Start here · Essential guide
Creating Vibrant Public Spaces: Urban Placemaking
An introduction to placemaking as a community-led way to shape plazas, streets and parks, including low-cost pilots and the approach's real limits.
Streets and Public Spaces
Public Spaces
Placemaking, design and art in plazas and parks.
Creating Inclusive Public Spaces: Strategies for Urban Development
A practical look at making parks and plazas work for different ages, incomes and abilities, from seating and paths to programming and everyday management.
Creating Vibrant Public Spaces through Art and Culture
How events, performances and cultural programming bring plazas to life, from planning and permits to costs, and why they differ from permanent artworks.
Creating Vibrant Public Spaces through Public Art
A plain guide to murals, sculpture and installations in public space: how they are commissioned, how communities weigh in, who maintains them and who they speak to.
Creating Vibrant Public Spaces: The Power of Urban Design
How scale, edges, sightlines and lighting influence whether people choose to linger in a plaza, street or park, and why design is only part of the story.
Creating Vibrant Public Spaces: Urban Design Strategies
A practical design checklist for squares and streets covering seating, shade, active edges, flexible layouts and the small details that make a space usable.
Creating Vibrant Public Spaces: Urban Renewal Strategies for Success
How tired plazas and waterfront edges are redeveloped as part of renewal, with attention to funding, phasing, disruption and the risk of displacement.
Designing Inclusive Public Spaces: Strategies for Urban Development
How seating, lighting, programming and rules shape who feels welcome in plazas and parks, and who is quietly or openly pushed out.
Public Space Maintenance and Who Pays
Why upkeep money is the weak point of many new plazas, what maintenance really covers, and the main ways cities and partners try to fund it over time.
Revitalizing Public Art: Urban Development Strategies for Cultural Revitalization
How mural programs and installations are commissioned and maintained, how residents can help choose them, and why art can accompany displacement.
Revitalizing Public Spaces through Community Engagement
How residents can help decide what a particular park, plaza or street becomes, using co-design workshops, pop-up trials and other practical methods.
Revitalizing Public Spaces through Urban Design
Specific physical design moves such as lighting, edges, sightlines, paving and furniture that change how a space is used, with honest notes on their limits.
Revitalizing Public Spaces: The Power of Urban Development
Why cities invest in public space, what parks and plazas can contribute socially and economically, and why those benefits are never guaranteed.
Revitalizing Public Spaces: Urban Development Strategies
A city-wide approach to public space: auditing existing places, setting priorities, and funding and maintaining a network instead of one-off showpieces.
Revitalizing Public Spaces: Urban Development Strategies for Vibrant Communities
What makes public places feel active across a day and a year, and how that activity relates to community identity, with cautions about forcing liveliness.
Revitalizing Public Spaces: Urban Placemaking Strategies
Short-term, low-cost placemaking tactics such as pop-ups, markets and temporary installations, and how successful trials can lead to lasting change.
Revitalizing Public Spaces: Urban Renewal Strategies for Parks and Plazas
How hard-surfaced civic squares and plazas differ from green parks in layout, microclimate and programming, and what renewing a plaza involves.
Revitalizing Urban Cultural Districts: A Guide to Successful Redevelopment
How a cultural district is designated and grown: anchor venues, affordable space for artists, and ways to keep rising rents from pushing creators out.
The Art of Urban Renewal: How to Revitalize Neighborhoods through Public Art
How neighborhood-scale art projects are commissioned and maintained, and the risk that art-led renewal prices out the artists and residents it celebrates.
The Importance of Public Spaces in Urban Development and Renewal
Why the public realm of streets, squares and parks works as essential infrastructure in development and renewal, supporting daily life and project value.
The Importance of Public Spaces in Urban Renewal
What renewal tends to do to existing public places, including who gains and who may lose access when a familiar plaza, street or park is redesigned.
The Role of Public Spaces in Building Community
How everyday contact in parks, plazas and streets builds familiarity and neighborhood trust, what the evidence suggests, and where public spaces fall short.
The Role of Urban Design in Shaping Social Behavior
How layout, seating, lighting and sight lines influence how people gather, move and interact in public space, and why design determinism is a mistake.
Urban Development and the Revitalization of Public Libraries
How libraries are updated as civic spaces: layout, services, opening hours and their role as a free public gathering place in changing neighborhoods.
Urban Development and the Revitalization of Public Libraries: A Regional Perspective
How a system of local library branches is planned across a region, comparing rural, suburban and urban needs in general terms, without naming specific systems.
Urban Development and the Revitalization of Public Spaces
A general overview of why and how run-down streets, squares and commons are brought back into use, and how success can be judged fairly.
Urban Development and the Revitalization of Public Spaces: A Global Perspective
How climate, customs and history change how people use shared places in different parts of the world, described in general terms without naming specific projects.
Related topics
More in streets and public spaces
Livable Cities Design principles and strategies for pleasant places to live. Walkable Cities and Mobility Walking, sustainable transport and street design. Downtown Revitalization Bringing central business areas back to life with a balanced mix of uses. Main Streets Reviving traditional commercial streets in towns and neighborhoods. Waterfront Redevelopment Turning city shorelines into open, working and resilient places. Mixed-Use Development Combining homes, shops and workplaces, and the density that supports them. Future of Cities Trends, technology and mobility shaping cities ahead. Public Art and Culture Art in public places and its role in renewal. Technology in Cities How digital tools and smart city ideas fit into planning, renewal and city services.