"Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit planning, design and educational organization settled in NY, dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities.
Our pioneering Placemaking approach helps citizens transform their public spaces into vital places that highlight local assets, spur rejuvenation and serve common needs.
The aim of PPS’ Public Market Program is to foster the role of public markets in reconnecting local economies and communities and to support the pivotal role markets play in supporting public health and local food systems.
PPS provides assistance to market sponsors, managers, and community development officials helping public markets become economically sustainable centers of community life. Through training programs, conferences, research and projects, the Public Markets Program promotes new models and innovative practices for public markets that achieve broad benefits for communities.
We believe that successful public markets, from small neighborhood farmers markets to urban market districts, achieve three goals: they are great community gathering places; are economically sustainable; and have a broad impact on their community’s development.
PPS provides assistance to market sponsors, managers, and community development officials helping public markets become economically sustainable centers of community life. Through training programs, conferences, research and projects, the Public Markets Program promotes new models and innovative practices for public markets that achieve broad benefits for communities.
We believe that successful public markets, from small neighborhood farmers markets to urban market districts, achieve three goals: they are great community gathering places; are economically sustainable; and have a broad impact on their community’s development.
The Power of Place: A New Dimension for Sustainable Development
It’s painfully obvious that development trends of the last 75 years are unsustainable. Performance indicators measuring climate conditions, public health, transportation patterns and household affordability are deteriorating. Evidence continues to mount that land use and development patterns of the last three-quarters century contribute greatly to all of the above problems.
We see Placemaking as one solution to these problems. Placemaking is the nexus between sustainability and livability: by making our communities more livable, and more about places, we also are doing the right thing for the planet. Placemaking provides concrete actions and results that boost broader sustainability goals such as smart growth, walkability, public transportation, local food, and bikes, yet brings it home for people in tangible, positive ways. We feel it is important to give people a proactive approach to sustainability in their hometowns. Creating lively town centers and neighborhoods that enhance pride of place and promote local economic development is critical to improving local quality of life as well as quality of the environment. In fact, we can reinvent entire regions starting from the heart of local communities and building outwards.
Placemaking offers a valuable tool communities can use to get back in control of their future and their environment. Although it takes advantages of what professional disciplines know, it puts the community in charge of the project.
Here are some ideas and information from around the world about how Placemaking can transform our communities into sustainable success stories:
1. The planning and design of transportation networks and streets can be reshaped to encourage economic vitality, civic engagement, public health, and environmental sustainability, in addition to serving peoples’ mobility needs.
2. Creating sustainable local food systems and public markets to provide access to fresh healthy food, integrate farmers and agricultural land into our goals for sustainability and economic health, and reduce our carbon footprint.
3. Reframing the professional disciplines that shape our places, including architecture, design and engineering, so that they result in the livable, sustainable communities we are asking for.
4. Creating diverse, lively and sociable public environments that help build social capital and place capital, focused on town centers. Great cities and towns are defined by great multi-use destinations and Placemaking provides the best ways to achieve them.
5. Promoting economic revitalization with a focus on what we can produce locally, encouraging local talent to flourish, especially in underutilized buildings and spaces. For some inspiring examples, see what’s going on in Boston and Newcastle, Australia.
6. Achieving all these goals through better coordination of our land uses and transportation, which will also preserve our best natural resources for future generations.
PPS believes that you can’t achieve environmental sustainability without addressing people’s inherent needs for a sense of community. We can try to outsource our problems to a new generation of green engineers, designers and architects, but will only see broad, lasting changes when the people inhabiting these communities create a vision for the future and lead the process for change.
It is not as if we have a choice of whether or not to focus in on the places where we have invested the most – those existing centers that have served us well for so long. The economic necessity to do more with our existing core infrastructure is in fact leading to our sustainable future. Let’s use the focus on better Placemaking to make it a positive leap forward. With a great vision and a motivated public, we can then make equal strides on a Transformative Agenda that could make every community a wonderful sustainable place.
A Transformative Agenda for Communities and the Environment
Here are some ideas and information from around the world about how Placemaking can transform our communities into sustainable success stories:
1. The planning and design of transportation networks and streets can be reshaped to encourage economic vitality, civic engagement, public health, and environmental sustainability, in addition to serving peoples’ mobility needs.
2. Creating sustainable local food systems and public markets to provide access to fresh healthy food, integrate farmers and agricultural land into our goals for sustainability and economic health, and reduce our carbon footprint.
3. Reframing the professional disciplines that shape our places, including architecture, design and engineering, so that they result in the livable, sustainable communities we are asking for.
4. Creating diverse, lively and sociable public environments that help build social capital and place capital, focused on town centers. Great cities and towns are defined by great multi-use destinations and Placemaking provides the best ways to achieve them.
5. Promoting economic revitalization with a focus on what we can produce locally, encouraging local talent to flourish, especially in underutilized buildings and spaces. For some inspiring examples, see what’s going on in Boston and Newcastle, Australia.
6. Achieving all these goals through better coordination of our land uses and transportation, which will also preserve our best natural resources for future generations.
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