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Announcing New Co-Executive Directors Kelly Verel & Nate Storring | Placemaking Round-Up

Posted March 27, 2022 - 11:57

This round-up from the Project for Public Spaces connects people who share a passion for public spaces to ideas and issues, news, quotes, places, and events from the placemaking movement.

Announcing Our New Co-Executive Directors Kelly Verel & Nate Storring
Kelly Verel and Nate Storry, Co-Executive Directors
We're thrilled to announce that Kelly Verel and Nate Storring will lead the organization as co-executive directors!

Both are longtime members of the Project for Public Spaces team who have touched all aspects of the organization's work, from placemaking projects to research to events to training. Read more.
 
“Like so many others, I first ran across Project for Public Spaces in my school days, and it radically changed the way I think about public space. Today, I am honored to continue finding new ways to carry on that tradition.”


—Nate Storring, Co-Executive Director
“I am motivated on a daily basis by the dedication and talent of our staff and inspired by the communities that we are lucky to work with.”


—Kelly Verel, Co-Executive Director

Recent Blog Posts
A (Market) Place for Everyone
February 22, 2022 • by Priscilla Posada

Thinking Beyond the Parks Department: A Q&A with Javier Otero Peña
January 14, 2022 • by Priscilla Posada

Our Top 10 Articles of 2021
December 27, 2021 • by Nate Storring
 

Webinar: Social Impact in Public Space
Monday, April 4th at 12-1pm EDT: Register now for our free upcoming webinar Places with Purpose: Achieving Social Impact in Public Space. 

You'll have the opportunity to hear from a panel of funders, grantees, and placemaking experts on how public space can help support health equity, make cities more resilient against climate change, and more.
 
Learn More & Register

More Events & Opportunities
Now through March 31 • Submit an activity for Jane's Walk NYC, Municipal Art Society of New York

April 1 • Register for the Placemake Earth 3: Inspire the Park Challenge, PlacemakingUS

April 10-13 • Register for the Social Alchemy Symposium, a free, participatory mini-conference, online and in person in New Harmony, Indiana, Big Car Collaborative

Now through April 19 • Apply for a Two-Week Preservation Fellowship, National Trust for Historic Preservation

Have an event or opportunity you would like to share? Email us at [email protected].
 

Public Space News
Ribbon cutting at the Shafter Learning Center in Shafter, California.
New Social Impact Project! Project for Public Spaces is proud to have helped create the new indoor-outdoor home of Shafter Learning Center in Shafter, CA. With support from GAF, we were able to add a new classroom to the library, doubling the space, and providing a cozy nook where kids can learn and play. We've also turned the parking lot into a plaza for studying and relaxing based on input from local residents. (The Bakersfield Californian)

Parks as Mental Health Infrastructure. During the pandemic many countries including the United States, Canada, Spain, and Denmark noted increased usage of parks as people sought to exercise, socialize outside, and access crucial social services. Now that parks are being recognized as important cornerstones of mental health infrastructure, many are thinking about how to ensure that their benefits are equitably distributed among a greater diversity of people. (Azure)

The Legacy of Christopher Alexander. We were saddened to hear of the death of influential architect and urbanist Christopher Alexander. His ideas about beauty, complexity, and the overlapping nature of urbanism deeply influenced the development of Project for Public Spaces and the placemaking movement at large. (Planetizen)

As Alexander's onetime student Michael Mehaffy beautifully summarizes, “The places we love, the places that are most successful and most alive, have a wholeness about them that is lacking in too many contemporary environments, Alexander observed. This problem stems, he thought, from a deep misconception of what design really is, and what planning is.  It is not “creating from nothing”—or from our own mental abstractions—but rather, transforming existing wholes into new ones, and using our mental processes and our abstractions to guide this natural life-supporting process.”
 

Placemaking Playbook
As always, here's a roundup of placemaking projects and ideas that inspired us this week:

  • Vote for your favorite parks and public spaces (USA Today)
  • Biophilia isn't just about the human love of greenery, it's about our love of vitality (The Wandering Brain)
  • Three bus stops that celebrate nature (Streetsblog USA)
  • Custodians of an informally planted micro-forest in Madrid fight to protect it (Bloomberg)
  • How downtowns can adapt to the age of hybrid workplaces (The Atlantic)
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