Spaces to Places

Transforming Public Spaces into Vibrant Places for the Community.

Nominate Your Favorite Plazas and Parks

Many of our REALTOR® Associations have received NAR's Placemaking Micro-grant to help fund the creation of a vibrant public place in their community.    Perhaps these places have now become a favorite place to go.   If so, get it on the list of favorite plazas and parks.  Nominate your park or plaza  today.

This is a re-post from the Project for Public Spaces on Jul 23, 2015.

Over the past few months, we’ve highlighted the world’s best streets and public markets – now it’s time to debut a few great parks, plazas, and squares. The latest addition to our Great Public Spaces website features those third places we cherish, the community gathering spaces in which we meet our neighbors, bond with family, and make memories.

Paley Park in New York City, famously referenced in William H. “Holly” Whyte’s public life study | Photo by Sampo Siklo via Flickr

This is by no means a comprehensive list, and so we need your help. We’ll be adding spaces to the list regularly over the next several months, and we want your nominations. Whether it’s a small town square or Central Park, we want to know about the places that have an an impact on your life. You can also join the discussion by commenting on the spaces we’ve already featured.

Plaza de la Constitución in Oaxaca City, Mexico designed in traditional Spanish colonial style in 1529 | Photo by Steve Cadman via Flickr

To kick off the discussion, we’re spotlighting several spaces here. It’s not a “best of” or a “top 10″ –  just a list of a few places that people think are great, and some thoughts on how and why they work. With your help we’ll be releasing more over the coming weeks in order to create a resource page to come back to, again and again.

Nominate your great places here!

The Spanish Steps in Rome, Italy, an unlikely but highly successful public space | Photo by Wooly Matt via Flickr

 

Advertisement

Community Outreach Programs

Housing Opportunity Grant
Housing Opportunity Grants support state and local REALTOR® Associations’ affordable housing activities. The goal of the program is to position REALTORS® as leaders in improving their communities by creating affordable housing
opportunities.

Smart Growth Grant
Smart growth is an approach to development that encourages a mix of building types and uses, diverse housing and transportation options, development within existing neighborhoods, and community engagement. The Smart Growth Program offers state and local REALTOR® Associations to way to engage with government officials, community partners and the general public in planning and designing community’s future.

Diversity
Planned diversity initiatives makes good business sense. REALTOR® Associations with well-planned diversity programs create a stronger sense of community, particularly in neighborhoods with high concentrations of foreign-born and minority residents who are moving up the socioeconomic ladder and are buying homes.

NAR Placemaking Resources

Placemaking Guide: A Guide to Transform a Public Space into a Community Place
REALTORS® and state and local association staff can learn the details of Placemaking, the kinds of projects placemaking entails, how to organize them, and where to go for assistance and resources.

Placemaking Webinar Series
Our Placemaking Webinar Series will provide more in depth information on the various types of Placemaking and how REALTORS® were involved in Placemaking activities in their communities.

Placemaking Grant
The Placemaking Grant funds the creation of new public spaces, like pocket parks, trails & gardens, in a community. The grant focuses on “lighter, cheaper, quicker” placemaking projects, which can be built under a year and cost less  than $200,000.

Comment Policy

The opinions expressed in reader comments sections on this website are those of the reader and not NAR or REALTOR® Magazine.

Smart Growth

The healthier a community, the better the environment for REALTORS®. Keeping a community attractive, livable and functioning well is a complex task.