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.

Winter Placemaking During a Pandemic: Six Ideas from Around Canada [2]

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The "new normal" of living with the coronavirus pandemic has already started to change once again as the cold winter months set in. In this guest post, Alyson Dobrota and Gail Armour at PBJ Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia, offer up six placemaking ideas for keeping folks connected to their community and local economy this winter. Read more. [2]

More from the Blog

The Power of Placemaking through Corporate Social Responsibility [3]
November 16, 2020

Seven Principles for Becoming a Market City [4]
October 30, 2020 • by Kelly Verel

Toward Market Cities: Strengthening Public Market Systems in Three North American Cities [5]
October 16, 2020 • by Kelly Verel

Events & Opportunities

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Walk/Bike/Places: Your Conference, Your Choice [6]

As we put together our program for Walk/Bike/Places 2021, we are trying something a little different. We often hear from participants about topics they would like to see in our program, so this year we are offering all of you to review and vote for your favorite Walk/Bike/Places proposals.

Participating is easy and your vote will help our reviewers decide what to include in the final program, so have your voice heard before the public review closes on December 21st! Vote now. [6]

Video • Webinar: Telling the Story of Place: Branding for Public Spaces [7]
Missed our webinar with Bruce Mau Design, Waterloo Greenway Conservancy, and Central Atlanta Progress? The recording is now available!

More Events & Opportunities

Jan. 8, 2021 • Call for Proposals: 2021 ULI Americas Awards for Excellence, Urban Open Space Category [8], Urban Land Institute

Jan. 8, 2021 • Webinar: Small Is Mighty: How Small Urban Ecology Projects Are Having Big Impacts (and How You Can Contribute) [9], Park People

Podcast • Playful Learning: A New Path to Education Reform [10], The Brookings Cafeteria

Public Space News

From Dreary Driveway to Joyful Plaza. Friends of Lafitte Greenway celebrated the grand opening of a new pedestrian plaza on the Lafitte Greenway, in New Orleans, Louisiana, which transformed the driveway of a former brake tag station. The Friends were one of three 2020 grantees of the Clarity Parks Project™, an initiative from the makers of Claritin® with technical assistance from Project for Public Spaces to improve public spaces in three communities across the U.S. that have been impacted by natural disasters. (Friends of Lafitte Greenway [11])

From Golf Course to Oasis for Nature and Culture. Brisbane City Council has finalized its vision, which Project for Public Spaces supported through case study research and placemaking review, to transform an 18-hole inner-city golf course into a 64-hectare public green space replete with a restored ecosystem and opportunities to practice and revitalize Aboriginal cultural heritage in collaboration with Traditional Custodians. (Landscape Australia [12])

Local Logic. Neighborhood-based social media networks have become hotbeds of racial profiling and petty parochialism. But can an alternative model make them a more constructive supplement to local public life? (Knight First Amendment Institute [13])

The Walkable Queen of the West. Cincinnati's mayor announced that he planned to make the city into the most pedestrian-friendly in the Midwest by making some of its public space responses to the pandemic permanent. (WLWT5 [14])

An Uneven Recovery. Yelp data shows that xenophobia has kept historic Chinatowns in several U.S. cities in a longer and more severe economic downturn than their surrounding metro areas. (CityLab [15])

One Day, One-Day Delivery will Bury Us. Almost all the climate and congestion benefits of online shopping are wiped out by rush deliveries, a study finds—which could spell disaster for U.S. roadways this holiday season. (StreetsBlog [16])

Attachment Is Key to Stewardship. A new study finds that inspiring people to take care of public spaces may be as simple as increasing their sense of ownership through simple interventions. (Wisconsin School of Business [17])

Christmas Light Crackdown. Holiday displays in the Dutch capital may soon require municipal approval, and lights must be overwhelmingly “warm white”—much to the chagrin of some Amsterdammers. (CityLab [18])

New Orleans Slow Streets Speed Up. The mayor of New Orleans announced that the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic would accelerate the reimagining of the city's well-known French Quarter for safety, equity, connectivity, and efficiency. (WDSU News [19])

L.A. Controversial. Los Angeles restaurant owners say public health officials can’t definitively link outdoor dining with a rise in cases, and they’re (mostly) right—but officials say they shut them down in a broader effort to avoid maskless gatherings. (Eater Los Angeles [20])

Placemaking Playbook

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

The mobility hubs in Minneapolis that bring together transit, micromobility, and placemaking (Next City [21])
A London initiative that opens roadways around schools to walking, biking, and more (CityLab [22])
Calgary's plan to creatively reuse 1 million square feet of empty real estate (onemillionfeet [23])
An audio installation memorializing the AIDS epidemic in New York public space (Next City [24])
The most important adaptations cities and towns need to thrive in 2021, according to nine leading urban thinkers (Strong Towns [25])
The restorative justice centers that could replace courtrooms with placemaking for peacemaking (Fortune [26])
The data that mattered to Jane Jacobs (Fast Company [27])
The world's great street corners (Social Life Project [28])
A series of choices overtime: 99% Invisible's Roman Mars on the kind of problem a city is (StreetsBlog USA [29])
An exhibition on women's suffrage at a historic home that is taking place all outdoors (Washington Post [30])

The Making of a Brand

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The design blog Typeroom recently caught with Laura Stein, Chief Creative Officer at Bruce Mau Design, to chat about their work with Project for Public Spaces on our new brand [3]. They talk about our collaborative process, capturing the spirit of the organization, and the design details that make the final product sing. Read more. [31]

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Six Ideas for Winter Placemaking During a Pandemic | Placemaking Weekly