SPOTLIGHT: Project for Public Spaces
The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) brings public spaces to life by planning and designing them with the people who use them every day. Their goal is to equip people with the knowledge, skills, and strategies to fuel lasting change.
PPS’s newly released Expanded 2nd Edition of their groundbreaking publication How to Turn a Place Around is a user-friendly, common sense guide for everyone from community residents to mayors on how to create successful places. The ideas presented in this book reflect Project for Public Spaces’ thirty years of experience in helping people understand and improve their public spaces. The book illustrates a community-based, “place oriented” process organized around the eleven basic principles for creating successful public spaces, as well as methods that anyone can use to evaluate a space.
People who read this handbook will learn how short-term actions and visible changes can lead to better public spaces in their own communities. Through examples of people’s experiences in other cities, PPS demonstrates that, with an understanding of how a place works, any place can be “turned around.”
In the workbook included as an appendix, tools such as observations and surveys are described in a simple, how-to manner that will help citizens get all the information they need to understand why some spaces are successful and why some are not. It also provides steps to help you lead a community-based visioning process and begin to improve your neighborhood.
Timeframe to Complete Project: Weeks to Months; Months to Years
Cost Range: $35 to Purchase Resource; Cost Varies by Project
Key Words: community, fiber, yarn bomb, engagement strategies, evaluation, funding, budgeting, project examples, public spaces, Intermediate, Public Spaces & Gathering Places, fun, art, interactive elements, public art
This project was created by The Project for Public Spaces. Click on the button below to access the resource.