How to Turn a Place Around - by Kathy Madden (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

How to Turn a Place Around is a user-friendly, common sense guide for everyone from community residents to mayors on how to create successful places. The ideas presented in this book reflect over 40 years of Project for Public Spaces experience helping people understand and improve their public spaces. The book illustrates a community-based, place-oriented process organized around eleven basic principles for creating successful public spaces, as well as methods that anyone can use to evaluate a space.

People who read this handbook will learn how short-term actions and visible changes can lead to better public spaces in their own communities. Through examples of people's experiences in other cities, Project for Public Spaces demonstrates that, with an understanding of how a place works, any place can be "turned around."

In the final section of the book, tools such as observations and surveys are described in a simple, how-to manner that will help citizens get all the information they need to understand why some spaces are successful and why some are not. It also provides steps to help the reader lead a community-based visioning process and begin to improve their neighborhood.

Expanded Second Edition: When it was first released in 2000, this user-friendly guidebook helped launch the placemaking movement. Along with a brand new design and vibrant color photos, this second edition adds new tools, like the "Power of 10" exercise and "Place Performance Game"; inspiring new case studies; and a more comprehensive section on how to run a successful placemaking process, from community engagement to creating a vision to implementation.

Review Quotes

"PPS' new places recipe book includes diagrams and tools to evaluate and suggest potential changes for any public space, from a neighborhood playground to a major tourist attraction. Any town, without calling in outside consultants, can use PPS's new book to develop similarly inventive strategies."

- Neal Peirce, Washington Post

"The people involved in the design and development within cities are thinking about all other facets of design, except for what makes a great place."

- Joseph P. Riley, Mayor of Charlestown, SC

"For years, PPS has been helping neighborhoods understand what their assets are, and how to use them to rebuild and restore their public spaces. This book is indispensable for anyone understands that with common sense and a lot of energy, any place can be turned around."

- Dana Crawford, President, Urban Neighborhoods, Inc., developer and preservationist

"Citizens are demanding that state Departments of Transportation do a better job of listening, and that we pay more attention to aesthetic and historic values. This book should be used as a primer for transportation officials to understand all the different elements that go into making a town or city livable."

- John C. Horsley, Executive Director, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)