Project for Public Spaces

Cases for Places

  • 11 Steps Adapted from our best-seller, How to Turn a Place Around, these 11 principles are the key to any successful Placemaking effort.
  • Creating Great Urban Parks Kathy Madden and Fred Kent of Project for Public Spaces explain how parks can play new roles as catalysts for both community and development, enriching cities in the process.
  • Parks for Livable Cities: Lessons from a Radical Mayor Parks, politics, and the pursuit of happiness: Enrique Peñalosa, former Mayor of Bogotá, Columbia, discusses the critical need for green space in Third World cities and elsewhere. A keynote speech from the 2001 Great Parks/Great Cities conference.
  • Good Places An Urban Parks Institute article covering the four cornerstones of a good place: uses & activities, access & linkage, comfort & image - and perhaps most important - sociability.
  • Doing It Wrong To Get It Right Urban critic and journalist Roberta Brandes Gratz on what's needed to truly revitalize our cities.
  • Rediscovering Community Through Parks A keynote address by John P. Kretzmann, Co-Director of Northwestern University's Asset-Based Community Development Institute.
  • Ten Benefits of Creating Good Public Spaces Brief case studies of cities where well-designed public spaces have had demonstrable positive impacts.
    Project for Public Spaces
  • What is a Great Civic Space? An article about the benefits of good civic spaces, with focus on how they create identity, improve the local economy, help the environment, and provide settings for cultural and social activities.
    Project for Public Spaces
  • Furnishing Your Public Space Learn about the "whys and wherefores" of public-space amenities with this series of features. Each offers design and use guidelines to help lay people and professional designers work with each other. Also included: notable examples of amenities from PPS's image database and, in some cases, information on select manufacturers.
  • Why Public Spaces Fail
  • What Makes a Successful Place?
  • Traffic Calming 101 An overview of the tools and techniques used to reduce traffic congestion, slow down vehicle speeds, and make streets safer for all users.
  • Transit-Friendly Streets Ways to achieve an equilibrium among street-users, including public transit, cars, bicycles, and pedestrians.
  • Public Art A primer on setting up and funding a public-arts program. Included is info on designing a public-art policy, potential sources of funding, building a constituency, and marketing the program.
  • Sustainable Places In this piece, PPS President Fred Kent explains why well-planned buildings and public places are critical to creating environmentally sound, sustainable developments where people can live and work.
    Project for Public Spaces
  • PPS's Place Diagrams Download our place diagrams and initiate the placemaking process in your community.