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I've seen some of these films; might want to watch the others. It's definitely worth watching for Place in films, always.
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When you’re watching a movie, how much attention do you pay to the setting? While the best way to learn about what makes a great place is often to get out and observe how public spaces work first-hand, there are films that illustrate Placemaking principles quite beautifully. We’ve collected ten of our favorites here, with explanations of why we think they tell great stories about place.
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Five excellent articles on *placemaking*.
Upcoming September conference in Norway on waterfronts and public space.
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The important themes of the conference include creating “Multi-use Destinations”, forging an “Architecture of Place”, expanding the idea of accessibility and the role of transportation on waterfronts and the important potential impact of markets on local economies.
* Creating “Multi-use Destinations” on Waterfronts: Multi-use destinations define what a city is about and are the premier public spaces in a city that attract and highlight the local assets and unique talents and skills of the community. The combination of uses – educational, cultural, retail, and commercial – are open and available for visitors to freely partake in and are accessible physically, and in terms of how they are perceived. Successful multi-use destinations are always changing because they are flexible enough to easily adapt to different times of day and year and they are proactively managed to take advantage of these differences.
* Forging an “Architecture of Place”: In many ways, iconic buildings have defined the past 50 years of modern architecture in cities. However, as cities and waterfronts evolve, a new idea of design is emerging called an “architecture of place”, which indicates that cities will become more livable, sustainable and authentic in the future. Public institutions such as museums, government buildings and libraries will become important anchors for civic activity that host a broader range of activities than they currently do and a new type of design will support that quest.
* Expanding the Idea of Accessibility and the Role of Transportation: In the last 100 years cities, (particularly waterfronts), have been defined by transportation decisions that were geared largely in favor of the car. The result is a system of streets and highways that reinforce a design ethos that is more about seeing or viewing rather than participating in communities. However, we are now seeing a massive shift in cities throughout the world where peo
Some interesting ideas articulated at the two-day Forum on multi-use destinations, held on Granville Island in Vancouver (organized by Project for Public Spaces).
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-Public multi-use destinations like Granville Island have proven to be most successful, and we should replicate them more often. Why do we spend so much money on new developments that don’t work and that don’t attract people?
-Don’t lead with design. The design of multi-use destinations should be to create a “setting” for the uses that are occurring and that emphasize the products and the authentic aspects of the place.
-The importance of government learning to say “yes” to new ideas and developing stronger more trusting relationships with the private sector.
-“If you think you’re done, you’re finished” – Developing spaces that are flexible and that “manage themselves.” In other words, ongoing and innovative management is key to create vibrant multi-use destinations.
-“The magic is in the mix.” We are moving beyond the simple concept of “mixed use” toward a technique of development that builds authentic places through establishing settings and uses that are intimately related, interconnected and interdependent. True sustainability comes from the relationships between uses, tenants, and the organizations within a place.
-Find creative funding strategies to keep rents low, attract a range of tenants and incentivize the presence of tenants who may not produce a lot of money for the site, but who bring a lot of foot traffic and are invested in the area.
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Density & livability doesn't have a singular form. Think choices instead:
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Livability is about choices, and if you want to pay four to five dollars a gallon to drive ten miles, you should have that right. But you should also have the right to avoid paying four dollars for a gallon of gas when you go buy half a gallon of milk. More to the point, if your monthly fuel costs cause you to not be able to pay your mortgage, as so many hard working Americans discovered in 2008, it becomes a problem to have no other options.
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The anti-livability gurus decry the administration’s approach as top-down. But has any community — rural, suburban or urban — ever seen a more top-down approach than the way state DOTs built the interstate highway system and continued to add more and more freeways? I should know; I served at the New Jersey Department of Transportation from 1973 to 2007. I watched community after community, property owner after property owner, feel powerless and helpless over how we conducted our business.
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Placemaking makes the case for economic robustness. Great profile of Vancouver's Granville Island, too.
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...cities first emerged because people gathered together at crossroads, creating busy, vibrant places to exchange goods and ideas. Cities grew out of commerce. The same holds true today. Cities need great places that provide the settings for these kinds of interactions. This is what businesses seek. They want places that are attractive to employees, places where connections can happen, where productivity and creativity increase and where the professional networks foster collaboration and innovation.
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People often think of both of these spots as tourist havens, with the usual low-pay, no-future tourist jobs. But a closer look shows that tourists are not the primary force behind the economic success of these places: Granville Island and Balboa Park are multi-use destinations that are heavily used by the local population. After all, at the Granville Island Market the highest-performing vendor is the meat market, which shows that it is a major attraction for locals.
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Studies have shown that even tourists themselves are more interested in an authentic experience than artificial attractions created expressly for them. All over the world travelers are drawn to places—Paris, Tuscany, San Francisco, Kyoto, you name it—with unique qualities that make these destinations interesting and vital. The last thing many tourists seek is to mingle with other tourists. By making more appealing places for residents, you attract tourists better than if you are trying to attract tourists.
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Fascinating read about how the concept of "forgiving highways" (forged in the 1960s), and why it needs rethinking in built-up areas, and how the Dutch are leading the way.
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Forgiving Highways is a concept that designs roads to “forgive” mistakes made on the road. It seeks to smoothly redirect the vehicles that leave roads, and allow wide enough clear zones to bring vehicles to controlled stops if and when they leave the roads. Breakaway supports, burying the end of guardrail, clearing the roadside of unneeded obstacles, and flattening and rounding slopes and ditch sections became standard design as part of the concept.
The idea that Forgiving Highways (wider and straighter) would reduce crashes on non-freeways took root during the 1966 National Highway Safety hearings.
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Obviously, "forgiving highways" works well in a non-urban context, but in an urban context, arterials built with those guidelines provide a false sense of security for drivers, and leave pedestrians and cyclists (anyone "weaker") in the lurch.
I'm particularly interested in this entry right now, because it seems to me that the City of Victoria's Engineering Department is stuck in a "forgiving highway" mindset as it tries to convince us that the city's Johnson Street Bridge needs to be replaced.
Portal page for two additional links, "10 Qualities of a Great Waterfront" and "The 9 most important steps in revitalizing a waterfront." The main worry for the authors here ("A common challenge is how to revitalize places where the river, lake or sea has been cut off from the rest of town by wide roadways or hulking industrial facilities") doesn't apply to Victoria, whose waterfront is *not* cut off by road arterials or industrial areas. But in general terms, there are still some nuggets on the linked-to pages.
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