Drake St. In the garden, there is a board describing the history of the garden as well as a community bulletin board where residents can post information about upcoming events and gatherings. This creates a means for community connection outside of working in the garden together. Drake Garden is divided into smaller zones with distinct plants and features in each area of the garden. Trees, flowers, shrubs, and open space mingle to create a lush, green environment. Recognizing that maintaining interest in a long-term, community project is hard, programming is a central concern for the Drake Garden Volunteers. The garden hosts such events as block parties and rummage sales in order to make sure that residents have as many reasons as possible to get engaged with the garden.

Drake Gardens also partners with Chicago Cares in order to get volunteers engaged with the work at the garden. This serves as an opportunity for residents from different parts of the city get to work together on a community-focused project. Chicago Cares helps engaged residents in the Chicago area find volunteer opportunities focused on addressing various communities’ most pressing needs.

NeighborSpace recently produced a video depicting a day of work at the garden that took home the Grand Prize in Placemaking Chicago’s What Makes Your Place Great? Contest, covered here on Making Places in September. Placemaking Chicago is a partnership between PPS and the Chicago region Metropolitan Planning Council focused on increasing the reach of Placemaking principles in Chicago. With over 8,000 individual votes cast in the contest, a winning photo and video were named in both the People’s Choice and Grand Prize categories. Amy Roth’s photo of Phillips Park and Ami Shah’s video of the Shops of Long Grove earned them both the People’s Choice Award. Along with NeighborSpace’s video profiling Drake Garden, Sylvia Ortega’s photo of Bush Community Garden of Hope also took home the Grand Prize. Be sure to take a look at the Bush Community Garden of Hope photo on flickr which includes some background on how the Garden got started and how it continues to be a tremendous community asset. Much like Drake Gardens, it is a great example of a community coming together for the sake of improving their neighborhood. The success of the Bush Community Garden of Hope also highlights the importance of effective partnerships as they are working not only with NeighborSpace but also local stakeholders such as the local Homeowners’ and Tenants’ Association and local businesses. PPS’ Great Cities Initiative helps support efforts like the Bush Community Garden of Hope and Drake Garden throughout the world.

Check out the other winning photos and videos at Placemaking Chicago’s website. You can also browse all of the photo and video entries for the contest.

Have you been a part of a Great Neighborhood Project?  Email us your story for use in future profiles. tpeyton (at) pps.org

]]> http://blog.pps.org/drake-garden-helps-chicagoans-get-their-hands-dirty/feed/ http://blog.pps.org/toward-a-robust-and-accountable-transportation-planning-process/ http://blog.pps.org/toward-a-robust-and-accountable-transportation-planning-process/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:34:23 +0000 gtoth http://blog.pps.org/?p=3531

Gary Toth following up on his reflections on the USDOT webinar, Forum on Livability.
As a career transportation geek, I found it particularly encouraging to hear talk about a new transportation planning process attached to performance measures which go beyond the overused and myopic focus solely on auto oriented benchmarks such as pavement quality, bridge inspections and level of service (congestion). To be clear, I am not saying it is bad to keep our bridges standing and safe and the roads that I use to travel to Vermont, Pennsylvania and Delaware from getting overclogged with traffic. Keep it up DOTs! However, we the public allow government to tax us because we want our lives improved and our agencies responsive. Having worked in the state DOT world for 34 years, I can tell you that most DOT insiders have lost track of that concept - and the public has noticed. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a major part of the reason why states and federal politicians will no longer vote for increased gas taxes.   Do we transportation professionals need to be hit in the head with a rock to figure this out?

USDOT gets this, as evidenced by last months webinar on Livability. So what would a more robust, 21st Century planning process look like?

For starters, it would be one which addresses environmental, energy, housing, economic, land use and development, and equity policies. There are ample models out there within some of the more progressive Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), which are the regional planning organizations mandated by federal transportation legislation. For instance, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Council (DVRPC) has generated a number of Scenario Performance Measures including amount of land development, average annual household transportation expenses, vehicle miles traveled and relationship within planning areas of jobs to housing. California’s State Bill 375 mandates Blueprint planning, which - like the DVRPC model — measures success of transportation planning against benchmarks that matter to the average citizen in every day life: how much does transportation cost eat into their budgets; is the regional planning helping folks to find affordable housing; does the transportation network help economize personal time or it is forcing them to drive around everywhere to bring kids to school, get a quart of milk, to take mom to the doctor?

These kinds of people based performance measures must count for as much (if not more) than how smooth the pavement is. Examples like DVRPC and California’s SB 375 must become the standard, not the remarkable case study.

This robust and accountable planning process must then be used to drive transportation investments. Sounds like a no brainer, right? Yet, the American public would be disillusioned to find out how much mismatch there is between long range plans and how state DOTs actually invest the transportation dollars that we provide to them. Federal law requires only that the investment plans (Transportation Improvement Plans or TIP for short) be “consistent” with metro or long range transportation plans. “Consistent” has become a term of art and is subject to strong-arming by the DOTs, which come equipped with bridge, pavement and congestion performance measures: DOTs can threaten to move money from one MPO to another if they don’t toe the DOT line. Politics also plays a big role in distorting the planning process. A majority of MPO voting members are elected officials who feel compelled to press for investment in the sub region that they represent. Fix it first projects often give way to huge investments in freeways or roadway widening. These have much more political visibility, satisfy economic interests in opening up new land for sprawling development or to satisfy the complaints of voters sitting in traffic. The end product barely resembles the plan.

