New Public Spaces Book Published
As part of upgrading the three-year old Green Belt program, HEPF published the Hungarian version of the best-selling book, How to Turn a Place Around originally by the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), New York. The publication was marked by a book christening at the Central European University in Budapest on the 7th of October 2008.
The event included a public forum at which the EPSD Czech, Slovak and Romanian Public Spaces programs as well as the activities of the Hungarian program were introduced. The event’s special guest, PPS Senior Vice President, Steve Davies also gave a presentation about their “placemaking” methodology. Approximately 70 participants – landscape architects, NGO representatives, students and municipal officers – attended the event.
The book itself is a user-friendly, common sense guide for everyone from community residents to mayors on how to create successful places. The ideas presented in this book reflect Project for Public Spaces’ thirty years of experience in helping people understand and improve their public spaces. The book illustrates a community-based, “place oriented” process organised around the eleven basic principles for creating successful public spaces, as well as methods that anyone can use to evaluate a space. Its Hungarian version is more than a simple translation: by adding case studies – partly realised in the frame of the Green Belt program – it also tries to highlight local opportunities and obstacles in adopting this methodology.
