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 2021 [3]

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Monday, March 29th at 5pm is your last chance to take advantage of the early bird rate to attend our Walk/Bike/Places conference [3] in person or virtually June 15-18, 2021.

This is going to be our most experiential Walk/Bike/Places yet, with a big focus on COVID-safe mobile workshops that give participants a taste of our host city of Indianapolis, Indiana.

One mobile workshop to look forward to is a tour of Harrison Center [4], a 65,000 sq ft arts space with artist studios and galleries, a rooftop LED tetherball, an indoor slide, a karaoke elevator (pictured above)—and an innovative program to prevent displacement of nearby residents.

Don't miss out on the lowest rates to see this awesome local project and more at Walk/Bike/Places! Register now. [3]

More Events & Opportunities

Mar. 22, 2021 • Publication Launch: Engaging Black People and Power [5], Jay Pitter, York University & the Canadian Urban Institute

April 12-14 • Conference: Main Street Now [6], Main Street America

April 18-25, 2021 • Global Event: Placemake Earth Challenge [7], PlacemakingUS

Apr. 30, 2021 • Grant: Asphalt Art Initiative [8], Bloomberg Philanthropies

May 19-21, 2021 • Conference: CNU 29. Design for Change [9], Congress for the New Urbanism

From the Blog

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Creating Online & In-Person Events with a Sense of Place: A Conversation with Juliet Kahne [10]

Want to know more about what the experience will be on the ground at Walk/Bike/Places and what kinds of COVID-19 precautions we're taking?

In this interview with PPS Director of Events Juliet Kahne, she gives a sneak preview of how she plans to weave together in-person and virtual experiences at our 2021 conference, as well as some reflections on the pandemic and the future of events. Read more. [10]

More from the Blog

How to Nurture Flourishing Cultural and Creative Hubs: Lessons from the Netherlands [11]
March 4, 2021 • by Rinske Brand

How a Library is Reimagining Public Wi-Fi During COVID-19 [12]
February 7, 2021 • by Aaron Greiner

Our Top 10 Articles of 2020 [13]
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

Stop Anti-Asian Hate. A shooting spree at two Atlanta massage parlors this week left eight people dead, including six women of Asian descent. (Time [14])

While these sickening events did not take place in public space, they are part of a broader trend of anti-Asian hate that often does. Last year, 3,800 anti-Asian hate incidents were reported to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, an increase of 149% over the previous year. At Project for Public Spaces, we believe that you cannot care about public space and not care about the violence and discrimination that goes on there.

We hope you will take a moment to learn how you can help by donating, volunteering, and reporting incidents in the above article from Time magazine.

Activity Centers. As the idea of the "15 minute city" has taken root over the past year, some questions about it remain. Will it make the spatial inequality of our cities even worse? How can it be implemented on a large scale? (Brookings [15])

This week, our partners at the Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking offer an important framework for answering those questions: activity centers. This new report shows how to locate places within regions where a diversity of economic, physical, social, and civic assets cluster at a clearly defined “hyperlocal” scale. In short, it reveals places of opportunity.

The Virtue of Doing Nothing. The Pritzker Architecture Prize is usually reserved for the highest of high design. But this year's winners are refreshingly humble. Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal are known for their socially oriented projects and their focus on subtle, gradual improvement of existing places. (The Guardian [16])

“When you go to the doctor,” said Vassal of a public square project in Bordeaux, “they might tell you that you’re fine, that you don’t need any medicine. Architecture should be the same. If you take time to observe, and look very precisely, sometimes the answer is to do nothing.”

Secretary Fudge. This week, Marcia Fudge was approved by Congress to lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. How will she handle "the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression," (USA Today [17]) and a "devastating" growth in homelessness last year (NPR [18]), not to mention the "urban development" part of her job?

License to Kill. The Oklahoma House passed a law that grants immunity to drivers who hit protestors while "fleeing from a riot." Rep. Monroe Nichols, who is Black, said he dreads having telling his son that rather than addressing the root cause of protests for racial justice, the House “made it so that folks who may advocate for people who look like him can be run over with immunity.” (The Oklahoman [19])

A Tour of the Post-COVID City. A year of the pandemic has laid bare many of the problems facing our big cities. The Financial Times offers a tour of how we might reconsider these flaws as the pandemic recedes, from work to home to life in between. (Financial Times [20])

Placemaking Playbook

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

A playbook for community-rooted economic inclusion (Brookings [21])
Wanted: A COVID-19 memorial that grapples with a complex mix of grief and policy failure (Curbed [22])
The doctors who are taking "nature deficit disorder" seriously (Next City [23])
The local policies that will outlast the pandemic (CityLab [24])
The mother of all case studies in "lighter, quicker, cheaper" transformations: Gabriel's Wharf in London (Social Life Project [25])
A subtle kind of hostile architecture that emerged from COVID (Azure [26])
The parking spot, reconsidered (Wired [27])
A deal between cyclists and the Houston planning department to fill in gaps in the city's bike lanes (Chron [28])
An augmented reality project to insert women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ icons into the landscape of public memory (Guernica [29])
The chaos of distracted walkers in a crowd (New York Times [30])

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