Politicians will be politicians, and DOTs are currently transportation focused, so if we perpetuate a system that allows them to use muscle to skew the investment in their favor, then they are almost compelled to do so. Who wants to be the senator who has to go home to his/her district and explain to their constituents that they have to continue to sit in congestion or drive over a shaky bridge because the Senator was more worried about global warming?

To fix this, the next transportation bill passed by Congress must mandate that federal funds cannot be approved for use on any individual project unless that project was contained and recommended within a long range plan and investment program. Those plans and program need to be based on statewide, regional and/or corridor visioning that were done using community, place and environmental based performance measures as well as transportation measures. In context sensitive solutions parlance - all concepts, projects and investment funded with federal dollars should be sensitive to all contexts, not just the transportation context. And, this all needs to be done with full and meaningful participation of all stakeholders, starting with the public, but including private developers, institutions and relevant non profits. When those stakeholders feel like the transportation insiders have allowed them to be part of the team, then those stakeholders will vote to raise money for the team’s game plan.

The next bill must also require that all investments and plans be based on integrated transportation and land use (T/LU) forecasting models. This will be expensive for sure, but states like California and Oregon have already learned that the return on investment is almost immeasurable. For instance, T/LU modeling helped Oregon reconsider a potential several billion dollar investment in freeways in Eastern Oregon, when the modeling revealed that the planned freeways would never perform as desired. T/LU modeling helped California understand that a politically driven call for a new freeway to Modesto — parallel to I-580 - would have the opposite effect on improving economics than conventional transportation only based logic suggested. Instead, T/LU modeling revealed a freight only toll road was determined to be the right investment. With funding for transportation becoming ever more scarce, our nation cannot afford to rely on outdated conventional transportation models institutionalized in response to the 1962 Federal Aid Highway Act. 21st Century investments require 21st Century models that evaluate decisions based not only on travel time savings but which also predict the induced economic growth based on economic, social and environmental realities. To help eliminate the political resistance created by the major expense of these models, the next National Transportation Bill should provide funding and resources for T/LU modeling.

To enforce the link between the investment program and the long range blueprint planning, no project be allowed to pass from one project delivery step to another without a formal declaration by the DOT/MPO that the investment “graduated” from a integrated and collaborative long range plan. For highway investments, the Federal Highway Administrati

on (FHWA) could easily enforce this. FHWA is currently required to approve requests for use of federal transportation funds at each project delivery stage, specifically inclusion of the project in a Unified Planning Work Program; start and completion of the environmental process (specified by the National Environmental Policy Act - NEPA for short); start of final design; start of property acquisition (called right of way); and start of construction.

These ideas will be resisted by most of the state DOTs. Even the “progressive” ones will not like the idea of relinquishing this much control of the investment process. AASHTO will follow their lead, even though their leadership gets the value of this. Learning from the current Health Care debate, opponents will portray this as more intrusion of the federal government into our local rights.

But as one early patriot once said, we either hang together or we hang separately. The current system allows if not fosters an “every man for themselves” approach. Individual objectives are maximized while collective objectives fall by the wayside. Each player in the current game will continue to protect their piece of a shrinking pie because that is how they win in the current game. The next bill must change the rules of the game such that individual battles cannot be one while the “war” is lost. 21st Century transportation must induce players to address broad societal issues that threaten the very future of our prosperity while still allowing officials to proudly cut the ribbon on a rehabilitated bridge.

USDOT must provide the leadership to help America to work together on this. Participants in last month’s webinar were encouraged, yet skeptical. We have been promised reform many times before by incoming administrations, which reforms dissipate in the face on entrenched self interest. The upcoming attempts at transportation reform will face monumental resistance from entrenched interests who cry state’s rights; people are more important than frogs; American’s won’t give up their cars; Washington’s liberals are trying to make us all live like them. Those of us who know better need to line up behind USDOT and give them the cover and the courage to continue to move forward. Otherwise early skepticism will grow into widespread loss of faith: “we heard your commercial, now where’s the beef?”

Gary’s next post will drill down more into the actual project delivery process and talk about how corridor planning and consideration of environmental issues during planning can help accomplish these goals.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office

The memorable experiences of one’s education often take place in the most comfortable and socially engaging places on a campus.  Campus planning has sometimes been neglectful of allowing for and creating such places, instead focusing more narrowly on single-use facilities and isolated design statements.

Harvard University has been quietly challenging this pattern and opening up to our Placemaking approach.  PPS worked with the university’s North Campus - which previously felt disconnected from the school’s well-known Harvard Yard - to develop recommendations in 2005 regarding seasonal uses and short-term experiments to activate the campus and make it feel more connected to the Yard.  In 2006, Harvard announced plans for a new Allston Campus, which will be built over the next 50 years.  With PPS’s help, this plan is being framed, in part, around key campus destinations and connections to the surrounding community.

This semester, Harvard brought Placemaking to its main campus, establishing a Steering Committee on Common Space to make campus life even better.  The Committee, dedicated to making sure the campus’ physical environment better supports the intellectual and social vitality of the University, has already installed colorful movable chairs and tables in Harvard Yard and the Radcliffe Quad.  A variety of foods will be offered nearby, and student performances will further activate the spaces.  For such a revered space, which never had any seating simply because there never was any historically, this is a big move and we applaud Harvard’s willingness to have a little fun with their most sacred space.

