The Recovery Will Happen in Public Space

Last week, 25 million Americans returned to public life. As more and more governors in the US relax their stay-at-home orders and restrictions on businesses, that number will only grow, even as coronavirus cases around the country remain higher than public health experts would prefer. We are at a precarious moment as a country, where we must balance safety and recovery.

To avoid a resurgence in infection and to recover equitably, cities must think more expansively about how all kinds of outdoor, everyday spaces can fulfill people’s daily needs, and work directly with the communities most affected by the virus and its economic fallout. Read more. [3]
 

More from the Blog

Communities in Nairobi Compete to Contribute to Public Space [4]
May 1, 2020 • by Miki Takeshita

Homelessness & Public Space During COVID-19: Seven Takeaways [5]
April 24, 2020 • by Nate Storring

Announcing Our New Senior Directors of Programs & Projects [6]
April 16, 2020 • by Christina Ragone

Farmers Markets Are Vital During COVID-19, but They Need More Support [7]
April 10, 2020 • by Hanna Love & Nate Storring

This month, Project for Public Spaces is joining our friends at CoDesign Studio to invite people around the world to activate their porch—or balcony, front yard, stoop, driveway, courtyard, or front door—to demonstrate how we can stay socially connected while we are physically distant during COVID-19. 

Please visit www.porchplacemaking.com [8] to learn how to participate and to find great resources on how to activate your porch.
 

More Events & Opportunities

Webinar: Placemaking – Engaging Community in a Time of Physical Distancing [9], May 20 (featuring Nidhi Gulati, PPS)

Global Event: Porch Placemaking Week [10], May 30–June 5

RFP: Call for New Members [11], the High Line Network, May 31

Conference: Walk/Bike/Places 2020 [12], August 4-7

Podcast: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Future of Public Space [13], California Planning & Development Report (featuring Meg Walker, PPS)

Looking for resources on how to respond to COVID-19? Watch our growing video library of past webinars. [2]

Is It Safe to Go Inside Again? When we began the lockdown here in the United States, we closed down many of our parks and other public spaces. Now, the evidence is mounting that these may be the safest places in our cities and towns, while shared indoor spaces may be the greatest risk for the foreseeable future (New York Times [14]).

In this context, it's time to consider moving as much of our life outdoors as possible, and opening up more public spaces to do so. As public health columnist James Hamblin writes, "Open the streets. Open at least half of them. ...  Dynamite the asphalt, sod the land, plant trees and flowers, and do not look back" (The Atlantic [15]).

Open Streets While Black: When communities of color push back on open streets when it comes to policing and street harassment, they are often met with hostility by transportation activists; that's not okay (At the Intersections [16]).

As the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery (and the delay in justice) brings to the forefront once again, Black communities and others in the US face violence in public space that changes their everyday experience of it (New York Times [17]). These legitimate fears should be acknowledged and addressed, even as urbanists push for improvements to the public realm.

As engineer and planner Ariel Ward writes in At the Intersections, "You can want open streets and want to hold cities accountable to ensuring new policies do not further harm communities of color. You can want open streets and want to prioritize the acute needs of Black and Brown communities that have been forced to show up for themselves in the midst of a crisis that has impacted them severely."

Pittsburgh, PA, stands out as one city that is considering a race equity task force to ensure that communities of color receive equal treatment under government recovery efforts (TribLive [18]).

The Cities We Need: This week, the New York Times editorial board released an article in defense of cities in America, and their potential to be places of opportunity—if we bridge their inequalities (New York Times [19]).

"Our cities are broken because affluent Americans have been segregating themselves from the poor," they write, "and our best hope for building a fairer, stronger nation is to break down those barriers."

In this effort, as Nicholas de Monchaux writes, public spaces must play a key role. "Equal, accessible and resilient public space can promote civic health during a pandemic. Over the long term it will promote the health, welfare and equality of our cities for decades to come" (New York Times [20]).

Operation Main Street: As cities and states prepare to tighten their belts in response to the current recession, they may be tempted to pull funding to place management organizations. But as Patrice Frey of Main Street America argues, that would be a mistake (Governing [21]).

Main Street organizations and others are vital connectors in our local entrepreneurial ecosystems. They know all of the players, and have the creativity and logistical knowhow to adapt commercial districts to new needs and standards.

Thankfully, if they have the resources, there is no shortage of models to learn from. This week, Cincinnati, Ohio, followed the model of Brookhaven, Georgia, and Tampa, Florida, in opening its streets to restaurants for physically-distanced outdoor dining (Cincinnati.com [22]). Meanwhile, Rockland, Maine, has decided to reopen its Main Street as an "open-air market" for all of its businesses (Bangor Daily News [23]). As this trend catches on, how long before public space programmers and cultural institutions join in?

Post-It Postmortem: In the wake of the announcement that Sidewalk Labs would abandon its smart city plans in Toronto, Shannon Mattern examines how their ostentatious performance of community engagement may have superseded genuine relationships between decision-makers and community (Places [24]).

As Mattern concludes, "What matters are the public processes through which the map arises—and the publics that emerge around it, which then go on to do other non-mappy things."

Placemaking Playbook: Finally, here's a roundup of 11 recent innovative placemaking projects making headlines. (The internet had a surreal sense of humor this week.)

1. A Welsh competition of driveway COVID scarecrows is both cute and cursed (The Leader [25]) 
2. A one-seat restaurant opens in a Swedish meadow (Food & Wine [26])
3. A German café gives patrons pool noodle hats to encourage physical distancing (Insider [27])
4. A fish bowl-shaped face shield by a Berlin art collective (Dezeen [28])
5. A blue carpet for local businesses in Delft (Modacity [29])
6. A stunning physically distanced market in Kalaw, Myanmar (Irrawaddy [30])
7. Drive-by birthdays replace drive-by shootings in LA (New York Times [31])
8. A suburban Atlanta reclaims a cemetery as public space (Next City [32])
9. A drive-by art exhibition in Long Island (New York Times [33])
10. A storefront mural project in Seattle (The Guardian [24])
11. A primer on mutual aid (The New Yorker [34])