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In a year where compounding crises fill our days with urgency, our recent Walk/Bike/Places 2020 conference offered a much-needed time to step back and reflect together on how placemaking and transportation planning can not just get things done, but do so inclusively, fairly, and sustainably.
While we couldn’t meet in person to discuss this year's theme of implementation, the virtual format gave participants a unique opportunity to share their own communities with each other. Read the conference report.
Interested in joining us next year? Stay tuned for our Walk/Bike/Places 2021 call for proposals later this month. |
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More Events & Opportunities
Oct. 14 • Webinar: The Places People Make, Part 2: Charles T. Brown, MPA, LCI, 2nd annual Urban Design Lecture Series, EJB|DESIGNS
Oct. 20 • Webinar: The pivot toward parks: How can we sustain creative activation of our public spaces beyond the pandemic?, Park People
Oct. 22 • Webinar: Healthy parks and healthy people: A (not boring) conversation about the future of park investment, Park People
Oct. 27 • Webinar: Downtown Rebound: Forecast, Opportunities, and Best Practices for the 2020 Holiday Shopping Season, ULI Northwest Arkansas, featuring Project for Public Spaces’ Kelly Verel
Oct. 31 • Survey: Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Farmers Markets, Farmers Market Coalition
Missed any of our past virtual events on placemaking and public space? Watch the videos on our Events page.
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From the Blog
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Public Space News
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Sprucing Up the Republic Square Oaks: This week, landscaping and planting kicked off in Republic Square in Austin, TX, which was chosen earlier this summer by the Clarity Parks Project and Project for Public Spaces as one of three public spaces in cities that have been impacted by a natural disaster to receive a $47,000 grant from the makers of Claritin. The grant will help enhance and protect the square’s historic Auction Oaks, as well as improve the comfort and image of the park with new landscaping, plantings and water-resilient features in the area surrounding the park's celebrated trees (Patch).
A Jam without Traffic: San Francisco unveiled a new permit that aims to allow live, outdoor music and entertainment on a small scale during the pandemic. The JAM (Just Add Music) permit offers businesses a way to book DJs, live music (without singing or wind instruments), dance, theater, comedy or film screenings with amplified sound in the city’s existing Shared Spaces locations, which allow outdoor activities while abiding by pandemic safety guidelines (KQED).
Community Infrastructure Is Down, Violence Is Up: Research has connected community-based organizations and programs to the dramatic decline in violent crime in the U.S. since the 1990s. But the pandemic has frayed all kinds of institutions and infrastructure that hold communities together, watch over streets, mediate conflicts, simply give young people something to do (New York Time).
No Parking, No Problem: Scores of cities around the world dramatically shifted their policies to encourage outdoor dining in the street, which public health officials say is much safer than gathering indoors—and the typical frustration over parking changes has simply not materialized (NPR).
A Monumental Undertaking: The Mellon Foundation announced that it would put $250 million toward creating new monuments across the U.S., as well as relocating and rethinking existing ones. This comes as protestors have challenged or outright removed monuments around the world for their connection to ongoing legacies of systemic racism (New York Times). |
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Placemaking Playbook
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Here's a roundup of 10 inspiring placemaking ideas from the week:
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A guide to making streets into safe pandemic polling places before the election (Street Plans)
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A long-distance art project that tackles COVID-era racism across the U.S.-Canada border (Next City)
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A Canadian playbook for revitalizing Main Street during the pandemic (Bring Back Main Street)
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A new research project to examines how privately-owned third places affect health and well-being (UrbanLand)
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Hostile architecture—it can happen from the top down or from the bottom up (Wired)
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A marketplace in Imphal, India, that has been run solely by women since the 16th-century (New York Times)
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A beginners guide to streateries (Spaces to Places)
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Two new case studies on creative placemaking and equitable real estate: one in Chicago (Planetizen) and one in Boston (Shelterforce)
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The value of dense urbanism in rural communities (Brookings)
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The reason why women are biking in record numbers during the pandemic (New York Times)
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Quote of the Week
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“It's up to us to decide whether we want our streets—our most abundant public space—to serve the many purposes that a public space can, or to continue to be single use, single experience spaces that serve a single kind of user.”
—Nidhi Gulati, Senior Director of Programs & Projects at Project for Public Spaces, during our ongoing Reimagining Streets as Places training. See on Twitter. |
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