Public Spaces

Add a Comment

Comment by K. M. Williamson, Ph.D. on November 9, 2009 at 5:52pm

Any comments on the function, popularity &/or design of these public space message board kiosks, like this one in Santa Barbara?

Comment by K. M. Williamson, Ph.D. on May 11, 2009 at 11:11pm

The Public Art in Public Places Project, a collaborative public information inventory of over 1,600 public artworks in public places in more than 100 Southern California cities, is now published and available on the web at www.PublicArtInPublicPlaces.info.

We invite you to view the Public Art in Public Places website and share with us your comments, additions, or suggestions.
K. M. Williamson, Ph.D.
k.m.williamson@verizon.net
Urban Public Realm Consulting

Comment by Dan Reese on February 7, 2009 at 10:35am

I live in the mountains of northeast Tennessee in the USA. Traveling in Great Britain, France, Italy, and Mexico I found many places for people to gather, walk and bike freely, and live in people friendly places. Here in the US we are working to transform our towns and cities into places build for habitation, not just transportation.

Comment by AC on December 9, 2008 at 11:45am

hello Fred,

I just joined Placamaking. I live and work in Amsterdam, and work a lot on diversity issues and within the municipality with public space.
Since there is still much segregation between cultural communities in the Netherlands, a lot could indeed be done in the public space to (really) meet. The Moroccan bakery in my former neighbourhood played an important role, even if a bakery is not really public space. I'd love to know what you have been doing in Amsterdam and with Levende Stad! A French friend of mine organises street debates, encouraging everybody to give their opinion and react to others opinions, in a accesable way.

Comment by Fred Kent on November 15, 2008 at 7:38am

I have been involved in Placemaking almost my entire professional career of 38 years and the past month was the most interesting of that entire time. I sort of approach each event without any expectations as to their importance or expectations, probably because things happen one right after another with no break. So here are some thoughts on my trip over the past month of October into November. They included Dubai, Harvard University, Chicago, Osaka, Paris and the Netherlands. I will describe each briefly. Taking them all together and adding other similar trips occurring monthly over the past year, the Placemaking movement is accelerating in interest month by month.

• Dubai. I was in Dubai during the middle of the October giving a series of talks to Nakheel, the largest developer in Dubai reviewing many of their new and proposed developments. I was struck with their intense interest in Placemaking because most of their developments were being sold as real estate development sites with limited planning for their long term sense of place. They were keenly aware of these issues, but normal consulting firms would only give them architecture and landscape plans rather than a “placemaking master plan” which would create a sense of place for entire sections of their major developments. That is not to say that they weren’t aware of the role of public spaces, but they had no way of seeing the value enough to warrant the time and expenditure of evolving their development plans beyond the iconic vision they are using to sell their developments. While there, I also met with the Executive Office where they are starting a new organization that wants to have as its core principle “Placemaking”.
In the Emirates, the Dubai leader is the Vice President who actually is the operating leader for the entire Emirates. We will be negotiating a way of providing them training, forums, project reviews, demonstration projects, benchmarks, etc. to help them organize and develop a significant effort to support a new country-wide effort to guide the development of their major cities.

• Harvard University. Harvard is expanding across the Charles River into Allston, which is part of Boston. This expansion is on course to double the size of Harvard over the next 30 – 50 years. They have been struggling with how to pull it all together into a plan that creates a sense of place that leadership feels represents their vision. They are now on their third Master Planning consultant. We have been brought in to add the “Placemaking” vision for this new area with a focus on the North Harvard, the street that connects the two campuses. They have also bought in Renzo Piano to add to the current vision. His “Architectural” philosophy and our Placemaking role are having the impact of elevating the entire plan to a level where the client is actually getting the plan we believe they have been searching for.

• Chicago. A year ago we did a session around our Transportation Initiative we call “Streets as Places” and “Thinking Beyond the Station”. Both are efforts to reintegrate transportation back into the public realm of cities. To many cities, the enormous impact of the automobile has done enormous damage beyond what anyone is able to really understand. When we show what an enormous impact the past 70 years have had on communities and entire cities, they begin to see a very different future by gradually changing the role of the automobile and ultimately removing it by starting to reduce its’ overwhelming presence and, in our view, eventually removing it almost entirely. Paris is on track to lead the world by systematically replacing transit with vehicle space for cars. As a result of the session, The Metropolitan Planning Council has developed a city-wide Placemaking program somewhat centered on transportation, but as they wisely surmised, they can only impact communities if there is a vision for the entire community. We had the kick-off a few weeks ago with a session for community leaders and government officials. This has the promise to have a major impact on the entire city of Chicago. Their web site,http://www.placemakingchicago.com/, describes their Placemaking Initiative as having “the potential to be one of the most transformative ideas of this century”.


• Osaka. I learned while in Chicago that Osaka and Chicago are sister cities, so there is a strong affiliation between the two. A year ago we received a delegation of around 20 city leaders for a half day session in NYC. They later sent a delegation of three to our “How to Turn a Place Around” training in New York. In mid October I went to Osaka to do a training effort around two significant sites in the main central area and to give a major address to 350 leaders from business, government and the professional community. While there, I became aware that they had spent over four years planning for this two day event and that they were extremely determined to develop a broad agenda around placemaking initially for their central core, but ultimately for the entire city and other nearby cities as well. Within the core area they have a rail yard site of 24 hectares which they want to do a “Placemaking” plan for.

• Paris. Earlier in October a leadership group from the RAPT came to our office to get a better understanding of our “Transportation Initiative” and how it might apply to the Paris Metro system. In late October we had a tour of the most important developments they were involved in. Their interest is to better integrate their vast system better into the communities they serve. We are planning a Spring Forum to address some of those possibilities.

• The Netherlands. For the past few years we have been spending a week in different parts of the Netherlands to the extent that we have pretty much covered the entire country with training, conferences and meetings. This past week, the team of people we have been working with called Levenda Stadt have realized along with us that the Placemaking idea needs to be a country-wide effort with a national commitment at the highest level of government along with the involvement of major cities and regions. (We did a high level workshop for public Amsterdam city agency officials around their City Hall/Opera House/waterfront.) We are charting out a course of undertaking major projects where one of the current main topics of discussion is around largely Moroccan youths with no purpose in life that are engaged in very harsh and difficult situations in the larger areas around the communities they are living in. In the Netherlands they have many disciplines engaged in public spaces, but they do not have a process to draw out the aspiration, assets or ideas from the community. So they like “Placemaking”, but they really are only beginning to understand how basic…and transformative it really is and what it can mean for the future of their cities