We are excited to see Placemaking being embraced on many college campuses.  A former PPS intern has been leading campus Placemaking efforts on the campus of Colorado College.  PPS has also been applying Placemaking to campuses in the development of new student unions, gathering areas and master plans on for institutions including, University of Madison Wisconsin, Stanford University, Duke University, George Mason University and University of Michigan Flint. Please share with us any examples that you may be involved with.

With Harvard taking these bold but simple steps, we are hopeful that campuses around the world will be inspired to find innovative ways to make their campuses more inviting and more memorable, and better contribute to the public realms of the communities they serve.

“Placemaker Profiles” highlights the individuals who have captured our imagination about the need to create great places in every community. By bringing together their valuable stories, key insights, and compelling visions, we hope to share their wisdom with our readers, honor their accomplishments, and acknowledge their profound influence on the Placemaking movement.

For more Placemaker Profiles, click here.

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ALAN BARBER

“Greenspace networks are not the space left over after planning, or the spaces between buildings. They are a vital component of ever-larger urban settlements in all developed countries. We neglect them at our peril.”

Alan Barber is an advocate, activist, and critic who has worked tirelessly on behalf of Britain’s public parks and greenspaces for decades. Barber’s efforts at all levels – within communities, through university teaching, and in local and national government positions – has made real and lasting change in the way public parks are managed and prioritized in the United Kingdom. Barber is unfailingly passionate and unafraid to speak his mind. His recent appointment as a member of the Order of the British Empire stands in testament to his years of devotion and commitment to Britain’s public parks.

Biography

Alan Barber was born in Lancashire, UK, in 1942. His love of greenspace was cultivated at an early age; he apprenticed with a local parks department at age 16, and at 21 he began a two-year term of study at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Throughout the rest of his twenties, Barber learned about parks management by working “on the ground” jobs in Lancashire and Manchester.

Barber then became Parks Manager for the city of Bristol, UK. Working in this position, he came to hold many of his current positions on parks management and the role of parks in urban social life. In this role, he founded important and lasting public-private partnerships, increased parks programming, and introduced goal-based management systems imported from industry.

Barber repeatedly witnessed budget cuts leading to the ruin of parks programs and historic greenspaces. This inspired him to begin campaigning and consulting nationally for dedicated parks funding and management. In this role, he served as President of the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management. In 1996, Barber co-wrote a position paper for Lord Rothschild that spurred the creation of a new grant-making parks initiative, funded by the national lottery, that became the largest investment in public parks in the UK; to date, over £300 million has been invested in revitalizing public greenspaces.

Barber went on to help found GreenSpace, a charity devoted to improving parks and involving communities in their care. He also has held several advocacy and teaching positions within government and universities, all devoted to better parks management and preservation.

In 1998, a House of Commons Select Committee – akin to a Congressional investigative hearing – met to consider the plight of public parks in the UK. Barber, who considered this a “real breakthrough,” served as a special advisor to the inquiry, and later to the government Urban Green Spaces Taskforce formed as a result. Barber helped to persuade both these bodies of the need for a national agency devoted to parks issues; in 2003, CABE Space – an addition to the UK’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) – was formed, and Barber was appointed a member of the Commission.

On April 7, 2009, Alan Barber was appointed a member of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen in recognition of his decades of advocacy on behalf of public parks. Upon receiving the prestigious award, Barber noted that: “I am still campaigning and writing about urban parks because I believe they are so important to the life of towns and cities. Their neglect in recent years has been scandalous, especially when they can do so much to encourage healthier lifestyles.”

Barber believes the biggest remaining challenge for greenspaces in the UK is “to reverse the steady decline in budgets for maintaining park systems in our towns and cities. Democracy is a much weaker force in the UK than in the USA. So much is dictated by Whitehall bureaucracy, rather than the wishes of local people. The silo-mentality in Whitehall means that nobody can link the welfare of children, which is a priority, to the care of the environment which children inhabit. A bit more attention to the latter and many of our serious problems with childcare would be reduced.”

Perspectives

The Role(s) and Management of Greenspace

Barber sees public parks and greenspaces as inherently multifunctional, and believes that their management must (but too often doesn’t) acknowledge this characteristic. He views parks as part of a larger ecological, cultural, social, and educational system.

This understanding of parks’ multifunctionality leads to Barber’s CLERE model for parks management. The model highlights what Barber sees as the five key interrelated functions of urban greenspace – its role in Community development and education; as a Landscape with conservation requirements; as an Ecosystem that provides natural services to a city; as a resource for Recreation; and finally, as a contributor to the local Economy. Each of these functions implies an accompanying set of management issues and goals, all of which must be addressed holistically for the greenspace to achieve its fullest potential.

The proper management of urban greenspace has farther-reaching benefits, as well. It contributes positively to national and global problems, including environmental issues like climate change and air quality, human well-being, and economic prosperity. Moreover, quality public space fosters and supports civic engagement and community spirit. If citizens feel alienated from their public spaces and institutions, they are less likely to participate (formally or informally) in governance of their communities. Thus, careful stewardship of public space is integral for guaranteeing meaningful democratic participation. This is a cyclical pattern: the less democratic the governing bodies, the more institutionally dysfunctional, bureaucratic, and self-interested the government – and in turn, a government of this sort won’t be a good steward of green space.

