WHO WE ARE

Not a picture of Nick, but one he took. The best day of the year in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn is Bastille Day, when the street is closed for a pétanque tournament and block party.

Nick Grossman

Nick is an urbanist and neighborhood handyman. Since joining PPS in 2002, he has divided his time between working on Placemaking projects and developing PPS’s family of websites.

Most recently, Nick managed a user study of NYC’s Washington Square Park. PPS was hired by a community group to study the current use of the park and facilitate a community workshop. Harkening back to PPS’s roots in social science research and William H. Whyte’s studies, a team of researchers performed behavior mapping and surveyed park users during the summer of 2005. The report, "Washington Square Park: A User Analysis and Place Performance Evaluation" found that Washington Square Park is extremely well used and well loved, although there are certain areas where it could be improved.

Nick has worked on various other Placemaking projects around the country, including Lincoln, NE; Newark, NJ; Littleton, NH; the Route 17 Corridor in NJ, Jamaica, NY, and Kent, WA. He thoroughly enjoys getting to know the people and learning about the unique issues in each town in which he's worked.

Nick’s first major web project at PPS was the development of the PPS Image Collection, the online home of PPS’s collection of over 500,000 public space images. The Image Collection is one of the most popular sections of PPS.org, and is a great free resource for architects, planners, municipalities, and community groups.

Nick currently manages the development and marketing of a major online resource center on "Context Sensitive Solutions" that PPS created for the Federal Highway Administration. Context Sensitive Solutions is a new way of approaching transportation planning, thinking beyond the pavement to consider the community, historical, and environmental impacts of road design decisions.

Prior to his work at PPS, Nick worked as an associate curator at a sculpture park in Ghent, NY; an apprentice carpenter in Palo Alto, CA; a planning assistant for the San Jose, CA Redevelopment Agency; and as an aspiring surfer in Santa Cruz, CA. He is a league bowler, whose team "Turkey Time" is (slowly) working its way up the rankings at Melody Lanes in Brooklyn.

Education

Stanford University, B.A. in Urban Studies, 2001

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