have you ever thought about what makes a
great public space you probably can
think of a few great places Boston
Commons maybe Brian Park in New York
Millennium Park in Chicago maybe a place
in your own community we all know a
great place when we see one and with all
the new attention to urban living to
downtown revitalization with moving
downtown why don’t we have more and
better public spaces after all the era
of building and designing for cars and
suburban living is over but it’s left us
with a heavy legacy of cars third path
streets that are parked with cars of
empty parks and of concrete plazas and
even award-winning designs like Pershing
Square in Los Angeles you see on the
slide here designed in 1993 don’t really
work for people it was designed to be a
symbol it was designed to make a
statement it wasn’t really designed for
people you would say well that was in 93
we don’t do this anymore but we do so
this is 2016
brand new park design to become a stage
for an adjacent building designed to be
looked at from a drone or a high-rise
office window not so good for people
public spaces are also places where
social issues become visible social
isolation social exclusion homelessness
gentrification all these things can
become very obvious in a public space if
we know where to look the study of how
people use publics
has deep roots it’s not a new science
and one of the pioneers of this science
was William white
he was an urbanist he was a writer and
he was really a pioneer of direct
observation he used film and camera to
record and really understand what people
did in New York City public plazas and
parks and he started doing this work in
the 60s and the 70s so he used
33-millimeter film he used old-school
cameras all to understand how people use
face and what do they need to enjoy
their public spaces and he noted that
great public spaces are actually made
out of a set of basics it’s not very
complicated and the first most important
thing of course is other people and not
just any people but a diversity of
people as we mentioned earlier so one of
the quickest ways to assess the health
of a public space is to look around and
see how many women are in the space when
a space has more women than men it means
that it’s safe and it’s comfortable so
next time you go in a public space do
that test we also want places with food
food is always great and yes sometimes
you have sad scenes like this one where
the only person not eating ice cream is
the little kid but we do love food in
public space and you know there is an
explosion of street food there is ice
cream there is food carts food trucks
food markets we’ve discovered Street
food and that is because we want the
accessibility we want the diversity we
want to connect to each other and have
some fun another basic component water a
lot of traditional public spaces used to
have these very serious fountains
untouchable but lately we’ve seen a
proliferation of sprinkle paths
of splash fountains water that is meant
to be touched and enjoyed and that’s the
right direction to go and of course we
need places to sit places to sit in the
shade or in the Sun next to a stranger
or maybe further away and sometimes even
the opportunity to bring our own chair
our needs as human beings are not that
complicated so what makes a place
comfortable when we’re really
comfortable we kick back we relax we
take our shoes off so seeing people
barefoot in a public space is a sure
sign that people feel comfortable they
feel they belong and they feel that they
really can take over this public space
triangulation it’s all about layering
activities so giving us simple things to
do is not enough
it makes for a thin experience so our
goal is always to connect smaller
activities together to create the hole
that’s bigger than the sum of its parts
so people can connect to each other
strangers then can talk to each other
find a common ground at the end it’s all
about coming together sharing and making
new connections so placemaking what does
placemaking have to do with great public
spaces placemaking is the process of
creating those public spaces it’s a
collaborative process
it’s about people coming together to
create places in their own communities
and it is a practice that at projects
for public spaces the nonprofit planning
and design organization where I’ve been
working for almost 20 years we’ve been
developing since the 90s we started
using the term placemaking sometime in
the mid 90s but today you may have heard
this word from other practitioners so
it’s really becoming not just a fad but
a practice that many people in the urban
field are using
it’s really about people working
together so one of our most important
principles is that the community is the
expert and what do we mean by that we
don’t mean that we’re expecting
untrained people from the community
community to come out and start
designing public spaces but we really
mean to have a conversation and to
engage the community from the onset of
the process to give people the place to
brainstorm ideas and to really be the
drivers of coming up with the places
that they need because they already know
what they need and what they their