The Design Profession

Barber considers the landscape design profession to have “lost the plot,” in his words; he thinks landscape architecture education must refocus on natural and ecological features, rather than cold, sterile architectural elements. He says he “would remove all [landscape architects’] paving catalogues and replace them with plant catalogues. I would ask them to contemplate a world of beautiful colours, of three dimensions and with no geometrical shapes.”

With characteristic wit, Barber describes the need for design professionals to truly listen to the public that will use these spaces, and (echoing William H. Whyte) to have a role in arranging their own spatial experience: “I must have read a thousand articles on seats in public places but I never once read that anyone had asked people which they liked to sit on. I like Paris’s Jardin du Luxembourg because visitors are given a choice of seat, and how they are arranged. In English public places immovable benches are always placed next to trash bins because the architect presumes the public like to sit next to stale food and wasps.”

Design and Management

Barber argues in favor of a closer, more collaborative working relationship between designers and managers of public spaces, and finds that design too often occurs without consideration of how people will actually use the space. Parks, in particular, must be well-maintained and well-programmed to live up to their potential as useful public spaces. He says: “Design and management have to be brought much closer together. I have found good design solutions to management problems but only where designers and managers speak the same language and where they can both communicate with people.”

Good management gives public parks the ability to adapt in response to changing user needs. Fixed architectural elements are not easily adaptable and are “incapable of self-renewal,” in Barber’s words; however, parks can be continuously renewed when managers intervene in an informed, thoughtful, publicly-minded manner.

“People-Power”

Rather than depending on government to make necessary changes to public space, Barber puts his faith in grassroots “people-power” movements. He notes the importance of local community groups (often “friends of the parks” organizations) in influencing the political agenda and engaging with public space. Barber also extols tools like PPS’s Place Game and CABE’s Spaceshaper, both of which involve communities in critically appraising their own local spaces.

Architecture

Though Barber’s writings and work focus primarily on public parks and greenspace, he commends recent architectural innovations like green roofs and walls, noting that “[t]here are few modern buildings in the world that wouldn’t look better covered in plants.” Barber also praises Prince Charles and his views on architecture: “He has a real understanding of the subject, much greater than many of his architect critics. I wish he would champion parks and public places more often. His interventions are well judged and very influential.”

Quotable

“I love public parks; the best seem to effortlessly capture the essence of civilized living in modern urban society.”

“Nothing repays its investment as well as a good public park.”

“In my writing, I am often found campaigning and confrontational, mostly towards an establishment, which does not seem to care.”

“Campaigning for better public parks is my life and I don’t intend to stop until I collapse in a heap.”

Selected Publications

Around the World in Twenty-One Parks. This annotated collection of films of Barber’s favorite parks provides wonderful insight into what makes parks work.

Green Future. Greenspace, 2005.

Time to Bite the Bullet. Green Places, March 2009.

How Green is My Eco-Town? Green Places, November 2008 (with Junfang Xie).

The Final Assessment. Green Places, March 2008.

See also Sarah Jackson’s excellent profile of Alan Barber in Parks and Gardens UK, on which the Biography section of this Placemaker Profile draws.

Contact Info

Alan Barber may be reached at: alan.barber@blueyonder.co.uk. He particularly welcomes contact from students.

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–written by Karen Levy

The United States Department of Transportation is planning to start leveraging transportation spending to build livable and sustainable communities.

Communities and advocates have been pressing the US transportation industry to be more proactive about achieving livability goals for decades. Yet, the transportation industry continued to pursue the notion that the safety and mobility of the motoring public was paramount.  Prior to the Obama Administration, these calls fell on deaf ears; now, it seems, we have an opportunity to begin to turn the battleship around.

“The pedestrian is the indicator species for a healthy, vibrant community.”
- Beth Osbourne, Deputy Assistant Director for Transportation Policy USDOT
For more quotes from the forum see our live Tweeting

On Thursday, September 24, ContextSensitiveSolutions.org, an FHWA website managed by Project for Public Spaces, hosted an online Forum on Livability for the US Department of Transportation (USDOT). In this forum, USDOT detailed several new programs related to a new Partnership for Sustainable Communities among USDOT, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that promise to reshape development patterns around creating stronger community centers, more compact, mixed-use and walkable environments, and enhanced transportation options. At the same time, these programs would focus development in existing developed areas and protect farmland and open space.

Transportation policy has drastically shaped the face of America.

We hope that we will look back on this initiative as a watershed moment in the history of transportation in America—a return to the idea that transportation investment should be about livability and community outcomes, not simply moving vehicles.

The idea that the transportation system should support community and societal outcomes is nothing new. Prior to the passage of the first federal aid highway act in 1916, road building was the responsibility of communities. They built roads to serve people and the needs of the community. Even when Americans authorized their government to begin taxing them to add highway infrastructure and create dedicated transportation agencies, we did so because we wanted the government to help improve our quality of life. For reasons which I outlined in a 2007 article entitled “Back to Basics in Transportation Planning” the American transportation establishment has lost its way. It is exciting to believe that the Obama Administration will be trying to help us find our way back to our roots.

Transportation policy is increasingly including efforts to improve accessibility, rather than just mobility.

