Placemaking
Some urban spaces – squares, parks, sidewalks or entire urban neighborhoods – feel more like empty spaces than lively, public gathering places. Urban Place helps cities turn their public spaces into vital places by developing an understanding of how people use a particular space and then facilitating change to improve its use.
From 1989 to 1992, Urban Place was the California representative for Project for Public Spaces, and since then, we have worked with 25 cities in attracting people back to downtowns by making them more pedestrian-friendly, easier to access, and places they connect with and want to be. This often takes the form of developing programs to create wayfinding and signage, calming traffic and rethinking often over looked space, updating existing events, and re-connecting the neighborhood to what makes it unique.
Carlsbad, CA
The City of Carlsbad hired Urban Place to revitalize the Village (Downtown Carlsbad). Unlike most of Urban Places’ projects, the Village did not have a need for cleaning or safety programs, it was already a pleasant space, however it was not a place. You did not
experience the village, there was no community places to connect to your neighbors. So, after listening to what the community, stakeholders and residents wanted, Urban Place set about to make places to enjoy, to sit and relax, to eat and drink and talk to your neighbors, places to connect and have experiences.