Kathy Madden

Architecture of Place

Porches: Where People's Lives Connect

"Of Porches there are two sorts: the decorative and the useful, the porch that is only a platform and the porch you can lie around on in your pajamas and read the Sunday Paper" – Garrison Keillor

Great Public Spaces

Learning from Valletta, Malta A Treasured City on the Mediterranean

Valletta is a very dynamic and social place for locals and visitors. Its public spaces excel in ways from which every community can learn. It demonstrates the power of comfortable and well-connected gathering places in maintaining vibrant social life.

Community Discussion

San Diego: A Waterfront Waiting to Happen Year, After Year, After Year

San Diego's central waterfront could be one of the best waterfronts in the world. But it will take some work. The good news is that its transformation can be started immediately, with publicly owned land along the existing waterfront – from streets to under-used open spaces!

Amenities

Why Focal Points are Essential for Great Squares

What a focal point is varies greatly with each square. Sometimes it is as simple as a good spot to sit, a fountain, or a statue on which kids can play and climb. The ones we are interested in are the ones that are swarming with people.

Architecture of Place

Balboa Park: San Diego's Global Destination

Ever changing. Always amazing. Where culture, science, and nature collide, It is home to more than 16 museums, performing arts venues, gardens and other attractions, including the San Diego Zoo on 1,200 acres.

Amenities

The Little Bollard That Could... Do a Lot

A simple tool that can make any city more walkable and pleasurable

Sidewalks

The Best Sidewalk in North America

Sidewalks are the foundation to making the social life of communities thrive. The best sidewalks share certain traits that make them welcoming, accessible, and socially active places.

Sidewalks

Who Owns the Intersection Defines the Social Life of Neighborhoods

You can tell a great city by its corners. If the intersection is owned by the vehicles, it is a city for cars and traffic. If the community controls the intersections/corners, it is a city of neighborhoods.

Streets

A Great Street: Buenos Aires' Calle La Defensa

Buenos Aires' Calle La Defensa is a memorable street any day—but especially on Sundays, when crowds gather to walk, shop, dance, eat and have fun interacting with the street performers.

Sidewalks

Two Buildings that Build Life: Fostering Sidewalk Social Life in Brooklyn and Paris

A building needs a base, At the street level, buildings with small shops that spill into the public space that has a plaza with a market or double-loaded sidewalk, buildings can come alive. What is outside becomes inside, and what is inside becomes outside.

Architecture of Place

Community Discussion: Creating the Heart of Brooklyn — Brooklyn Borough Hall, Court House, Cadman Plaza down to Fulton Landing

Few would argue with the statement that Brooklyn Borough Hall, Court House, and Cadman Plaza may be the most underperforming public spaces in New York City. Their potential is enormous.

Public Markets

The Magic of Holiday Markets

As you look at the best markets around the world, they are dynamic year-round destinations in the center for most cities. Bryant Park and Victualen Market in New York City and Munich are prime examples.

Remembering Don Miles

Don Miles was a long-time friend of ours and a founding board member of Project for Public Spaces in 1975. He passed away in Seattle on December 2, 2021.

Community Discussion

Seven Catalytic Placemaking Strategies: A Discussion about the Future of Vermont Downtowns

Restoring social life in Vermont starts with a rethinking of streets, public spaces and community institutions

Top Ideas

Discussion: Next Steps for the Global Placemaking Movement

Imagine if the places where we live were shaped for, and from, our social lives, re-imagined to make it easy for us to gather, shop, have fun, eat together, and be around people different from us. we would collectively have an impact on the health of our planet.

Amenities

Have a Seat? How Seating Shapes Welcoming Cities

Benches and seating are not objects; they are mirrors to our social behavior. We have seen it time and again, that where there is seating, there is life.

Great Public Spaces

Time-Honored Places: The Public Square

Public Spaces as squares are plazas in Spain, Latin America, and sometimes the U.S., piazzas in Italy, platz in German-speaking countries, and simply "square" everywhere in between. In many small towns they have the Village Green. In essence they are the main gathering places for people.

Waterfronts

Discussion - Brooklyn Promenade Social Seating and Cafe/Kiosk

The entire promenade is very stark and not very inviting except for the extraordinary view. By initially just adding a few items to experiment with, the community could see what might be possible in the future

Amenities

You are where you sit: Zurich shows us how

People thrive in place that reflect their personality and where they can be seen in ways that others understand something about who they are. Different people need different settings. Diversity of seating is a basic need and varies for each place.

Architecture of Place

Vancouver Community Discussion: Has Vancouver lost its Soul? Can they Create the Waterfront they Deserve?

Vancouver is no longer a small city along the west coast of North America. It has the highest population density in Canada. Two questions: Has it lost its soul? Can it create the great waterfront a great city deserves?

Climate Resilience

How Placemaking and Social Life are Helping Win the Climate War - 11 Ways

When it comes to addressing climate change in a way that actually moves the needle, the creativity and community-orientation that always defined the global Placemaking movement can be the foundation for the future of communities everywhere--and for our planet.

Great Public Spaces

Catalytic Places: Public Squares, Part I

What great squares have to offer their communities is limitless. Above all, it's the social life that works in these squares: What are perhaps the most magical parts about these places are the simple, crucial chance encounters that allow us to have with others.

Neighborhoods

A Big Idea - Staring us Right in our Face

Placemaking Resource Center: Creating organic and productive places for people to come together, reflect on the social life of their cities and communities, spark new ideas through conversations and case studies, and be inspired to take the social life of these places into their own hands

Amenities

Throwing (Good) Shade for Placemaking

Shade can become an intentional strategy — developed with communities, led by communities. If we do it right, the addition of shade in all its forms can have an enormous collective impact on walkability, Social Life, and climate resilience.

Waterfronts

Pop-up Restaurants on the Waterfront: Six Cities that Do it Well

Eating along the water is almost universally appealing. We are drawn to the waterfronts that have them