There are few better authorities for comparing the thousands of neighborhoods, streets and public spaces than the American Planning Association, especially since their vast membership represents just about every one of these destinations. Thus, special attention should be applied to their annual Great Places in America, with ten designees in each of the three aforementioned categories. However, they choose new recipients each year, and this is its second year, so you may want to check out their 2007 winners - scroll down to see them here.

How does can this apply to your city, neighborhood? Not only do these provide great models, but the site also lists the detailed criteria for how these were selected.

You can easily see the 30 choices on one page at their Great Places in America 2008 site, so rather than list them all, here’s a review.

Great Public Spaces - You can’t go wrong with this list, particularly since they didn’t have public spaces as a category in 2007.

Great Neighborhoods - The ones with a more urban vibe include Charles Village, Baltimore, Maryland and their deeply strong sense of community; the revitalization of new to complement historic downtown Salem, Massachusetts; the arts community in Echo Park, Los Angeles; the college-life-infused Greater University Hill in Syracuse, New York; the loft conversion movement of Old Town Wichita, Wichita, Kansas; and the beautiful quaint architecture and cobblestone streets of Society Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (pictured). The others on the list are more small town family/retiree oriented.

Great Streets - Looking at the entries that fit the tone of a freshened natural cultural district at a more human scale, these are the historic, nightlife rich 7th Avenue in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida; the historic fishing waterfront of Commercial Street in Portland, Maine; the true urban of Washington Street in Boston; and the creative urban hotspots along West Main Street in Louisville, Kentucky.

The online world centers around conversation, via discussion forums, chat rooms, comment threads, Facebook’s ‘Walls’… many of these mediums didn’t exist ten years ago, even five years ago. That’s not difficult to fathom, given that today it doesn’t take more than five minutes to set up an online community with all these things. However, an internet minute is equivalent to a real estate year, so if you’ve subconsciously wondered why walking through your built environment lacks the spontaneity and enthusiasm of surfing the net, that’s because it hasn’t been manifested in the real world… yet.

An initial question is, what would that look like? Virtual discussion forums consist of a regular community of people with like-minded interests that freely converse in a common place. A physical version of that would be presented in two ways:

1. A regular community of people within a physical community that freely converse in a physical public forum, such as a piazza, plaza, courtyard or square, at the center of where they’re most likely to cross paths, such as the center of downtown. However, they need to be provided with a myriad of dining and drinking choices via outdoor tables because food is the one thing that brings people together, and it supports the economic vitality to keep the place vibrant and fresh.

2. A regular community of people with like-minded interests that freely converse in a third place, such as a coffeehouse, cafe, pub, rooftop hangout, with both an ongoing series of events that support those interests which eventually lead to spontaneous encounters in between. It’s the latter that sparks the notion that there’s a real sense of community going on here, and an innate sense of enthusiasm that you can’t get online.

It helps to be social network bilingual in both the virtual and physical world.

How do you see the social dynamics of the virtual world transformed into your physical world?

Image: A cafe-lined square in Freiburg, Germany by Jassy-50.

In May 2008 the NYC DOT (Department of Transportation) announced plans for the Broadway Boulevard, a pedestrianized street from 35th to 42nd avenue.

By the end of August 2008, a mere three months later, the pedestrian plaza is completed. That’s a rare sign of a government bureaucracy defying being a bureaucracy, opting for a more effective people-oriented decision-making process, such as their streets to plaza program.

The public-private partnership is a model of sharing responsibilities:
The private sector Business Improvement District: Plantings, sweeping/litter removal, supplemental furniture, programming
The public sector DOT: Planters (46 large, 126 small), roadbed surface treatment, starter kit of furniture

Image source: zodak

How do you top Maryland’s first pedestrian-only street in several decades and its first pedestrian-only mixed-use lane? Easy, its first real piazza, which we profiled while in the planning stages here.

The $360 million, 15-acre Rockville Town Square has literally become the city’s center stage overnight, hosting concerts, movies, a farmer’s market and even a rock climbing wall. Being in the space feels right - it’s like an outdoor room, enclosed on four sides, filled with outdoor dining tables and trees that will transform the place as they mature. Two blocks from Washington DC Metro/subway, it features 108,000 s.f. of restaurants and shops plus a 100,000 s.f. library, with 644 condominiums in three stories above.

While far from having a true creative, organic vibe because it was built all at once involving one developer, thus the predominance of national chains, this is a major step forward toward seeing one of these within a natural cultural district.

Manhattan is on a roll - first there’s Summer Streets where major streets are being closed to cars on August Saturdays, then talk of a bike sharing program, and now the rather mundane announcement that they’re turning two of four lanes on Broadway in Midtown into a pedestrian and bicycle zone - to be completed in mid-August 2008, permanently.

To be known as Broadway Boulevard between West 42nd and West 35th Street, the project will feature a Euro-style designated bicycle lane and a host of public gathering spaces that include cafe tables, chairs, umbrellas and planters.

Once again, the effort is being led by Mayor Bloomberg and the NYC DOT (Department of Transportation). All cities need to take note of this level of government leadership if they’re to establish their own pedestrian-friendly destinations.

Read more at NY Times: Closing on Broadway: Two Traffic Lanes.

There really is no better model than Europe for walkable neighborhoods, so it should be of special note when Europeans recognize the top urban developments of the last 25 years! The International jury of the 2008 Philippe Rotthier European Prize presents their ten winners via this A Vision of Europe website and forthcoming book.

