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Governing Magazine - Placemaker Profile: Allan Jacobs
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
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Whyte's classic 1980 study of New York's plazas started a mini-revolution in urban planning and design. Out of print for six years, PPS has acquired the rights and is thrilled to make this important book available again to the public.
From the new forward:
For more than 25 years, Project for Public Spaces has been using observations, surveys, interviews and workshops to study and transform public spaces around the world into community places. Every week we give presentations about why some public spaces work and why others don't, using the techniques, ideas, and memorable phrases from William H. "Holly" Whyte's The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.
In its effort to create and sustain public spaces that build communities, Project for Public Spaces runs programs in markets, transportation, parks and civic squares, and public buildings. Our Public Market Collaborative uses open-air and historic downtown markets to transform streets, plazas, and parking lots into bustling "people places," alive with vitality and commerce. Our programs in transportation are helping to reduce sprawl and create more livable communities by encouraging the use of transit and traffic calming. And we manage the Urban Parks Institute, which promotes parks as community places. We also conduct training programs for all kinds of professionals, from traffic engineers to architects, as well as for communities and government officials, to help them understand what we learned from Holly-that its places that matter, not projects, and that in order to function as true gathering places, public spaces must be designed with people and uses in mind. All these concepts are tied together in How to Turn a Place Around, a handbook for creating the kinds of thriving, social places that The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces first identified.
Holly Whyte was both our mentor and our friend. Perhaps his most important gift was the ability to show us how to discover for ourselves why some public spaces work and others don't. With the publication of The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces and its companion film in 1980, the world could see that through the basic tools of observation and interviews, we can learn an immense amount about how to make our cities more livable. In doing so, Holly Whyte laid the groundwork for a major movement to change the way public spaces are built and planned. It is our pleasure to offer this important book back to the world it is helping to transform.
Fred Kent, President
Steve Davies and Kathy Madden, Vice Presidents
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces is available through our secure online form, or you can order over the phone: (212) 620 5660. We accept MasterCard, Visa, checks and money orders.