desires are so our role as urban
professionals is really a role of
facilitation of providing and supporting
information and really coordinating and
leading the process along so more than
anything else
placemaking is a process and it takes
many forms
there’s workshops there is site
evaluation there is happy hour there is
little Poppins where you can talk to
people very quickly there is even
festivals and events that we organize in
community so people can come together
and we can talk to them and understand
what their needs are and what they
really need in their community a space
can become a place a space in a place
are not the same things so in downtown
Houston we worked in a parking lot and a
derelict park to create one of the most
successful downtown parks in Houston
it’s called Discovery Green it even has
a boat pond and we started with a
parking lot in downtown Detroit we were
able to revitalize and bring the old
downtown heart back through this
collective process working through a
site that had nothing but traffic and it
had become a traffic intersection to
create the park that today attracts
in nearby Harvard this is Harvard Plaza
and it’s actually a space that sits atop
of the Cambridge Street underpass it’s
essentially a cap and has become a Plaza
that connect heart connects Harvard Yard
with the Science Center of course it has
food it is hungry students and it has a
fabulous winter program so if you’re
there this winter there is fire pits
there is marshmallows there’s ice
skating there is curling so go there and
see it you can’t do it alone placemaking
is all about partnerships and a lot
about unlikely partners so it could be
senior volunteers staffing a game card
like in this park
Woodruff Park in downtown Atlanta it
could be homeless youth working with
artists to provide programming on
Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis it’s also
about lighter quicker cheaper so lighter
quicker cheaper is about impactful big
changes that can be done quickly without
big funds and long long construction
projects which doesn’t mean that we
don’t want to do long term change and
construction but it means that when you
engage people you can’t ask them to wait
five years until we’re done with
construction their needs are gonna
change their kids are gonna be out of
college out of high school and into
college they’re gonna need to do
something else
so with lighter quicker cheaper back in
Campus Martius in Detroit I was showing
you earlier we were able to transform
one of the underused lawns into an urban
beach in just three months
it’s basically a sandbox it has a lot of
seating a place for kids and families a
place for downtown workers because it’s
downtown and of course there’s a lot of
office workers in a little down beach
cafe you can see the little white pop-up
tent which evolved through the years
into a portable container that serves
food and drinks and at the end of summer
in October all of this gets packed away
to make room for ice skating so lighter
quicker cheaper gives you a lot of
flexibility in a big bang for your buck
we also want to program program for
diversity and in some places like in
Bryant Park diversity may mean
activities for kids in families a
carousel in a children’s reading room in
downtown Philadelphia it meant engaging
the LGBTQ community through performances
by the Philadelphia gay men’s choir in
for Limburg in Park in Mexico in Mexico
City it meant adding family programming
and activities for kids to their mobile
library places can build resiliency and
this is really the big lesson of for
Alan Berg that I just showed you this is
the community in Mexico City that
spontaneously gathered at for Alan Berg
right after the earthquakes last year
people brought supplies people felt that
they will be safe there they were
volunteers they gave each other mutual
aid all coming together in this place
because they were already connected to
it so at the end of the day place and
creating a place requires a lot of
disciplines and a lot of knowledge but
place also touches on so many things
from architecture and design which are
the obvious things to community
development transportation community
resiliency lifelong learning the built
environment sustainability place is also
where you can start to address a lot of
social problems from inclusion and
equity to helping your community connect
better build social capital create local
economies that are supportive and
sharing a project for public spaces we
started building an international
movement around placemaking about six or
seven years
and today this is the map of all the
people around the world that are part of
our movement their self-identified they
say they’re doing placemaking I’m sure
everybody is doing it in a different way
but you can see they’re everywhere
people want to contribute so I want to
leave you with with this you can
transform your own community through
placemaking you don’t need to be an
urban professional to do it you can be
an activist you can be a participant you
can look at your places in a different
way and contribute and making it make it
happen so good luck and go enjoy your
public spaces thank you [Applause]
