What We Do

PPS is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities. We provide technical assistance, education, and research through programs in parks, plazas and central squares; buildings and civic architecture; transportation; and public markets. Since our founding in 1975, we have worked in over 1,500 communities in the United States and around the world, helping people to grow their public spaces into vital community places.

Improving Public Spaces Through Placemaking

Our multi-faceted Placemaking approach to planning and design is rooted in the communities we serve and the places that are important to them. Building on the techniques from William H. Whyte's ground-breaking Street Life Project, it involves looking at, listening to and asking questions of the people in a community to discover their needs and aspirations.

We work with them to create a vision around the places that they view as important to community life and to their daily experience. Then we help them implement their ideas, beginning with small-scale, do-able improvements that can be phased in quickly and immediately begin bringing benefits to a community.

One key to this process is reaching out to people - including those who might not otherwise participate in an improvement effort - where they live, work and congregate. We use systematic on-site observations, time-lapse filming, and customized interviews and surveys to gather people's input and document and analyze their activities.

Our process also utilizes Placemaking workshops, facilitated public forums, and other types of meetings and partnerships to give people an opportunity from the outset to identify issues, contribute ideas, and make decisions about improvements that can address their concerns. Using this multifaceted approach, we are able to help people enhance the places where they live and work, and rebuild communities both in spirit and as places.

BUILDING A PLACEMAKING MOVEMENT

Besides our work in communities, PPS's Placemaking mission is reinforced through a membership program and a host of other initiatives, resources, and activities. These include:

Our growing schedule of "How to Turn a Place Around" workshops; a history of producing national and international conferences that bring together experts and innovators in urban parks and public markets; and a training course that shows traffic engineers how to think "beyond the pavement" to the role that streets and roads can play in enhancing communities.

In addition to a range of publications, our web-based Urban Parks and Better Buildings resource centers and image database help people transform public spaces into true community places.

Finally, our Great Public Spaces website, the Great Public Spaces Awards, and our family of listserves nurture a growing community of people who, like us, are committed to Placemaking in their professions and their communities.

Support Great Places - Become a PPS Member

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