Project for Public Spaces, Inc. (PPS) is a nonprofit technical assistance, research, and educational organization. PPS's mission-to create and sustain public places that build communities- is achieved through programs in parks, plazas, and central squares; transportation; public buildings and architecture; and public markets.

Since its founding in 1975, the organization has worked in over 1,000 communities, within the United States and abroad, helping people grow their public spaces into vital and distinctive community places that are well integrated into the community fabric and enrich people's experience of public life. PPS considers public spaces to include the many areas that the public uses in common, indoors and out, in public or private ownership; among these are streets, parks, plazas, and their surrounding environments, as well as entire downtowns and neighborhood districts.

To ensure that a public space fulfills its potential for increasing community - and environmental-friendliness, PPS has, for the past 27 years, emphasized Placemaking, a methodology to create places on a human scale that respond to community needs, that feel safe and comfortable-especially to families and the elderly-and that are conducive to community gathering. PPS's Placemaking process allows diverse constituencies to identify how a public space can be reshaped to make it a welcome, well functioning, and attractive place for people.

Our approach to Placemaking is based on its belief that it is not enough simply to develop design ideas and elements to improve or develop a public space. Improvements need to reflect community values and needs. We believe that a public involvement process that defines and responds to community conditions and needs from the outset is one of the most critical factors in achieving a public space that is truly sensitive to its context.

Thus, Placemaking, as PPS approaches it, must begin with a thorough understanding of the dynamics, desires, and conditions within a community. It involves observation and research and listening to the people in a community about its problems and aspirations. We work with community members to create a vision around the places they view as important to community life and to their daily experience; and we help them implement their ideas beginning with short-term, often experimental improvements that enable them to gain momentum and arrive at truly appropriate and lasting solutions.