great public space you probably can
think of a few great places Boston
Commons maybe Brian Park in New York
Millennium Park in Chicago maybe a place
in your own community we all know a
great place when we see one and with all
the new attention to urban living to
downtown revitalization with moving
downtown why don’t we have more and
better public spaces after all the era
of building and designing for cars and
suburban living is over but it’s left us
with a heavy legacy of cars third path
streets that are parked with cars of
empty parks and of concrete plazas and
even award-winning designs like Pershing
Square in Los Angeles you see on the
slide here designed in 1993 don’t really
work for people it was designed to be a
symbol it was designed to make a
statement it wasn’t really designed for
people you would say well that was in 93
we don’t do this anymore but we do so
this is 2016
brand new park design to become a stage
for an adjacent building designed to be
looked at from a drone or a high-rise
office window not so good for people
public spaces are also places where
social issues become visible social
isolation social exclusion homelessness
gentrification all these things can
become very obvious in a public space if
we know where to look the study of how
people use publics
has deep roots it’s not a new science
and one of the pioneers of this science
was William white
he was an urbanist he was a writer and
he was really a pioneer of direct
observation he used film and camera to
record and really understand what people
did in New York City public plazas and
parks and he started doing this work in
the 60s and the 70s so he used
33-millimeter film he used old-school
cameras all to understand how people use
face and what do they need to enjoy
their public spaces and he noted that
great public spaces are actually made
out of a set of basics it’s not very
complicated and the first most important
thing of course is other people and not
just any people but a diversity of
people as we mentioned earlier so one of
the quickest ways to assess the health
of a public space is to look around and
see how many women are in the space when
a space has more women than men it means
that it’s safe and it’s comfortable so
next time you go in a public space do
that test we also want places with food
food is always great and yes sometimes
you have sad scenes like this one where
the only person not eating ice cream is
the little kid but we do love food in
public space and you know there is an
explosion of street food there is ice
cream there is food carts food trucks
food markets we’ve discovered Street
food and that is because we want the
accessibility we want the diversity we
want to connect to each other and have
some fun another basic component water a
lot of traditional public spaces used to
have these very serious fountains
untouchable but lately we’ve seen a
proliferation of sprinkle paths
of splash fountains water that is meant
to be touched and enjoyed and that’s the
right direction to go and of course we
need places to sit places to sit in the
shade or in the Sun next to a stranger
or maybe further away and sometimes even
the opportunity to bring our own chair
our needs as human beings are not that
complicated so what makes a place
comfortable when we’re really
comfortable we kick back we relax we
take our shoes off so seeing people
barefoot in a public space is a sure
sign that people feel comfortable they
feel they belong and they feel that they
really can take over this public space
triangulation it’s all about layering
activities so giving us simple things to
do is not enough
it makes for a thin experience so our
goal is always to connect smaller
activities together to create the hole
that’s bigger than the sum of its parts
so people can connect to each other
strangers then can talk to each other
find a common ground at the end it’s all
about coming together sharing and making
new connections so placemaking what does
placemaking have to do with great public
spaces placemaking is the process of
creating those public spaces it’s a
collaborative process
it’s about people coming together to
create places in their own communities
and it is a practice that at projects
for public spaces the nonprofit planning
and design organization where I’ve been
working for almost 20 years we’ve been
developing since the 90s we started
using the term placemaking sometime in
the mid 90s but today you may have heard
this word from other practitioners so
it’s really becoming not just a fad but
a practice that many people in the urban
field are using
it’s really about people working
together so one of our most important
principles is that the community is the
expert and what do we mean by that we
don’t mean that we’re expecting
untrained people from the community
community to come out and start
designing public spaces but we really
mean to have a conversation and to
engage the community from the onset of
the process to give people the place to
brainstorm ideas and to really be the
drivers of coming up with the places
that they need because they already know
what they need and what they their
desires are so our role as urban