Today’s webinar built upon the anticipation and excitement created by the June announcement of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. Key officials from the USDOT’s Office of the Secretary (Beth Osborne), the Federal Highway Administration (Gloria Shepherd), and the Federal Transit Administration (Robert J. Tuccillo) covered the guiding principles of the new Partnership:

1. Promote more transportation choices
2. Promote equitable affordable housing
3. Enhance economic competitiveness
4. Support existing communities
5. Coordinate policies and leverage investment
6. Value communities and neighborhoods

These goals signal that our transportation leaders will finally tackle broader societal issues, which for decades they have insisted were not their purview. Issues covered by the presenters included land use, housing, climate, energy security and public health.

Later, the webinar addressed the inevitable question: “What Does the Future Hold?” Answers were encouraging. We can look forward to performance-based planning, especially using benchmarks that go beyond the narrow transportation focus that has conventionally dominated DOT and MPO planning and investments. Finally, an era may be approaching in which community vitality, equitable access to transportation, and a match between housing, jobs and transportation choices are equally as important as pavement quality and congestion levels.

Major changes to long-range planning practices, which advocates such as PPS have demanded for quite some time, are also on the horizon. I have personally advocated for multi-modal corridor planning that integrates transportation and land use, with Placemaking as a key foundation. PPS will again explore some of these ideas in a blog post next week.

Most critically, the speakers indicated that there will be changes in the transportation funding structure. Currently, there is a huge disconnect between strategic and policy-level transportation planning and how public funds are actually spent. It is encouraging to hear that these expenditures will be based on performance measures that go beyond pure transportation objectives. It sounds like we may actually be getting back to the basics!

The road ahead for transportation in America will only get more interesting -- and hopefully more livable.

PPS has been contributing to the idea of livable transportation for almost two decades. We were involved in publications like the The Role of Transit in Creating Livable Metropolitan Communities, as well as a 2008 publication written for AARP entitled Great Corridors, Great Communities: The Quiet Revolution in Transportation Planning. Additionally, our recent Citizen’s Guide to Better Streets: How to Engage your Transportation Agency was published to help advocates work constructively with public agencies in order to create more livable and sustainable streets and neighborhoods. In these efforts, we are proud to have been able to build on and supplement the work of other great organizations such as the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Reconnecting America, the Surface Transportation Policy project, among others.

We believe that non-profit organizations and advocates across the country—at the local, state and national levels—have both leadership and implementation roles to play in helping Washington achieve these goals. PPS will continue to be actively engaged to keep the public informed to make change happen in communities across the country.

What: A gorgeous, covered market that dates to the turn of the 20th century and is a focal point for city life.

Why it Works: The spectacular building has been lovingly renovated and sits in all its glory just steps from the Danube on the Pest side, at the foot of the Liberty Bridge (itself a lovely structure). Not only is it beautiful, it is completely wheelchair accessible. Plenty of local people shop for their daily fare here undaunted by the hundreds of tourists roaming up and down the aisles. The second floor contains the handicrafts and souvenirs so dear to visitors hearts: embroidery, leather work, hand-carved chess sets, matruska dolls from Russia. The lower level is devoted to food - there are aisles of fresh vegetables, stands of fowl and meat, a couple of shops with wine and liquor. The only problem a guest faces is trying to choose from the salami, strings of red peppers and packets of saffron. Far in the back, a few small farmers come in from the country with honey, peppers and fresh berries in season.

Read the entire profile here.

Click here to nominate your favorite public space!

For one glorious day each year, an international celebration of street life commonly known as “Park[ing]  Day” reclaims parking spaces as people spaces in cities ranging from Santiago to Copenhagen. As described by its local New York City organizers—Transportation Alternatives, this monumental day is intended to

“support the conversion of parking spots throughout New York City into human-friendly places for one day each year. This year there are 55 spots throughout the five boroughs. These temporary public spaces provide relief from the hustle and bustle of New York City and aim to spark a dialogue about the way residents, visitors and city officials choose to use valuable public space.”

Well said. Park[ing]  Day is yet another example of grassroots community efforts to  make our streets more comfortable and welcoming for the pedestrian. These efforts complement the host of steps such as the NYC Plaza Program, through which the DOT has reclaimed prominent public spaces including Times Square and various plazas throughout the Meatpacking District from vehicles to enhance the pedestrian experience of the city. Yet for us here at PPS, Park[ing]  Day is so much more.

For Project for Public Spaces, parking day is like game seven, Bulls vs. Knicks, Jordan vs. Ewing, people vs. car, auto-dominated highways vs. friendly streets as places where the random sidewalk contacts are able to foster a wealth of public life. We train all year for parking day…discussing potential themes, practicing badminton in the office until the wee hours of the night, even lying down in traffic… just to practice. This year the enthusiasm was so high, we even got a countdown calendar with daily quotations by transportation visionaries such as Alan Jacobs, Hans Monderman, and Rolf Monheim.

Following a strong track record with a Mini-Bryant Park themed space at last year’s Park[ing]  Day and a “disPlaced Park” the year before , expectations were high for ‘09. After great debate, with the uncanny sense of vision and passion of a seasoned veteran, new Project for Public Spaces employee Tom Peyton had a stroke of genius…Turf’s Up!…which is obviously an Astroturf beach.

Based upon this theme, PPS incorporated its “Power of 10” methodology to provide a layering of activities and uses including: Hula Hooping, Dancing, Dominoes, Music, Twister, Manicures, Pedicures, Eating, Drinking,  People Watching, Football, Frisbee, Outdoor Meetings, Cigarette Breaks, and of course a small library consisting of books on Pidgin English and gossip magazines.

