The Dutch Approach to Streets as Places | Placemaking Weekly

Posted August 23, 2020 - 08:26

This newsletter from the Project for Public Spaces connects people who share a passion for public spaces to ideas and issues, news, quotes, places, and events from the placemaking movement.

Sneak Peak: Mobycon on the Dutch Approach to Streets as Places

We are excited to be partnering with Dutch mobility firm Mobycon on our upcoming Reimagining Streets as Places virtual training course, starting October 5, 2020!

In this new guest blog post from Integrated Mobility Consultant Mary Elbech, she gives a taste of Mobycon's approach to balancing transportation and placemaking on the street, and some of their recent research on micromobility that will be shared during the training. Read more.

More from the Blog

Restoring the Joy of Parks in Communities Impacted by Natural Disasters with the Makers of Claritin®
July 31, 2020

Essential Places: Warren Logan on Open Streets Beyond Brunch and Bike Lanes
June 26, 2020 • an interview with Warren Logan by Nate Storring

Equitable Development During and After COVID-19: Five Takeaways
June 12, 2020 • by Nate Storring

Events & Opportunities

Reimagining Streets as Places

Virtual Training, October 5–21, 2020

In case you missed it, last week registration opened for our new Reimagining Streets as Places virtual training course! This multi-day course will prepare participants to systematically change transportation infrastructure and behavior, implement community-based street activations, and balance the movement and public space functions of a street. Sessions will also include deep dives into topical issues, like responding to COVID-19.

The course includes presentations from PPS and Mobycon staff, interactive assignments, open office hours, and a networking event to get to know your fellow participants, plus optional one-on-one coaching. Learn more.

More Events & Opportunities

September 10, 2020: Grant Application, Rural Placemaking Innovation Challenge, U.S. Department of Agriculture

October 1, 2020: Call for Proposals, EDRA52Detroit: Just Environments, Environmental Design Research Association

Missed any of our webinars on COVID-19 and public space? Watch the videos on our Events page.

Placemaking in the News

Placemaking Playbook: This week was a slow one for public space news, but here's a roundup of 15 recent innovative placemaking ideas and projects making headlines:

A roundup of articles on equity and public space (Reimagining the Civic Commons)
A Black design collective that's reimagining how cities are built (Fast Company)
A campaign to demand a new Director of the Public Realm position for New York City (Municipal Art Society)
A study of how better playground design can promote active kids (ScienceNews)
A rapid placemaking toolkit to bring back Main Street (Canadian Urban Institute)
An antivirus bus shelter with temperature sensors and UV lamps in South Korea (The Guardian)
The soundscape of Harlem in the summer (New York Magazine)
Five unique outdoor summer pavilion around the world (Azure)
A flexible net playground revitalizes a leftover space in Bangkok (Designboom)
The economic case for legalizing accessory commercial units (Strong Towns)
A high-design bike garage in The Hague (Azure)
A national Canadian survey that reveals the importance of parks to wellbeing during COVID-19 (Montreal Gazette)
The story of how the world's biggest garbage dump became one of New York's biggest parks (New York Times)
Tokyo's innovative transparent public restrooms (Forbes)
The adaptations of New York's street vendors to COVID-19 (Next City)

Equation of the Week

Tim Cresswell's Place: An Introduction is one of those classic books that many of us at Project for Public Spaces read in college. It offers a concise history of how geographers, philosophers, and others have theorized the experience of place over the years.

At one point in the book, Cresswell simplifies the definition of that slippery term “place” to the handy equation below.

Place = Location + Meaning + Power

As he explains in the book's introduction, “Place is how we make the world meaningful and the way we experience the world. Place at a basic level is space, invested with meaning in the context of power.” Any definition is always incomplete, but we love how this simple equation captures how a place can be both personal and political, comforting and traumatic, traditional and insurgent, open and exclusive—often all at the same time.

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