“Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities.”
Activities
Project for Public Spaces (PPS)’ services include planning and design, community workshops, training, research, conferences, community websites, and information databases. PPS partners with a broad range of other organizations, from town and city governments to federal agencies, and advocacy groups working on sprawl or environmental issues.
Relevant Project(s)
- Great Cities Initiative— brings together PPS’ experience in placemaking. The Initiative is a step-by-step program that communities can take on in the attempt to improve neighborhoods and public spaces. The program encompasses all of the Initiative’s main activities, from initial analysis and site evaluation, to training of community leaders, and publication of results.
- Image collection— a database of approximately 1,000,000 of cities and public spaces across the country, organized by area and type of space. The collection shows both what is great about spaces and what needs to be improved.
- PPS website is an extensive resource for anyone interested in sprawl or community revitalization. Includes case studies, issue papers, facts, and links to projects across the country.
- Recent “placemaking” projects (see Processes) include downtown revitalization efforts in Farmington, CT; Poughkeepsie, NY (Vassar College); Arvada, CO; and New Haven, CT (Yale University).
- Public Space Assessment— is a city-wide analysis that addresses areas in need of community building or revitalization, but also highlights places that are successful. The process also focuses on opportunities and obstacles in improving these spaces.
Relevant Methodologies
Trainings, community workshops and planning games, evaluation, community websites. Community Workshops use many participatory and visioning methods. Among them:
- Place Performance Evaluation. PPS has devised a special "place performance evaluation" exercise that is used in many PPS workshops. This performance exercise incorporates PPS observation, interview and analysis techniques in the format of a game that allows workshop participants to evaluate sites themselves and enables them to gain insights and develop different ideas by looking at the sites from a user-oriented point of view. While the "game" can take various forms depending on the audience, equally dramatic results are achieved whether the participants are schoolchildren or professionals.”
- The Great Cities Initiative is designed to assemble a step by step approach to designing public spaces including visioning, community website creation, and trainings on Placemaking, The visioning involves looking at, listening to and asking questions of the people in a community to discover their needs and aspirations.
Region
National
More Information
700 Broadway, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10003
(212) 620-5660 (phone)
(212) 620-3821 (fax)