Here are the true benchmarks of walkable urbanism (note the European flavor in the descriptions), and remember, these are recognized as the best within the last 25 years:

Best Operation of Urban Renaissance in a suburban city - Plessis-Robinson, FrancePrix (pictured)
Best New City - Val d’Europe, Ile-de-France
Best Reconstruction of an Historic Center - Historisches Gesellschaft DresdenNeumarkt, Dresden, Germany
Best Reconstruction of a City Center - Palermo, Italy
Best New Village - Poundbury, Dorchester, UK
Best Public Intervention - Rathaus Viertel, Gladbeck, Germany
Best Neighbourhood Center - Borgo Città Nuova, Alessandria, Italy
Best European Urban Plaza - Plaza del Juncal, Irun, Spain
Best New Garden-City - Heulebrug, Knokke-Heist, Belgium
Best Urban District - Akroken Campus, Sundsval, Sweden

Special Mention: Quality of the City Extension to the Spanish Cities of Alicante, Bilbao, Burgos, Carbajosa de la Sagrada, Gijón, La Coruña, Oviedo, Pamplona, Salamanca,San Sebastian, Santander, Santiago de Compostela, Valladolid, Vitoria.

Thanks to Alessandro Bucci for the reference.

How do you breathe new life into a city waterfront? Check out San Francisco’s Ferry Building Marketplace.

Built in 1898, San Francisco’s landmark clock tower was the West Coast’s Ellis Island, but by the mid-20th century had become obsolete. After decades of mundane office use, it reopened in April 2003 as a cosmopolitan marketplace, with its Farmer’s Market attendance doubling and merchants consistently exceeding sales goals.

It’s lessons for success? The San Francisco Chronicle lays it out:

Preserve what’s essential: Keep as much of the historic building as is feasible. Some proposals suggested eliminating the buildings you see above.
Add what’s needed: A 30-foot-wide promenade was added between the building and water that wasn’t practical in its ferry days.
Don’t be afraid to mix old and new: The ground floor had a ceiling until the architects opened it up as an atrium to the skylights above, and exterior additions toward the promenade used contemporary design.
Don’t go overboard: Previous schemes involved ‘starchitects’ that would have alienated people looking for a down-to-earth experience, which it is today, much less hiked up the rents to boutique and chain status.
Keep it simple: Plain concrete floors, communal tables, in reference to the point above.
Be part of the real city:1.7 million commuters annually pass through the six ferry berths behind the landmark and the farmers market is the city’s finest.
Contrasts can be good: While the building forms a massive tenth-of-a-mile wall blocking views of the water (the reason why some wanted it demolished), it also provides the only such public gathering place on the water.
*Go local: Indie restaurants provide a variety of $ and $$$ menus, along with a bookstore, an old-fashioned Italian deli, and fruit stands.

The newly christened pedestrian-only Mint Plaza in San Francisco is worth the two headlines.

First, as you can see in the images to the right, what was once a seedy automobile alley is now a pedestrian-only gathering destination. Opened a year ago near Fifth and Mission Street, the plaza is starting to become a vibrant scene with restaurants and outdoor seating. It was funded through a public-private partnership and is maintained by a nonprofit.

Mayor Gavin Newsom used Mint Plaza as the model (and stage - that's him in the top image) in announcing San Francisco's Better Streets Plan proposal. The plan is presented in a 250-page document that provides standards, guidelines and implementation strategies to build more pedestrian environments like Mint Plaza.

First of all, one principle that our crowdsource-based beta communities agree with is that 'design by committee' - a true democratic design process - isn't effective (see Apple). Another way to look at it is this quote by designer Yves Behar, "Never ask the consumer about the future. You can ask them what their aspirations are, but you will not get an answer about what you should do. Design will bring those stories to life." In other words, good design needs a leader and isn't something that's voted on, but rather influenced democratically.

That said, how do you transform the beta communities' ideas, values and stories into a design that inspires them? Studio Wikitecture provides one rather progressive open-source example using Second Life, a crowdsourced 3D virtual world on the web.

Anyone can join the process, though you'll have to join Second Life and search 'Studio Wikitecture' to do so. Participants can add comments to the 3D-represented architectural design, even vote on changes. Iterations are tracked like they are on Wikipedia via a historical 'wiki-tree'. It's unclear how decisions are made however, the design is lead by an experienced architectural team, and while they have yet to complete a built project, they're actually committed to a very democratic process. Let's hope they can distinguish between good values and good design.

Discuss how crowdsourcing can be applied to design in the CoolTown social network discussion forum.

Thanks to Braulio Agnese of Architect Magazine for the reference.

Near the top of many progressive, creatives' lists one will find San Francisco or New York City. Why? Because there's raw excitement in living in a trendsetting city - experiencing the future in the present. From Smart cars to Yelp! to flash mobs - you'll find them first, exclusively or most prevalently in such a city. So what's the latest sign of things to come? Weekend pedestrian-only streets.

Spurred by an international movement to close major urban thoroughfares to cars and allowing only pedestrians and bikes (known as Ciclovia):

- The city of San Francisco is looking to establish Sunday Healthways, where streets in the Bayview, Tenderloin and Chinatown neighborhoods would be closed to cars on Sunday mornings in lieu of walkers, joggers, bicyclists and even practitioners of yoga and tai chi.

- The neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn will enjoy four Saturday afternoons in a row starting in June where its main street (Bedford) will be closed to automobile traffic. Many of the merchants are enthusiastic, knowing it will allow them to accommodate more customers with outdoor seating on the street. The impetus? Would you believe it's the NY Department of Transportation, part of city's PlaNYC 2030 initiative to create more streets as pedestrian public realms.

Image source: Burlington Vermont's wildly successful pedestrian-only Church Street, by Jimmy-Dy.