Happy Holidays from Project for Public Spaces | Our Year in Review

2018 has been a year of change and transformation at Project for Public Spaces, and we've marked some important milestones this year. In July, we welcomed our new CEO, Phil Myrick [4], an experienced planner and placemaker with a long history at PPS, and in August we moved to our bright new offices at 740 Broadway.

As always, the year brought a host of events, projects, trainings, and programs. Our activities extended to over 50 communities both urban and rural, with projects as wide-ranging as a market expansion on Granville Island in Vancouver, BC, an interdepartmental training for city officials in Durham, NC, a waterfront district plan in Brisbane, Australia, and an environmental and community health workshop in Las Vegas, NM through our Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design [5] (CIRD) program.

This past September, Project for Public Spaces convened our biennial Walk Bike Places [6] conference in New Orleans, LA, and in December we partnered with UN-Habitat to convene Placemaking Week Wuhan [7], marking the launch of a brand-new Chinese Placemaking Network. Indeed, the placemaking movement gathered unsurpassed momentum in 2018, with regional placemaking networks and events cropping up all over the world, in places like Mexico, Canada, England, Spain, Sweden, Jerusalem, Nairobi, Australia, and New Zealand.

In 2018, our Southwest Airlines Heart of the Community Program [9] helped to amplify the impacts of placemaking projects in five past grantee communities, and we also kicked off the Heart of the Community Cohort Learning Network, which includes a series of PPS-hosted webinars focusing on social inclusion. In November, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking [10] launched at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program in Washington, DC.

The Project for Public Spaces team focused deeply this year on building capacity and creating tools and resources for inspiring even more placemakers, urban professionals, city officials, and grassroots activists around the world. Along with the creation of our new Streets as Places Action Pack [11], we also released the long-awaited new edition of the groundbreaking book on placemaking, How to Turn a Place Around [12].

As we enter 2019 with new digs and an expanded team of placemakers and partners, we continue to honor the proud foundations on which Project for Public Spaces was built over forty years ago by our founders: Fred Kent [13], who led a small group of out-of-the-box thinkers to become the hub of a global movement for placemaking; Kathy Madden [14], longtime director of PPS’s education and research efforts and co-author of our landmark publication How to Turn a Place Around; and Steve Davies [15], the mastermind behind PPS’s public markets program who launched the inaugural International Public Markets Conference in Seattle and Vancouver in 1987.

Here’s what we’re looking forward to in 2019:

1. The 10th International Public Markets Conference [16] in London, UK! Check out our new conference website [17], and be sure to join us this June 6-8, 2019!
2. New Tools for Transportation [18]. In 2019 we will publish our free online guide to "rightsizing" streets for placemaking, as well as a handbook for Main Street managers on working with Departments of Transportation.
3. Placemaking Week 2019 [19]. First Vancouver, then Amsterdam. Who will be the next host city for our flagship placemaking conference [20]? Keep an eye out for an announcement early next year!
4. Live Mutual Project [21]. Our new initiative with MassMutual—the Live Mutual Project [22]—uses placemaking to bring together existing community resources to build financial strength and help people reach their full potential, neighborhood by neighborhood.
5. New Partnerships. In 2019, PPS is seeking opportunities for partnerships with like-minded nonprofits, design and planning firms, and socially responsible corporations. Get in touch with us at [email protected] [23]!

Lastly, we'd like to take a moment to offer a heartfelt thank you for your continued support of Project for Public Spaces, and for sharing our vision for community-powered public spaces around the world. Please consider making a year-end gift [24] to Project for Public Spaces today.

Happy Holidays from all of us here at Project for Public Spaces!