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| Granville Island Public Market Photo: Hutch |
Every
community needs a commons where people can gather as friends,
neighbors and citizens. This can be a grand public square, a humble
Main Street or a vacant lot with a few handmade benches where locals
sit down for conversation. Or even a bridge, beach or bus station, as
the examples below show.
What’s
important are the connections made among people, which can lead to
wonderful things: friendships, love affairs, partnerships that flower
into new ideas for businesses or community projects.
Project
for Public Spaces,
a New York-based group that works around the world helping citizens
boost the sense of community in their neighborhoods, compiled a
comprehensive catalog of more than 600 of the best public spaces
around the world. Here is a selection of some of the most inspiring,
many of them very modest and in surprisingly humble locations, which
can offer ideas about creating or improving a commons in your
own town.
You
can find out more—including practical information about elements
what make these places succeed as commons—and nominate your own
favorite public spaces at Project for Public Spaces’s Great
Public Spaces Hall
of Fame. You can peruse PPS’s Hall
of Shame to
learn what mistakes not to repeat from over 60 of the most
disappointing public spaces around the world.
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