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.

Places 2021 is Now Open [2]

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Featuring over 50 sessions, as well as Covid-safe public space experiences and networking events for those attending in person, Walk/Bike/Places 2021 [2] will be our first hybrid event on June 15-18, 2021. Registration is now open to attend either online or in-person in Indianapolis, Indiana.

This year's program will explore how our public spaces—and the ways we move through them—can serve as part of our social, economic, and emotional recovery. Don't miss this opportunity to register for the lowest rate possible to attend this year's conference. Learn more. [2]

Photo by Bryan Plata [3].

More Events & Opportunities

EXTENDED: Feb 15, 2021 • Call for Nominations: Great Places Awards [4], Environmental Design Research Association & Project for Public Spaces

Feb. 16, 2021 • Coming Together: Maintaining a Healthy Sense of Community in Indigenous Communities During a Pandemic [5], National Association of Friendship Centres

Feb. 18, 2021 • Watch Party: A Pandemic of Opportunity: What & How to Change the Public Realm [6], SF Urban Film Fest & Project for Public Spaces, featuring PPS's Juliet Kahne

Feb. 23, 2021 • Park Bench Chat: Preserving Black history for a more equitable future [7], Trust for Public Land

Mar. 9, 2021 • Grant: Canada Healthy Communities Initiative [8], Community Foundations of Canada

Mar. 12, 2021 • Request for Applications: Rural Design Workshops & Learning Cohorts [9], Citizens' Institute on Rural Design

Monthly Professional Development Webinar Series [10], Association of Pedestrian & Bicycle Professionals

Job: Chief Executive Officer [11], Baltimore Public Market Corporation

From the Blog

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In case you missed it, last week we published a guest post by Aaron Greiner explaining how placemaking nonprofit CultureHouse transformed an empty courtyard at the Somerville Library into an all-weather workspace for the community—bringing back free Wi-Fi to a community where one in five lack access. Read more. [12]

More from the Blog

Our Top 10 Articles of 2020 [13]
December 17, 2020 • by Nate Storring

Winter Placemaking During a Pandemic: Six Ideas from Around Canada [14]
December 11, 2020 • by Alyson Dobrota & Gail Armour

The Power of Placemaking through Corporate Social Responsibility [15]
November 16, 2020

Public Space News

St. Valentine's Favorite Public Spaces. While Paris has many grand public spaces, like Place de la Concorde, the best spaces in the City of Lights for Valentine's Day are more intimate. Jaime Izurieta explores the characteristics of scale, enclosure, and sensory detail that allow love to flourish in public space. (Proud Places [16]) But especially this year, romantic love is not the only kind of love that cities are celebrating through public art installations. (CityLab [17])

From the PPS archives: On Valentine's Day 2018, our founder Fred Kent made the case [18] for affection as an indicator of great public spaces.

Public Space as Essential Infrastructure. Architecture critic John King points to public space as the biggest way the San Francisco Bay Area has changed over the past year. Not only have people woken up to the importance of public space, he argues, but their expectations of what is possible have also expanded. (San Francisco Chronicle [19])

“We’ve used this as a time of experimentation,” Phil Ginsburg, general manager of San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department, told King. “Parks are not luxuries or sweet amenities—they’re essential infrastructure.”

Your Curb Enthusiasm. One of the elements of public space that transformed the most in 2020 is a humble one: the curb. And cities that made it easier to adapt the space between street and sidewalk have learned lessons that could last well beyond the pandemic. (City Monitor [20])

Mobile Healthy Places. While the COVID-19 vaccine is now available to some, the same spatial inequities that made some communities more susceptible to the virus than others now limit access to the vaccine. State of Place founder Mariela Alfonzo argues that a placemaking approach could support a more equitable COVID-19 vaccine rollout. (State of Place [21])

NY PopsUp. As a way to support the arts community and provide safe entertainment to the public, New York State will host a series of more than 300 free pop-up performances, called “NY PopsUp,” from Feb. 20 to Labor Day this year. (New York Times [22])

When Placemaking Goes Viral. The Umbrella Sky Project is one of the most popular entries in our Great Public Spaces database [23], receiving over 6,000 views last year. Since its inception in 2011, this beautiful installation has spread from its permanent home in Águeda, Portugal, to temporary installations around the world. (Washington Post [24])

"This is a really wonderful example of how public spaces and public space management entities are being really smart about those investments in public art," says PPS Director of Projects Elena Madison, "Connecting them to other programming and building the name of the place as a place that is interesting and exciting and worth going to.”

Road Tripping while Black. A new book by Amani Willett called A Parallel Road explores how Black Americans have experienced life behind the wheel in the twentieth-century United States. (BuzzFeed News [25])

"Black Americans keep getting in cars and taking trips," Willett explains in an interview with BuzzFeed News, "Refusing to give in to the history of violence and oppression meant to limit their ability to live in the same America that has been attainable for white Americans."

Placemaking Playbook

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

A chance to reclaim the historic core of Black Indianapolis (Next City [26])
A huge Covid-safe winter park near Montreal with skating, skiing, and snowshoeing trails, and an illuminated ice slide (Ton Barbier [27])
A toolkit for making parks feel safe for housed and unhoused residents alike (City Monitor [28])
The secret, essential geography of the office (Wired [29])
Lessons from the evolution of pop-up retail (Main Street America [30])
A quiz: What kind of post-2020 citymaker are you? (State of Place [31])
The artists' community healing projects in Minneapolis that are funded by repurposed police dollars (Next City [32])
A guide to Native land acknowledgments (U.S. Department of Arts and Culture [33])
An affordable, inclusive community hub in Seattle's gentrifying South End neighborhood (Next City [34])
Wander Art's playful and socially distant installations in London (Azure [35])

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