Ethan Kent
member since November 13, 2007, last login October 7
- Location
- NYC
- Groups
- Member home
- http://www.livablestreets.com/people/Ethan
- Website
- About
- Ethan Kent practices Placemaking as a Vice President with Project for Public Spaces. His experiences photographing, evaluating and helping to improve public spaces in hundreds of cities around the world form the foundation of his work. Ethan helped found the NYC Streets Renaissance Campaign and leads PPS’s efforts in NYC, managing PPS’s role in the campaign.
- Interests
- With the NYCSR my interest has been to help move the discussion from being focused only on mobility, to accessibility and actually creating places that we want to be in. Only when we shift the conversation beyond mobility and modes will we substantially accomplish mode shifts and accessibility improvements. If the point of transportation planning is to get people places, then all transportation planning should really start with placemaking. By focusing narrowly on mobility we risk moving people around more and more and accomplishing less and less. Imagine for instance the efficiency of what gets accomplished in some of the best public markets or civic squares in the world where mobility is at its lowest. The best streets, public spaces and cities that we can create are going to be most like great markets and squares. People are there to move to them not just through them and everything in and around them is competing to contribute as much as it can to the space, because that is how it is going to get the most in return. Transportation is predominantly public, street space is shared, business is about engaging people(inactive ground floors don’t last) and contributing to their experience, and art, architecture and landscape design is not about itself but about what it gives back to people. Everything is working together to maximize public outcomes and out compete incompatible private or anti-social activity (driving cars, committing crime, loitering, etc.). If people live here or come to places like this it is to be around other people first, not because of available private space for living, playing, parking or working. Because these places are so responsive to people, people can still accomplish most everything they need while also experiencing many unplanned benefits as well. No one person or company tends to get wealthy off these kinds of places but the wealth that is created, distributed and sustained by these places is unparalleled. Progressive planning, urban design and advocacy can now move beyond pedaling a narrow set of their solutions that tend to isolate and alienate people and start educating, challenging and empowering people to envision and help co-create great streets, communities and cities.
