Project for Public Spaces

Taking our schools outdoors should not be a revolutionary idea, after our year-long dining experiment. Yet the city has been sluggish at best about moving schools into outdoor space, let alone streets.

Vision Zero? How about Vision 25 by 25?

Gary Toth is director of transportation initiatives at Project for Public Spaces. This post first appeared on PPS's Placemaking Blog.

A DOT team received a mix of gratitude and derision at Tuesday's public forum about recent pedestrian improvements in the Meatpacking District, which attracted an audience of about 100 people to the Housing Works offices on West 13th Street. It was an interesting window onto the competing interests now vying to shape what has been, from the beginning, a genuinely community-based project seeking to put pedestrians on equal footing with vehicle traffic.

In his storied career at New Jersey DOT, Gary Toth played an indispensable role changing the culture of the agency, promoting a place-based ethic instead of the auto-centric transportation planning dogma. Today Toth heads transportation initiatives at Project for Public Spaces, where he has written "A Citizen's Guide to Better Streets." The book, which will be published by AARP, serves as a how-to for working constructively with your local transportation and planning agencies. (It is not yet available for purchase.)

Broadway Boulevard takes center stage in a USA Today story on New York City's recent pedestrian improvements. Those who questioned whether people would sit in plazas near passing traffic have their answer:

Tuesday evening, Project for Public Spaces held a "placemaking" community workshop for Manhattan's Upper East Side, featuring PPS founder and president Fred Kent. Streetsblog regular BicyclesOnly was there and files this report.

According to the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), Portland, Oregon's Pioneer Courthouse Square is one of the Top 10 greatest public spaces in the U.S. & Canada. I couldn't agree more. Affectionately referred to as the city's "living room" the charming and versatile block was once slated to be a parking garage in the 1960s. Thankfully the residents didn't let that happen.

On Friday, Streetsblog looked at how northern Virginia can't get enough road widening. As a follow-up, Gary Toth of Project for Public Spaces directed us to another example of how smart growth faces hurdles in the places that need it most -- in this case, the Trenton suburb of Bordentown, New Jersey (right: the main drag).