• How placemaking can save the planet

    A brief film biography of Fred Kent offers insight into placemaking, and why it is essential.
    The Place Man is an excellent and easily digestible documentary history of the Project for Public Spaces (PPS). At only 19 minutes, The Place Man focuses on the career of founder Fred Kent, who William H. Whyte hired to work on the seminal “Street Life Project” that studied and documented how...Read more

  • Town converts parcel into downtown hub

    A sold-out concert by soul music legend Gladys Knight opened a new 2-acre park in Douglasville, Georgia, recently—that’s a good sign for the multipurpose public space in the county seat 30 miles west of Atlanta. Douglasville is another example of a town converting an underutilized parcel downtown...Read more

  • Growing cultural life and mobility in a small city

    Railyard Park in Rogers is the central public space the city has always lacked—providing a place for diverse activities and people, connected to a regional trail network.
    The City of Rogers was founded as a railroad service depot in Benton County, Arkansas, during the 1880s. In 1950, the town still had only 5,000 people. Nearby, Sam Walton started a retail chain in the 1960s that would spur massive growth and forever change the rural town. Now, Rogers is a small...Read more

  • Children, left behind by suburbia, need better community design

    Walkable, mixed-use planning is the key to getting young people outside again and enabling their independence.
    “Why don’t children leave the house?” Childhood in America is losing its charm. The lack of effective transit, coupled with the lack of kid-friendly destinations and the feeling of more dangerous neighborhoods, means that today’s youth find it harder than ever to go outside, meet up with friends,...Read more