All in all, Park[ing]  Day was a success…but there were a number of other bar raising celebrants around the world who have encouraged us to begin planning the best Park[ing] Day space ever for 2010.

For further coverage of parking day please see the following links:

http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/parking-day-2009-nyc/

http://www.apapase.org/

http://twitter.com/parkingdayphila

http://parkingdayla.com/

http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2009/09/parking-day-dc-tomorrow-september-18th.html

Cities defined by great public destinations are becoming ever more important in a competitive globalized economy.  Examples can be seen everywhere, from the transformation of Bryant Park and Central Park in New York, to the emergence of Lower Downtown in Denver and the revival of once-overlooked cities such as Barcelona, Copenhagen and Melbourne.

Based on more than 30 years of work at Project for Public Spaces, the non-profit organization I founded after working with Holly Whyte, I am convinced that place-based initiatives are the best way to promote vitality and prosperity in cities everywhere.  Our experience helping people in more than 2500 towns around the world improve their communities shows that mobilizing people to make great places strengthens neighborhoods, cities and entire metropolitan areas.

Nearly every city today can brag about at least one success story where determined citizens, guided by the idea we call Placemaking, made a difference in the place they call home. Even downtown Detroit now enjoys a popular town square—Campus Martius— whicnh has brought thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment to the hard-hit city center.  These remarkable turn-around stories did not happen through the grand visions of designers, but rather by the creativity of a diverse group of people who thought imaginatively and applied broad skills to transform their communities into great places.

But the recent trend toward “iconic” architecture—which has gained a big following in the media and among high-profile clients, winning numerous architectural prizes—minimizes the importance of citizen input and dismisses the goals of creating great public places. Instead it promotes a design-centric philosophy where all that matters is the artistic statement conceived by an internationally recognized celebrity. Frank Gehry, an architect of considerable talent and imagination, drew world attention to the iconic design movement with his famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In the process, he inaugurated an era in which designers call all the shots in creating our cityscapes, leaving us with showy buildings meant to be admired from a distance rather than contributing to the vitality of everyday life in a local community.

Gehry's iconic Bilbao Museum makes a singular statement

Gehry’s Bilbao Museum made a definitive design statement when it opened in 1997, putting this Spanish city on the map of contemporary cultural destinations.  But this sort of media buzz enjoys a short life. To make an enduring impact, a place must continually reinvent itself to stay relevant to the times and its setting. The next step for this groundbreaking museum should be for it to evolve it into a great place that keeps people coming back for more than just architecture and art. It needs to become a spot where people naturally want to hang out in order to enjoy the entire experience and energy of an amazing city. Our assessment is that the Bilbao museum does not do that. We have praise for the building as a work of art, but not as a destination.

The two people coming out of the stairs at the sunken entryway were mugged by the two people in the above photo and their camera was stolen. Muggings are common in the empty plazas.

I am a big fan of some of Gehry’s buildings. I think the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park is outstanding – a true iconic architectural achievement. The concert stage, the “Trellis” that spreads an excellent sound system across a large expanse of grass and the seating area are all awesome. I think it is his finest work.

The Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millenium Park, Frank Gehry’s finest building, fosters vibrant public life and contextually creates a real center for Millennium Park.

Yet one of iconic architecture’s greatest strengths—the eye-catching quality of these new and sometimes beautiful buildings—also becomes its greatest weakness in the hands of designers, clients and architecture boosters solely interested in creating monuments with “curb appeal.” Too little thought is given on how to continue attracting people to these places after their first visit.  Since many of these buildings are cultural institutions, whose success depends on instilling a sense of community and connection among their visitors, this is a particularly short-sighted strategy.  One-time tourists won’t pay the bills of these expensive-to-maintain buildings.

Gehry’s iconic cityscape in Dusseldorf, Germany, with few signs of human life

The Problem with “Starchitecture”

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created for everybody.”  -Jane Jacobs

Cities as envisioned by iconic “starchitects” and their supporting cast of patrons and admiring journalists are worlds apart from the aspirations ordinary citizens have for their communities. That helps explain why designers today are deeply afraid of being judged by anyone other than their own kind.

I was forcefully reminded of this at the Aspen Ideas Festival this summer when I asked Frank Gehry a respectful but direct question about why great iconic architecture rarely fosters great public spaces. He declined to answer the question, and waved his hand to dismiss me, a haughty display that eminent journalist James Fallows compared to Louis XIV. The session’s moderator Thomas Pritzker, chairman of the Pritzker Prize jury, also avoided the question. Their response (or lack, thereof) set off a furor in the design-world blogosphere.

I believe this simple question ought to be asked of every designer and every client on every project: “What will we do to ensure that design creates good public spaces for people to use and enjoy?” For a designer to duck that question does a huge disservice to the profession and society as a whole.  Good design involves much more than making “bold” and “innovative” aesthetic expressions; design should help us achieve solutions to the major urban issues confronting our world today, from environmental destruction to economic decline to social alienation. Architecture falls far short of its potential when designers focus all of their talent on what shapes and facades to use in making their latest artistic statement.

Traveling around the world to work on public space projects, I’m always excited to see the latest trends in design. But I have to say that when I examine them in the context of their settings, they usually are failures. What looks sensational on the pages of an architectural magazine or website too often falls flat when experienced up close.

