Help For Your Park

Resources

We offer a wide range of resources that can help you understand more about the problems and issues you face with your parks and other public spaces. These include:

Workshops

All workshops are tailored to help you in evaluating your parks and to build consensus among stakeholders. After the workshop, the Institute typically writes a short report based on the findings. The people who participate will learn to:

• Understand the attributes of a good place
• Evaluate their own places
• Increase the use of public spaces
• Build consensus around a plan for their place
• Develop innovative partnerships
• Secure financial resources

Planning & Visioning

We can help your community to build a vision for transforming its public realm, using techniques such as time-lapse filming, observations and specially designed surveys to analyze how people actually use space.

The end product is typically a concept/vision for a place that outlines the issues, makes recommendations and suggests a strategy for the next steps. Recommendations include small-scale, easily implemented improvements that quickly enhance the social and economic vitality of public spaces.

Specific components of the process include:

• Analyzing the problems of the space
• Setting objectives
• Site observations and documentation
• User interviews and on-site behavioral analysis
• Literature research
• Community visioning and public forums
• Management programs for the space (e.g.: events programming, maintenance, security, retail planning)

PPS Design Center

The PPS Design Center helps you to take the next step. Depending on the project, our assistance could include any of the following:

• Conceptual designs
• Amenity and art selection
• Master planning/urban design plans
• Design review and design guidelines
• Implementation strategies
• Collaboration with others firms to offer skills such as retail analysis and traffic engineering

Design Management

For people who do not have the time or expertise to give guidance to the implementation process, the Institute can oversee that process. Our continued involvement in the planning and design process ensures that the vision arrived at is realized at the end, and not lost through a series of changes and compromises made by consultants. Depending on the client's needs, we can provide:

• Funding and financial recommendations
• Oversight of presentation drawings and cost estimates for fundraising purposes
• Assistance in making presentations to project partners and funders
• Translating planning objectives into a scope of services for designers and other consultants
• Oversight of the design process from concept to construction documents
• Guidance to designer selection process

Pilot Project Implementation

Short-term actions can be a way of not only testing ideas, but also giving people the confidence that change is occurring and that their ideas matter. The Institute can help you implement these projects, whether physical, programmatic or management. Such projects may include experimental paint striping for new pedestrian crosswalks, or launching a trial farmers' market. Our involvement can include:

• Planning and budgeting
• Identification of sources for materials and equipment
• Project launch and implementation
• Development of management organization
• Project evaluation

Project Evaluation

Whether or not we work with you on implementation, the Institute can help you evaluate the impact of your project and identify potential next steps to continue or expand your place-making. Our services can help with the ongoing management of your public space. You can also use our evaluation products to attract interest and new funding to your projects. Components of the process include:

• Site observations and documentation
• User interviews and on-site behavioral analysis
• Community and public forums

Products

The outcome of our work with you depends on the nature of the project and on how far into the project we continue to work with you. We summarize our findings in draft format for comment - they are then finalized. Our reports are based on the findings of interviews, data collection, the vision for the area, and specific recommendations for physical, programmatic and management improvements. They are clearly written and include a staged action plan, starting with low-cost, easily doable changes. Depending on the project, final reports could include:

• Perspective sketches, renderings, conceptual designs
• Time lapse and behavior mapping charts
• Amenity and art selection and design guidelines
• Master planning/urban design plans
• Outcomes of market/local needs analysis
• Examples of best practices from other parts of the country or world
• Transportation, parking, planning, and zoning recommendations
• Business development, marketing, and management opportunities (e.g. maintenance, security, promotion, events, leasing and retail recruitment)
• Implementation plans and matrixes
• Recommendations for public/private partnerships
• Funding strategies and financial plans
• Pilot projects/actions

Why Choose the Urban Parks Institute at Project for Public Spaces?

Project for Public Spaces, Inc. has an international reputation for its work In the planning, design and management of public spaces.

Key strengths

Focus on communities: We put particular emphasis on the needs of people in neighborhoods and what they want.

Places, not projects: We help people create active, thriving parks, markets and downtowns, rather than create designs with little relevance to everyday life.

Proven track record: We have 25 years of experience and have worked in 1,000 neighborhoods, 46 states and 12 countries.

Broad portfolio of projects: Our experience is not limited to parks, plazas and central squares. We work in all kinds of public spaces, from streets and transit stations to waterfronts, markets, public buildings, and more!

Rigorous community process: We are pioneers in community involvement, using a range of techniques - including workshops, customized surveys, and interactive planning tools - that help residents and stakeholders create a vision to "turn a place around".

Holistic approach: We look at the relationships between spaces - for example, between transit stops, adjacent streets and parks - rather than considering these spaces in isolation.

Access to resources: We offer a wide range of resources - publications, videos, research findings, websites, contact databases, listserves, conferences, training courses and more.

Wide range of services: Our specialties run from visioning and conceptual designs to master planning, funding and financial plans, design management and implementation.

Results-oriented: We focus on addressing practical, real-world needs. Our phased action plans start with small-scale, high-impact improvements that can be implemented immediately, and then build to a transforming vision for a place.

Widely recognized: Our work is well-known and respected, enabling us to develop collaborative partnerships and leverage funding and resources for projects as they are being conceived.

Committed to the public interest: As a non-profit organization we take a broad approach to our work that emphasizes the public interest. Our research and education activities inform and enrich our technical assistance.

Selected Projects in Parks, Squares and Plazas