How to Make Streets into Great Public Spaces [2]

More from the Blog

Sneak Peek: Mobycon on the Dutch Approach to Streets as Places [4]
August 21, 2020

Restoring the Joy of Parks in Communities Impacted by Natural Disasters with the Makers of Claritin® [5]
July 31, 2020

Essential Places: Warren Logan on Open Streets Beyond Brunch and Bike Lanes [6]
June 26, 2020 • an interview with Warren Logan by Nate Storring

Equitable Development During and After COVID-19: Five Takeaways [7]
June 12, 2020 • by Nate Storring

More Events & Opportunities

Sep. 10 Grant Application: Rural Placemaking Innovation Challenge [9], U.S. Department of Agriculture

Sep. 16 Webinar: How to Keep Parks Clean in a Pandemic [10], Next City 

Sep. 30 Webinar: Don’t Just Tick the Box, Think Outside It: Reimagining Public Engagement in Parks and Public Spaces [11], Park People 

Oct. 1 Call for Proposals: EDRA52Detroit: Just Environments [12], Environmental Design Research Association

Oct. 5 Virtual Training: Reimagining Streets as Places [3], Project for Public Spaces

Missed any of our webinars on COVID-19 and public space? Watch the videos on our Events page. [13]
 

Memorial Drive: Pandemic Detroit's Belle Isle park, which Project for Public Spaces had the honor of advising on in 2013 [14], has become a powerful place to mourn and celebrate the lives of people lost to the pandemic. Watch a moving video of the project (Detroit Free Press [15]), or read an interview with Rochelle Riley, the city’s Director of Arts, Culture & Entrepreneurship who organized the Memorial Drive (Bloomberg Cities [16]).

The Neighborhood Trap: The huge social, economic, and health problems we tend to think of as global or national concerns are really playing out hyper-locally, in specific neighborhoods: inner-suburban apartment districts where most immigrants and other low-income groups have struggled to climb the economic ladder. It may well be that the most effective solutions can be found only at the neighborhood level, too (Globe and Mail [17]).

Pedestrian Deaths Aren't Random: The recent traffic death of Avante Reynolds in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of Philadelphia highlights a troubling national trend: despite years of lobbying, communities of color don’t get access to traffic safety measures with the same ease as predominantly white neighborhoods (WHYY [18]). The systems that have led to persistent and inequitable traffic deaths across the country are the topic of Right of Way, a new book by journalist Angie Schmitt (Fast Company [19]).

The Exodus that Wasn't: The media can't stop talking about the end of cities (Planetizen [20]), but the data says that a mass migration to the suburbs isn’t happening (Curbed [21]). 

Building Community through Transportation: In order to head off a housing and real estate crisis, we need to reform land use and finance regulations to allow for mixed-use, walkable communities. But we will fail to avert the crisis if transportation engineers and planners don’t transform the streets that hold these places together (Public Square [22]).

Use It or Lose it: The pandemic has deprived people of interactions with peers, and our social skills have atrophied (New York Times [23]).

Streets for Pandemic Response & Recovery: The winners of a new grant will seek put roads to their highest and best use at this historic moment: helping the most undeserved residents of our cities (Streetsblog USA [24]).

Here's a roundup of 10 inspiring placemaking ideas from the week:

1. A remarkable new socially distanced public square in Cambridge, MA, built on a parking lot with scaffolding, scrim, and wall-to-wall programming (Metropolis [25])
2. A jaw-dropping step bridge in Vøringsfossen, Norway (Azure [26])
3. Yikes—a Houston highway interchange the size of the entire downtown of Siena, Italy (Texas Monthly [27])
4. The 247 schools that were approved for outdoor learning this fall in New York City, the country’s biggest school district (StreetsBlog NYC [28])
5. A history of outdoor learning (Smithsonian Magazine [29])
6. The trusted public spaces that could help save the U.S. election (New York Times [30])
7. A youth-run, open-air market that replaced a looted liquor store in Chicago, IL (Good News Network [31])
8. The elegant, flexible design for Los Angeles' new streetlights, like a bouquet of flowers (Los Angeles Times [32]) 
9. Tactical urbanism, a global "jugaad" for pandemic response (TheCityFix [33])
10. Two winning visions for reimagining Brooklyn Bridge to spur conversation about infrastructure as public space (Van Alen Institute [34])