People friendly public realm

The public realm has a tremendously important role to play today. We humans are social animals needing a strong network of friends and family in order to have true happiness. That network has been eroded for decades by technologies that have separated us and sped life up, by a culture of work that takes too much of our time, and by designing for cars rather than people for the last seventy years. The consequence is that America has, despite a material wealth two times greater today than it was in 1970, one of the least happy peoples on the planet - 150th out of 178 by one measure.

The public realm – streets, downtowns, parks, neighborhoods – is the place where the social network and fabric of communities is built. For the public realm to be alive with people, it must be built and operated on a human scale, and we have to have the time to be there.

As a result Playce believes:
~ We must design for people first, understanding and building for the
    pedestrian.
~ Connecting important destinations is vital - providing multiple ways
   to get to the destinations is basic.
~ We must think strategically about how to facilitate the mixing of
   people. This means examining uses and their locations, programming to
   attract people, being flexible with codes rather than prescriptive.
~ A human place full of human interaction is achieved by melding
   physical character, use, policy and local culture in the public realm.
~ There is an emptiness to our lives created, in part, by how we build
   our communities. Only by recognizing this can we begin designing in a
   way to fully support the richness of life people bring to a place.
~ Community, a sense of community, is created when you feel like you
   belong. The work of cities, therefore, is to help people belong.
~ Every community has a unique set of assets which should form the
   basis of decision making.
~ For 70 years in decision making we have been making rational choices
   that have ultimately undermined the quality of life of communities.
   Understanding what we have been doing is basic to being able to take
   new directions that enhance quality of life.

Finally, we believe our cities and towns are places where people should be able to share our humanness, our culture, our society. Everything Playce does is aimed at allowing this to happen naturally.