The idea of great places as espoused by the iconic architecture movement is very different than that of almost everyone else. All of us at PPS are amazed when we ask stakeholders and residents in a given city to evaluate a public space or building that is highly praised in the media and among the design community. They are often ruthless in their assessment. Not impressed by design awards or lavish praise in architectural journals, local citizens are focused how well a space works for people.

This raises issues about the elite nature of many of these iconic buildings—contemporary art museums, opera halls, university buildings etc.—that occupy prime settings in the heart of a community and are subsidized by public funding (if not in the actual construction,  then in public infrastructure and upkeep for the surrounding area).  There is a moral obligation that these landmarks serve a wider audience than just contemporary architecture buffs in order to justify the investment of public and tax-free charitable money that goes into them.  The best way to do this is to create a convivial setting—outdoors as well as indoors– that the whole community will see as an asset.

This issue is being addressed in Perth, Australia, which has one of the most unique combinations of cultural institutions anywhere in the world. The State Library, a museum focusing on the natural history of Western Australia, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and adjoining public spaces sit next to the central railway station and downtown, offering wonderful potential for a major destination in Perth that is more than the sum of its parts.  However, until recently there has been little focus on nurturing the rich public life these cultural institutions could cultivate. PPS is working with the East Perth Redevelopment Authority (EPRA) on a short term physical improvement program and management strategy intended to enliven the Cultural Centre at all times of day and in all seasons. Our plan is to create a great place that offers people 100 reasons to visit, which will drive greater attendance to the cultural facilities.

My question to both Gehry and Thomas Pritzker was a plea for help and a call for action. I was seeking their advice on how to assist the design professions in forging a place-based architecture that can address the enormous challenges facing us today. Creating “iconic for iconic sake” buildings is no longer enough—architects must become more inventive in creating new design strategies that can sustain the environment and improve daily life for the one-half of the world’s population that now live in cities.

The current development slowdown caused by the real estate crash and global economic crisis gives us time to reflect and re-orient our focus. We can emerge from this slump armed with bold design innovations that will strengthen local communities and economies, protect the earth and establish a new kind of architecture rooted in a sense of place and a mission to improve people’s lives.

It’s not clear yet what shape this “New Architecture of Place” might take, but we know that today’s current trends in design show little promise in addressing either the problems or opportunities confronting us today.

Great Examples of Iconic Architecture that Create Great Places

“We shape our buildings, and thereafter our buildings shape us.” –Winston Churchill

The problem is not with the idea of iconic architecture, as some architectural traditionalists charge, but with the constricted approach that too many iconic designers embrace. Here are two recent examples of iconic projects that create a marvelous sense of place, thus treating the public to both cutting-edge design and a great destination to admire, use and enjoy.

1.    Oslo Opera House (Oslo, Norway)

Purely Iconic in its design, the new opera house in Oslo, Norway by the Snohetta firm (based in both Oslo and New York) takes contemporary architecture beyond just the building to create an amazing public space where the public may literally use the entire site as a playground. In fact, Snohetta has explained that for this project, nature defines form and not function. The building itself is wonderful, featuring a dynamic design that allows for creative uses and opportunities for exploration. It is a masterpiece of form, function and nature, and thrives despite its isolation from the rest of the cityscape. To remain vital for the future, the building must grow into a larger mixed-use destination for year-around activity.

Iconic Architecture at its Best: The Oslo Opera House attracts crowds of people despite an isolated location.

2.    Council House 2 (Melbourne, Australia)

Melbourne, a city that is reaching for the best in urbanism on many fronts, sports an impressive “green” municipal office building that  richly enhances the surrounding neighborhood. This is a boldly beautiful accomplishment, which fosters street life and  creates a good sense of place by connecting with what’s nearby. It has earned Australia’s six-star Green Star rating.

Triple Crown: Council House 2 in Melbourne, Australia, shows that a beautiful iconic building can spark lively streetlife and fit in its surroundings. It has also won green architecture awards

Three Ways to Make Great Places in Our Communities

“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”  -novelist Wallace Stegner

So how do we move beyond the era of narrow architecture to incorporate community, environmental stewardship and a sense of place into the evolving architecture of the 21st Century?   Here are three ways to start:

1.    The design professions must move away from iconic-only solutions and toward a larger vision of “Architecture of Place.” A big step in this direction could be taken by the officials of the Pritzker Prize, the “Nobel Prize” of Architecture, in changing the criteria for the selection of their award. They could also add other categories to the prize that would broaden the idea of how design can be an integral part of making great cities. (The Driehaus Prize, equal in dollars to the Pritzker, already does this with its prize for classical architecture and urbanism.)

2.    Going deeper, we need to establish an entirely new field that encompasses design but is not defined exclusively by it. This field would be wider than architecture, urban planning or community development, putting a special emphasis on the skills needed to work with communities in creating streets, community institutions and public spaces that improve people’s lives. Within this context, iconic architecture could be a very valuable asset but not the exclusive focus.

3.    Before the first sketch is made on any project large or small, designers, clients and the community as a whole need to ask basic questions about its impact:

• How will it generate vibrant public life?

• How will it honor its context in the community?

• How will it create a community place and draw on local assets? (Cultural, ecological, historical, social, and economic)

• How will it delight people, bring them together and enhance their lives?

