Great Places Symposium

Email from Fred Kent, President of Project for Public Spaces:

For the past few years PPS has been working with two of our board members, Ron Sher and Don Miles from Seattle , on a regional initiative around great places. Both Ron and Don are very active in the region. Ron has developed some old, failing shopping centers into vibrant community gathering places. Don is a partner in a very excellent architecture firm Zimmer Gunsul Frasca. His specialty has been the design of community friendly buildings for campuses, and transportation facilities.

Within the Seattle region, Ron and Don, along with Karen True, have been developing a leadership group around “Great Places” leading up to an event in the summer of 2008 called the Great Places Day. This day will be a catalyst for civic engagement and will help initiate a major movement around the idea of place for the entire Cascade Region. The essence of this idea is that places, at the regional scale, and issues relating to regional growth need to be coupled with issues around place at the local community level. We need to focus on both the community and the regional issues as we think about our how growth will shape all our regions or metropolitan areas over the next 50 - 100 years.

This campaign needs to be centered on the broad idea of sustainability, growth, economic development and social capitol. It needs to result in public and private collaborations from many sectors. It is imperative that the convergence of the many interests within the entire region be focused on this campaign.

A small group of leaders will be meeting for a Great Places Symposium in Seattle , July 19-21, 2007. The goal is to shape a campaign to generate a broad understanding and appreciation of the importance of “great places.” Participants will be leaders in their communities who understand “Placemaking” and the links between livable communities, economic vitality and environmental sustainability. We hope to combine the individual knowledge and experience of you who are already doing this work to:

• Draft guiding principles stating our commitment to strengthen communities, stimulate growth and foster sustainability by organizing around the concept of place;

• Brainstorm outreach strategies for a great places campaign;

• Plan the public launch of the Great Places Day and Conference in 2008;

• Help determine other regions where this effort might be initiated.

The symposium will take place in a variety of extraordinary Seattle venues, including the new Olympic Sculpture Park, the waterfront, and the expanded Seattle Art Museum . We have included ample time to network with peers, including attendees at the concurrent Mayors’ Institute of City Design , and time to experience the dazzling beauty of summer in Seattle .

As we plan this campaign, we are looking for ten more people to attend the symposium in July to consider duplicating it in other regions around the world. The mix of leaders for this July event represents the first time for many to be part of such a broad initiative. We want to open this up for people who might take this enormously important idea back to another region or metropolitan area and seek a way to implement a similar effort.

Let me know if you are interested. We should discuss further how this could affect your region and how we might be able to help you build a constituency. Call or email me so we can talk.

There will be a small registration fee for this Great Places Symposium to cover incidentals for this gathering. More information is available on the website.