Project for Public Spaces's Page

Our Mission

Imagine a plaza or town square bustling with people who are greeting each other, buying, selling, and exchanging ideas. For everyone striving to make public spaces better, PPS is that town square. Our vision is to act as the central hub of the global Placemaking movement, connecting people to ideas, expertise, and partners who share a passion for creating vital places.

Since 1975, we have worked in more than 2,000 communities in 26 countries around the world, helping people turn their public spaces into vital community places, with programs, uses, and people-friendly settings that build local value and serve community needs.

Our Program Areas

Our mission-driven program areas encompass all major public spaces. With the talent of our dedicated staff and the generous contributions of our partners and funders -- organizations like The Wallace Fund, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Kellogg Foundation -- we have improved parks, markets, streets, transit stations, libraries and countless other places.

Parks
Parks, plazas and squares succeed when people come first, not design. Today, PPS is working with more communities than ever before to transform underperforming parks into great public destinations that are lively, secure, and distinct in character.

Transportation
If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places. PPS sees the vast amount of urban land dedicated to cars, traffic, and parking lots as a huge opportunity to create public spaces that serve community. We approach transportation projects as catalysts of this transformation--by redeveloping facilities from highways to boulevards, from parking lots to mixed-use transit oriented development, and from nowhere to someplace.

Civic Centers
Civic centers should connect people to their public institutions. PPS turns these crucial public spaces--our courthouses, libraries, seats of government, and more--into assets for both the institutions they represent and the communities they serve.

Public Markets
Through our technical assistance and workshops, research and grant programs, and training courses and conferences, PPS helps public markets become vibrant public spaces while also achieving broader social impacts – from community development, to health and nutrition, to preserving family farms.

Downtowns
Great downtowns fill cities with life. In our work for downtowns, PPS helps spark revitalization by finding ways for this vitality to emerge. Our Placemaking approach goes beyond the typical downtown master planning process: It enables city staff as well as residents to focus on improving the places that are most important to them.

Mixed Use Development
PPS assists developers and municipalities all over the country in planning new developments. We ensure that new mixed-use communities, town centers and infill development - and especially their public spaces - are planned and designed in such a way that they build a strong sense of community and provide a sense of place for residents and workers.

Campuses
The desirability of a university is often judged by its sense of place. It is not enough to build a university around the specialized needs of its academic programs. PPS helps academic institutions create a collection of distinct gathering places that catalyze interaction and bring the campus to life.

Squares
Squares and plazas have been a core focus of PPS beginning with our work with William H. (Holly) Whyte and our signature early projects like Rockefeller Center's Channel Gardens. Over the years we have helped many cities create such great public destinations, providing a range of services to communities building new squares and plazas or revitalizing existing ones.

Waterfronts
In our work with cities that want to bring life back to their waterfronts, PPS stresses that the key to success is layering activities into a vision for improvement that is "greater than the sum of its uses." In waterfront projects from Hong Kong to San Diego to Memphis, PPS is working to re-integrate waterfronts (many of which have been blocked off by highways, train tracks, or fenced-off industrial facilities) into surrounding neighborhoods through a variety of means.

Public Space Advocacy

We complement our project work, training, and services with public space advocacy that sets the stage for broad change. Our goal is to enhance Placemaking efforts everywhere by promoting good policy and professional practice.

Making great public spaces the norm rather than the exception depends on introducing policy-makers at all levels of country, state, and city government to new ideas and approaches. We also advocate for change within disciplines, showing how architects, planners, transportation engineers, and other professionals can adopt a Placemaking approach. When these crucial decision-makers set their minds on creating great places, sweeping improvements follow.

That's why PPS pursues systemic change in all our program areas, collaborating with foundations and campaign partners on advocacy that leverages our resources and expertise to achieve broad impacts. Through our advocacy partnerships and outreach, we want to see Placemaking change people's lives for the better.