How placemaking can save the planet
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 people use public spaces in New York City, starting in the early 1970s.
That project launched Kent’s career in placemaking, which has spanned more than 50 years. He founded PPS in 1975.
For me, the most memorable parts of The Place Man are quotes from a recent interview of Kent, distilling what he has learned. “If you want to seed a place with activity,” he says. “You start with ice cream.” That sounds about right—and here is how he defines placemaking. “If architecture is frozen music, and planning is composition, placemaking is improvisational street performance.”
Placemaking, he says, “is the most basic idea of people on this planet, helping to make their community and their lives better.” The next step for placemaking is a “global transformation,” he argues.
“Cities have to be reborn. ... They have failed on so many levels. And not just the cities but the suburbs, even more so. And so we really need a global transformation, and if that transformation is done around places and placemaking, it'll save the planet.”
See the documentary below. It’s a worthwhile way to spend a third of an hour.
Editor's note: This article addresses CNU’s Strategic Plan goal of advancing design strategies that help communities adapt to climate change and mitigate its future impact.