The challenge in creating great cities for the future is enormous, yet critically important. Our attention needs to be focused on many levels of urban life:  livability, local economies, community health, sustainability, civic engagement, and local self reliance. Good architecture and design, broadly defined, must be at the heart of all these efforts. When all of these goals are aligned, we’ll see a world-changing movement to repair the environment and improve living conditions for everyone living upon it.

The public spaces around Queens Courthouse have been improved but are not yet a gathering space.

Sweeping changes in the judicial system and society call for courts to become civic gathering spots [T]he story that a building tells through its design may be as important to the community it serves as is its function. By shaping our thoughts about ourselves and our institutions, it will directly affect our efforts to work productively together. — Justice Stephen G. Breyer (United States Supreme Court, 1994–present)

The courthouse used to be a cornerstone of the community, a source of local pride and the nexus of social life and ritual. But today, courthouses and the public spaces that surround them are often physically and programmatically disconnected from public life, even though they usually occupy central property in a community. Citizens don’t visit their courthouses unless compelled to do so, and very few serve as public destinations.

The good news is that court properties have much potential for resurgence when there is positive leadership, open-minded management, and the desire for change. Courts have the opportunity and responsibility to serve as integral places, key parts of the communities in which they reside. Courts are, after all, the people’s houses of justice, and only by becoming engaging places can they live up to their potential.

While early American courthouses often shared space with other public institutions (like the post office or the county clerk) and were heavily used, more recent court design has encouraged segregation and specialization of uses, so that citizens have little reason to enter the doors of court buildings. The design of court facilities has shifted from welcoming to foreboding, and from public to monumental. The resulting diminution of the courthouse’s community role is indicative of a larger trend: a widening disconnect between the judicial system and public life. While courts are busier than ever, trials are vanishing, and more cases are resolved by private settlement or in non-public forums. Through such privatization, court spaces are no longer truly civic, and don’t support community vitality.

PPS's work with Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square has included efforts to connect the courthouse to the Square.

What is needed – and a real opportunity – is a fundamental reconsideration of how we think about and design court spaces. If courts find ways to recapture their relevance and resonance within communities, they could once again become civic destinations that engage with and respond to their users.

Project for Public Spaces is committed to playing a key role in facilitating these discussions. PPS has worked extensively to revitalize many types of civic centers, including courthouses, post offices, museums, libraries, and seats of government. Since 1999, PPS has partnered with the General Services Administration’s Good Neighbor Program in helping communities envision public spaces that will draw a variety of people, uses, and activities. PPS has worked in this capacity in almost two dozen cities.

PPS’s extensive placemaking experience with civic centers, and our history of collaboration with GSA, give us a strong foundation on which courts of all types can build in fulfilling their potential as true civic destinations.

* * * * *

By Karen Levy with Fred Kent, President and Cynthia Nikitin, Civic Anchors Program Director for Project for Public Spaces, Inc. Karen Levy is an attorney and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in sociology at Princeton University. Karen has been working with Project for Public Spaces as an Arthur Liman Public Interest Summer Fellow, a program sponsored by Yale Law School and Princeton’s Program in Law and Public Affairs.

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Federation Square, in Melbourne, had the primary goal to create a great place.

The Role of Placemaking in Fostering Better and More Creative Design

“Architecture needs to evolve from expressing the individual’s creativity to supporting the community’s creativity.” — Silvia Soonets, Architect, Arqui5

If the primary goal of architects and landscape architects was to create places that people want to be in, would we be designing our communities the way we do today? If contemporary architecture was asked to be responsive to community outcomes, public uses and human comfort would it be done differently? Would it create more demand for the skills of designers?

Looking at design magazines and looking at our cities, it appears that the professional shaping of the built environment has been reduced to creating isolated physical forms with little consideration for their contribution to a larger experience of a place. This reality no doubt closely reflects a demand on design professionals to merely create designs (for buildings, parks, roads, master plans, etc.). Since they have rarely been asked to create places that attract people, it follows that they have not, for the most part, created such places.

At a time when the skills, technology and need for creating successful places has never been greater, there are so few truly successful examples of new public spaces being created or improved.

It Will Take Architects to Create Great Places

Design professions can be much better employed in shaping the public realm. The role of design can and should be much broader and bolder, but will undermine itself if it continues to try to drive a city building or Placemaking process the same way it does today. If the role of design is to create places, design actually become more valuable and creative while developing more productive relationships with clients, partners and communities it is serving.

But if we merely focus on the goals of “good” or “world class” design as an end in itself, we limit the potential of what can be accomplished, and we ignore architecture’s ability to respond creatively to context. When a project prioritizes creating places that meet the needs of its community, the design problems and solutions become more clear, interest in the project rises, and talented people step up to collaborate in the process.

How PPS is Working to Support the Design Professions

Our intention at Project for Public Spaces is to boost the prospects of success for urban designers, architects and landscape architects by creating public demand for quality urban spaces and educating communities to work creatively and constructively with design professionals. Ultimately, we want designers’ work to be more valued than it is today.

PPS works to understand, bring about, celebrate, and inspire public spaces that are valuable to cities with the hope that we can get more of them. When public spaces are not adequately used, do not add value to a community and or become “owned” by the citizens that are meant to use them, it is not only a loss for the community, but a blow to the design professions whose contributions have been limited.

By focusing on the broader goal of creating places, we are consistently able to draw more creativity out of the various professions, as well as the communities they serve. We believe that creating successful places should be easier and more rewarding than it is today, and we dedicate ourselves to making that happen.