professionals is really a role of
facilitation of providing and supporting
information and really coordinating and
leading the process along so more than
anything else
placemaking is a process and it takes
many forms
there’s workshops there is site
evaluation there is happy hour there is
little Poppins where you can talk to
people very quickly there is even
festivals and events that we organize in
community so people can come together
and we can talk to them and understand
what their needs are and what they
really need in their community a space
can become a place a space in a place
are not the same things so in downtown
Houston we worked in a parking lot and a
derelict park to create one of the most
successful downtown parks in Houston
it’s called Discovery Green it even has
a boat pond and we started with a
parking lot in downtown Detroit we were
able to revitalize and bring the old
downtown heart back through this
collective process working through a
site that had nothing but traffic and it
had become a traffic intersection to
create the park that today attracts
in nearby Harvard this is Harvard Plaza
and it’s actually a space that sits atop
of the Cambridge Street underpass it’s
essentially a cap and has become a Plaza
that connect heart connects Harvard Yard
with the Science Center of course it has
food it is hungry students and it has a
fabulous winter program so if you’re
there this winter there is fire pits
there is marshmallows there’s ice
skating there is curling so go there and
see it you can’t do it alone placemaking
is all about partnerships and a lot
about unlikely partners so it could be
senior volunteers staffing a game card
like in this park
Woodruff Park in downtown Atlanta it
could be homeless youth working with
artists to provide programming on
Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis it’s also
about lighter quicker cheaper so lighter
quicker cheaper is about impactful big
changes that can be done quickly without
big funds and long long construction
projects which doesn’t mean that we
don’t want to do long term change and
construction but it means that when you
engage people you can’t ask them to wait
five years until we’re done with
construction their needs are gonna
change their kids are gonna be out of
college out of high school and into
college they’re gonna need to do
something else
so with lighter quicker cheaper back in
Campus Martius in Detroit I was showing
you earlier we were able to transform
one of the underused lawns into an urban
beach in just three months
it’s basically a sandbox it has a lot of
seating a place for kids and families a
place for downtown workers because it’s
downtown and of course there’s a lot of
office workers in a little down beach
cafe you can see the little white pop-up
tent which evolved through the years
into a portable container that serves
food and drinks and at the end of summer
in October all of this gets packed away
to make room for ice skating so lighter
quicker cheaper gives you a lot of
flexibility in a big bang for your buck
we also want to program program for
diversity and in some places like in
Bryant Park diversity may mean
activities for kids in families a
carousel in a children’s reading room in
downtown Philadelphia it meant engaging
the LGBTQ community through performances
by the Philadelphia gay men’s choir in
for Limburg in Park in Mexico in Mexico
City it meant adding family programming
and activities for kids to their mobile
library places can build resiliency and
this is really the big lesson of for
Alan Berg that I just showed you this is
the community in Mexico City that
spontaneously gathered at for Alan Berg
right after the earthquakes last year
people brought supplies people felt that
they will be safe there they were
volunteers they gave each other mutual
aid all coming together in this place
because they were already connected to
it so at the end of the day place and
creating a place requires a lot of
disciplines and a lot of knowledge but
place also touches on so many things
from architecture and design which are
the obvious things to community
development transportation community
resiliency lifelong learning the built
environment sustainability place is also
where you can start to address a lot of
social problems from inclusion and
equity to helping your community connect
better build social capital create local
economies that are supportive and
sharing a project for public spaces we
started building an international
movement around placemaking about six or
seven years
and today this is the map of all the
people around the world that are part of
our movement their self-identified they
say they’re doing placemaking I’m sure
everybody is doing it in a different way
but you can see they’re everywhere
people want to contribute so I want to
leave you with with this you can
transform your own community through
placemaking you don’t need to be an
urban professional to do it you can be
an activist you can be a participant you
can look at your places in a different
way and contribute and making it make it
happen so good luck and go enjoy your
public spaces thank you [Applause]
Please follow and like us: