The document outlines 10 principles for improving cities through public spaces as identified by the Project for Public Spaces, including improving streets for pedestrians and cyclists, creating multi-use parks and squares, building local economies through markets, and restructuring government to better support public spaces through citizen participation and bottom-up policymaking.

1. 10 Ways to Improve Your City through Public Space
Finding ways to build and maintain healthy public space remains allusive to many municipal
governments, especially in the developing world. The vast web of streets, parks, plazas, and
courtyards that define the public realm is often lacking, too poorly planned, or without adequate
citizen participation in the design process.
Public spaces are increasingly being recognized as a crucial ingredient for successful cities, and
for their ability to revitalize and create economic and social development opportunities. But
actually finding ways to build and maintain healthy public space remains elusive to many
municipal governments, especially in the developing world. The vast web of streets, parks,
plazas, and courtyards that define the public realm is often lacking, too poorly planned, or
without adequate citizen participation in the design process.
Recognizing these challenges, the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) released earlier this month a
draft of their handbook Placemaking and the Future of Cities. It’s intended to serve as a best
practices guide for those wishing to improve the economic, environmental and social health of
their communities through the power of successful public space.
10 fundamental principles for placemaking have been identified by PPS as the keys to vibrant,
safe, and attractive public spaces:
1. Improve Streets as Public Spaces
Streets are the most common public spaces, but they are often hostile to pedestrians and cyclists,
and end up congested with vehicular traffic. This simple principle is about planning streets for
people and places, with the deliberate decision to design streets around all users with a range of
street types to help strike the right balance. Creating good public space where it is most prevalent
and most accessible adds to the social cohesion of the city – the street.
2. Create Squares and Parks as Multi-Use Destinations
Parks and squares are important places in cities when planned right – building economies, civic
pride, social connection and happiness. The great public parks and squares of the world, just like
other great places in cities, are multi-use destinations. By collectively deciding on what will
make the park or square desirable to come to, they will attract a range of people for a multitude
of reasons, coming together for a shared public experience.
3. Build Local Economies Through Markets
Cities originated because of the market – the crossroads for the exchange of goods and
knowledge. This principle embraces that history and recognizes that that essential function has
not changed. Like parks and squares, they bring together all types of people to share in the space
including low income groups who are given an entrepreneurial opportunity with little capital
investment. While they declined in the North American context with the rise of the supermarket,
urban markets are reemerging across the developed world as viable alternatives that help
preserve surrounding farmland, stimulate the local economy, and invigorate surrounding
neighbourhoods.
4. Design Buildings to Support Places
Rapid urbanization around the world is leading to unprecedented building construction.
Buildings play an important role in the shaping of the public realm through their visibility and
they way they interact at street level. They should be built to be permeable and respond to the
block and building fabric around them, built at a human scale, function as multi-use destinations,
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2. and enhance the liveliness of the neighbourhoods they are in. These tenants hold true especially
for public buildings, as they are the anchors of civic life for the entire community.
5. Link a Public Health Agenda to a Public Space Agenda
Public spaces need to be recognized for their contributions to public health: markets can provide
fresh and affordable food, good streets with efficient transit can encourage walking or cycling,
and good public parks and squares can relieve stress and reduce the amount of crime through the
amount of people out on the street. Equally, public health institutions can serve the public spaces
by acting as community centres and providing health and education services.
6. Reinvent Community Planning
This principle is about tapping into the collective wisdom of those that know the community best
– its citizens. By engaging those with a historical perspective, insights into how the area
functions, and an understanding of what is meaningful for locals, it will help to create a sense of
ownership and better ensure the success of public space projects. Institutions and key community
stakeholders should be brought in as partners to work with locals, and together guide
professionals to act as facilitators and resources to help implement their vision. Public space
must also be given the ability to evolve and change over time along with the community to
ensure it continues to function as a great destination.
7. Power of 10
The Power of 10 aims to develop a critical mass of public space elements that comprise a larger
whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. 10 is not a strict number, but is intended to serve
as a foundation. The idea is that if you can provide 10 things to do that attract people to one spot,
you’ve started to create a great place. Building on that, aim for a neighbourhood to provide 10 of
these great places. Further, a city with 10 of these neighbourhoods has now given residents
access to quality public spaces within walking distance of their homes. It’s the sort of
comprehensive goal that municipal decision makers can strive for while giving citizens
something tangible to create at the local level.
8. Create a Comprehensive Public Space Agenda
Comprehensive strategies are required for the development, enhancement, and management
public space. An assessment is needed to create a city-side inventory of the performance of
existing public spaces across the city. Using this inventory, public space goals can be created for
the community that strengthen existing successes and improve areas that are underperforming.
This agenda should be linked to new development projects to preserve and enhance public
environments and use the economic activity of development to help fund other civic public space
improvements.
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Great spaces are the products of an evolution which have increased in complexity over time,
beginning with small, inexpensive improvements. Capatalize on the creativity of citizens who
can continuously try new things. Municipal leaders can get the ball rolling by creating
demonstration projects of light, quick, and cheap improvements that the public can add to and
expand upon to suit their needs. Where there are successes, build upon them. Light, quick, and
cheap improvements are low risk and low cost, but with time, money and effort, successes will
lead to more successes, and great public spaces will emerge.
10. Restructure Government to Support Public Spaces
The principles listed above are about catalyzing local leaders, funding, and strengthening local
resources for the goal of creating great public spaces. However, government is not usually set up
to support this. The achievement of this goal requires the development of consensus building,
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3. city consultation processes, and institutional reform in order to enhance inclusion and build
citizen engagement. Government needs to develop and implement bottom-up policies for this
purpose, strengthening inclusion in the process. Removing bureaucratic obstacles helps to make
participation monetarily feasible for all and quickly implementable. Empowering citizens
through institutional restructuring helps drive all the other principles necessary to create a
positive public realm with health, attractive and well-used public spaces that are a true reflection
of the needs and values of the community they are in.
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