Virtual Walk Audits and our New Leadership Team | Placemaking Weekly

Posted October 5, 2020 - 13:39

This newsletter 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.

Virtual Walk Audits: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The walk audit, where people get together to assess their streetscape together, can be "a radical act of advocacy” for the national walking movement. But what happens when public health orders require physical distancing or prohibit gatherings of people from multiple households?

During our recent Walk/Bike/Places conference, our partners at AmericaWalks led a virtual walk audit session where participants recorded the good, the bad, and the ugly of streets in their own communities. Read more.

Announcement: A New Leadership Team at Project for Public Spaces

Project for Public Spaces is excited to announce the appointment of a new Executive Leadership Team. Reporting directly to the board, this new team will be responsible for leading the organization into a new stage of achieving its mission to strengthen communities through public space. Read more.

More from the Blog

How an Atlanta Park is Connecting People to Housing through Place-Based Social Service Provision
August 26, 2020

Sneak Peak: Mobycon on the Dutch Approach to Streets as Places
August 21, 2020

Restoring the Joy of Parks in Communities Impacted by Natural Disasters with the Makers of Claritin®
July 31, 2020

Essential Places: Warren Logan on Open Streets Beyond Brunch and Bike Lanes
June 26, 2020

Equitable Development During & After COVID-19: Five Takeaways
June 12, 2020

Events & Opportunities

October 1st would have been the 103rd birthday of William H. Whyte, the groundbreaking public space researcher who mentored the founders of Project for Public Spaces.

This year is also the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Whyte's research on public space, and to celebrate and investigate his legacy, the Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy at Rutgers University is hosting The Places People Make, a two-part lecture series featuring Alex Garvin (Oct. 6) and Charles T. Brown, MPA, LCI (Oct. 16). We hope to see you there!

More Events & Opportunities

Oct. 7 • Webinar: Who Are Streets Designed For?, SPUR, featuring Project for Public Spaces’ Nidhi Gulati

Oct. 9 • Call for Proposals: Winter Places: A Design Competition for Winter Placemaking, BenchCo

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 webinars on placemaking and public space? Watch the videos on our Events page.

Public Space News

Quality Over Quantity: When it comes to the coronavirus, growing evidence suggests that super-spreader events may be more important than the average rate of transmission. Because of this, America's heavy-handed response could learn a lot from Japan, which has focused more on the factors that prevent super-spreading in public places: masks, poorly ventilated indoor spaces, crowding, and length of contact (The Atlantic).

Streets as Polling Places: The National Association of City Transportation Officials has added voting to its list of activities cities can consider repurposing streets for, as the nation prepares for a presidential election amid a pandemic (Government Technology).

Not So Fast: Road fatality rates have reached their highest level in 15 years, and the fact that it happened during a time of historically low driving signals it's time to redesign our roads (Streetsblog).

Hygge, meet friluftsliv: While “hygge,” the Norwegian idea of coziness, became a part of North American popular culture over the past year, a different Norwegian philosophy might be more relevant for pandemic-addled 2020. “Friluftsliv” is all about outdoor living—even during the winter time (National Geographic).

Digital Workplacemaking: The pandemic has shaken up the way many of us work, leading some to ask what the role of the office will be, now that so many teams have had to learn to work well together virtually. Marie-Céline Merret Wirström argues that a hybrid “digital placemaking” approach can help the office function as a hub that connects team members wherever they may be, enabling collaboration and enriching the employee experience (AdNews).

A Garbage Year: Housebound urban residents are making more garbage, and budget-strapped cities are having trouble keeping up (CityLab).

Placemaking Playbook

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

From garden streets to bike highways: four ideas for post-Covid cities – visualised (The Guardian)
A crowd-sourced resource guide to tackle anti-Blackness within urban planning (Black Voices on the City)
Another guide to remote community engagement (What Works Cities)
Four urban planning fails we need to correct in 2020 (Planetizen)
A portrait series of New York’s beautiful and beleaguered street trees (Jensen Projects)
The political signs that stirred up controversy in a small U.S. town (The Guardian)
Oysters, honeybees, and beavers—three species that are resettling in New York City (Next City)
A youth-led vision for neighborhood public safety in Chicago (Next City)
A program in Denver to rebalance the inequitable distribution of parks (New York Times)
New York City’s new easier to handle, harder to abuse trash bin (CityLab)

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