Placemaking
'Trees in Hard Landscapes': Guide for High-Performance Urban Infrastructure
A new cross-disciplinary report cites 32 case studies to offer practical solutions for integrating trees into civic spaces and surface car parks.
A Day at the Beach in Downtown Detroit
Inspired by the Paris Plages temporary urban beach along the Seine, a temporary beach in a park in Downtown Detroit is inspiring the Motor City to rethink its public spaces.
The Importance of Inter-Urban Walkability
In his third "place-decoding" essay from France, Chuck Wolfe recalls all that we can learn from walking between settled places.
What's Your 'Elevator Pitch' for Greener, Healthier Cities?
Kaid Benfield shares his placemaking pitch.
The Option of Sensing the City
In his second Huffington Post article on "place-decoding," Chuck Wolfe argues for considered attention to enhancing people's abilities to discern the city around them.
The Important Role of Front Porches in Latino Communities
James Rojas explains the importance of front porches in Latino-American communities.
Learning to 'Place-Decode' the Elements of Urbanism
Chuck Wolfe champions the role of France's attachment to place as a laboratory for decoding the essential elements of urbanism.
Denver's Social Media Campaign to Celebrate the City
The Denver Community Planning and Development department unrolled a new social media campaign this week utilizing #favoriteplacedenver to celebrate the city's unique characteristics.
Millennial Fever: Taking Stock of Denver Placemaking
Denver's investments in placemaking—guided by the city's great appeal to Millennials—are a mixed bag of hits, misses, and open questions.
Place-Based Development and Streetcar Transforming Downtown Tucson
Restaurants, retail, offices, and adobe homes pop-up in and around the long-suffering downtown damaged by urban renewal.
Why 'Place' Is the New American Dream
The new American Dream will transform cities and towns in the 21st Century. To understand it, we have to grasp a few features of the previous American Dream.
Competition Addresses the Design Challenges of Placemaking in Rural Communities
In its annual competitive funding effort, the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) has selected four small towns and rural communities to host a two-and-a-half day rural design technical workshop.
Let's Make Sticky Streets for People!
As cities work hard to evolve their perspective on the role of streets as public places in smarter city-making, remember this: Good cities know that streets move people, not just cars. Great cities know that streets are places to linger and enjoy.
Strengthening the Bond between People and Placemaking
A research team at MIT Urban Studies and Planning, led by Susan Silberberg, released a paper examining “the interactions between placemaking, community participation, and the expanding ways communities are collaborating to make great public places.”
'Living Innovation Zones' Activate Public Space in San Francisco
San Francisco recently launched the Living Innovation Zones program to generate space-activating public art installations around the city. The city hopes the program will create “catalysts for exploration, innovation and play.”
Placemaking Lessons Learned from Seattle's Super Bowl Parade
Last Wednesday, an estimated 700,000—more than the city's population of 635,000—welcomed the Seahawks home, without major incident. Writing in The Atlantic Cities, Chuck Wolfe describes five lessons for placemaking through words and photographs.
New Paper Makes the Case for Placemaking's Role in Building Community
With the publication of a new paper, PPS is celebrating "an important occasion in the evolution of the Placemaking movement." Through 10 case studies, the paper argues for "the importance of Placemaking as a vital part of community-building."
Why Affordable Housing is an Environmental Issue
Improving our cities and suburbs is just as important to environmental sustainability as regulating pollution or conserving undeveloped land, argues Kaid Benfield.
With Pop-Up Project, Detroit Becomes a Beach Town
With 150 tons of golf-course bunker sand, the Downtown Detroit Partnership has turned a traffic island at the southern end of the Campus Martius into an urban beach, part of a larger effort to revitalize they city's downtown.
Abandonment, Authenticity, and Transgressive Placemaking
Kelly Bennett writes on the connections between authentic places, abandonment, and a new wave of placemaking.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
Heyer Gruel & Associates PA
City of Moreno Valley
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
Salt Lake City
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
City of Cambridge, Maryland
