This newsletter from the Project for Public Spaces [1] connects people who share a passion for public spaces to ideas and issues, news, quotes, places, and events from the placemaking movement.

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Places Early Bird Rate Ends Monday, March 29th [3]

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At our Walk/Bike/Places conference [3] this June, our program will focus on The Route to Recovery. How can our streets and other public spaces act as agents of healing from the pandemic, as well as the many challenges and injustices that it magnified?

We hope you will join us in answering that question together by registering before Monday, March 29th at 5pm to take advantage of our early bird rate.

If you're undecided, take a look at our updated conference website! We just added more info about the program and COVID-19 safety. Learn more. [3]

More Events & Opportunities

April 12-14 • Conference: Main Street Now [4], Main Street America

April 18-25, 2021 • Global Event: Placemake Earth Challenge [5], PlacemakingUS

Apr. 30, 2021 • Grant: Asphalt Art Initiative [6], Bloomberg Philanthropies

May 19-21, 2021 • Conference: CNU 29. Design for Change [7], Congress for the New Urbanism

From the Blog

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Seven Principles for Nurturing Flourishing Cultural and Creative Hubs [8]

In case you missed it, check out this guest post by Dutch placemaker Rinske Brand all about creating and sustaining successful arts and culture hubs.

To pull together these seven key principles, Brand spoke with twenty practitioners and leaders about their experience building outstanding centers for artists, creative professionals, and the community. Read more. [8]

More from the Blog

Creating Online & In-Person Events with a Sense of Place: A Conversation with Juliet Kahne [9]
March 12, 2021 • by Nate Storring

How a Library is Reimagining Public Wi-Fi During COVID-19 [10]
February 7, 2021 • by Aaron Greiner

Our Top 10 Articles of 2020 [11]
December 17, 2020 • by Nate Storring

Registration is now open for Walk/Bike/Places in Indianapolis and online, June 15-18, 2021. Early rate ends March 29th.

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Public Space News

A Platform for Connection and Equity. A new report from the Knight Foundation explores the success of seven public spaces across the United States during the coronavirus pandemic, and draws lessons about developing equitable and inclusive spaces in the future. (Knight Foundation [12])

A Year of Public Space Adaptation. Another new report by the Urban Land Institute examines how cities around the world adapted public spaces during the pandemic, from streateries to open streets to creative placemaking to parks. The big takeaways? These lighter, quicker, cheaper experiments were often led by the public sector, changed public opinion, and grappled with issues of equity with varying degrees of success. (Urban Land [13])

Policing Against Hate? In a year of criminal justice reform, attacks on Asian Americans in Atlanta and elsewhere are raising questions about the right way to protect a community against racism. (CityLab [14])

Farmers Markets at Risk. While grocery stores experienced unpredictable shortages during the pandemic, many farmers markets across the country helped ensure continued access to healthy, local food [15]. However, new public health restrictions left 74% of markets with less income and 93% with higher costs, and many may not reopen this year. (Colorado Sun [16])

Textbook Hostile Architecture. Over the past year, the developers of Hudson Yards in New York City have added landscape elements like planters that vendors believe are designed to keep them from operating in this seemingly ever-expanding privately-owned public space. (Curbed [17])

"It is time that the real estate industry stopped running our city and controlling our public space," Mohamed Attia, executive director of the Street Vendor Project nonprofit, said. "Our public space is made for all New Yorkers and visitors to use and utilize, not to be privatized by billionaires."

A First for Reparations in the United States. This week, Evanston, Illinois, became the first city in the U.S. to launch a housing reparations program for Black residents. (Washington Post [18]) Housing may not sound like a "public space issue," but in a recent interview, urbanist Lynn Ross makes a persuasive case for the role that public space can play in housing justice. (Reimagining the Civic Commons [19])

"We don’t yet think of policy in this broad and intersectional way, but we should," says Ross. "We don’t get housing justice or an equitable public realm until we understand that not only are these issues and policies interconnected but at their foundation, they all tie back to racial justice."

Placemaking Playbook

As always, here is a roundup of 10 inspiring placemaking ideas from the week:

Four principles for a federal highways to boulevards program (CNU Public Square [20])
Five racial justice practices to adopt from arts and culture organizations (Next City [21])
The precarious state of the mom-and-pop store (Common Edge [22])
A hygiene hub run by people experiencing homelessness (Next City [23])
A park for and by people experiencing homelessness in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Inquirer [24])
A story of cultural gentrification in action from Austin (Texas Monthly [25])
Three international Covid-19 placemaking responses led by UN-Habitat (ArchDaily [26])
The basic infrastructure of lingering in public space: seating (Social Life Project [27])
A brief anatomy of outdoor dining (New Yorker [28])
A lesson in wintertime active transportation from Ottawa's Rideau Canal Skateway (Ottawa Citizen [29])

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