Public Space Planning

Public place provides the grounds for cities to be seen and experienced. Whether it is a squ ar, a market, or a park, common space in cities has been noted as the place where ideas are exchanged, city identity is make and citizenship is learned (Carr et al. , 1992 Low, 2000 Goodsell, 2003). Such places are important and even necessary for citizens to approve a good quality of life and well-being (Relph, 1993). Historically, macrocosm places allow played an important role in cities in many cultures.Public spaces such as the Greek agora, Spanish plaza, and colonial town square provided a place for markets, celebrations and civic life to flourish (Carr et al. , 1992). In modern cities frequent spaces play many diverse roles they are sites of recreation, frugal increase, consumption and alliance they take shape as plazas, parks and urban entertainment areas they look upon many things to many people and can establish an identity for a neighborhood or a city at large. Public s paces, in any incarnation, are important to civic life (Goodsell, 2003).While we may go a good understanding of why in the public eye(predicate) spaces are important in cities, what is still largely unknown is how the grooming process itself contributes to the development of these important places. In addition to understanding the role of public spaces in cities today, the means of public space creation, the underlying interests, processes, and motivations involved with their construction, must as well be scrutinized and better understood in order to come to a full understanding of how public spaces execute their desired goals.Two case studies were chosen to illustrate approaches to public space planning Torontos Yonge Dundas jog and the urban center of Mississaugas City Centre Parks. These sites were chosen beca intake of their similarities and in addition because of their differences. Both sites were think to achieve similar goals of creating a sense of place and creatin g new opportunities for economic development in their cities. Their efforts, though, are taking place in real different contexts and employ different planning approaches.In Mississauga, a rapidly evolution city with a developing downtown core, a placemaking process featuring public workshops and staff training was used. In the Yonge Dundas Square example, located at adept of Torontos historic commercial nodes, a public-private partnership was used to achieve the goals of the meet. In addition, the cases are also at different stages in their development. The Mississauga project has only completed its initial visioning and preliminary design stages while the Yonge Dundas Square project is nearing completion.In choosing these disparate cases, I was able to explore the strengths and weaknesses of different styles of public space planning. Specifically, these cases allowed me to investigate differences between what seemed to be a tightly controlled planning process in Yonge Dundas Sq uare and a seemly very public planning process in Mississauga. Ultimately, the comparison of these cases helped me to elicit relevant criticisms and indemnity recommendations for planners of public space, regardless of the process they are working within.Through research nearly these case studies, key informant interviews and in-depth analysis of planning documents and relevant literary works this report presents a critique of public space planning processes right in the context of Yonge Dundas Square and the City Centre Parks. While having goals that use the language of sense of place, the planning processes employed are more in force(p) in serving the economic goals of the projects. Because socio-cultural goals like sense of place are defined broadly and grow over time, the planning process does dwarfish to directly address them.Ultimately this report suggests that socio-cultural goals like sense of place should not be removed as a goal of public space planning, but rather, the planning process should attempt to reconcile economic and socio-cultural goals. By increasing awareness of the importance of the socio-cultural function of public space with educational outreach to developers and the public at large, as well as by incorporating socio-cultural goals into long-term strategic plans and mission statements, municipalities can more effectively effect public spaces that are not only economically strong, but also socially important to their citizens.