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How public spaces make cities work

00:04
When people think about cities, they tend to think of ___________ things. They think of buildings
and streets and ___________, noisy cabs. But when I think about cities, I think about people.
Cities are ___________ about people, and where people go and where people meet are at the
___________ of what makes a city work. So even more important than buildings in a city are the
public ___________ in between them. And today, some of the most ___________ changes in cities
are happening in these public spaces.

00:41
So I believe that lively, ___________ public spaces are the key to planning a great city. They are
what makes it come alive. But what makes a public space work? What ___________ people to
successful public spaces, and what is it about ___________ places that keeps people away? I
thought, if I could answer those questions, I could make a huge___________ to my city. But one
of the more wonky things about me is that I am an ___________ behaviorist, and I use those
skills not to study animal ___________ but to study how people in cities use city public spaces.

PREP.VN
Part 2
01:25
One of the first spaces that I studied was this little vest pocket park called Paley Park in
___________ Manhattan. This little space became a small ___________, and because it had such a
___________ impact on New Yorkers, it made an ___________ impression on me. I studied this
park very early on in my ___________ because it happened to have been ___________ by my
stepfather, so I knew that places like Paley Park didn't happen by ___________. I saw firsthand
that they required incredible ___________ and enormous attention to detail. But what was it
about this space that made it ___________ and drew people to it? Well, I would sit in the park and
watch very ___________, and first among other things were the ___________ if there were other
people around. And it was green. This little park ___________ what New Yorkers crave: comfort
and greenery. But my question was, why weren't there more places with greenery and places to
sit in the ___________ of the city where you didn't feel alone, or like a trespasser? ___________,
that's not how cities were being designed.

Part 3
02:58
So here you see a ___________ sight. This is how plazas have been designed for ___________.
They have that stylish, Spartan look that we often ___________ with modern architecture, but it's
not ___________ that people avoid spaces like this. They not only look desolate, they feel
downright dangerous. I mean, where would you sit here? What would you do here? But
___________ love them. They are plinths for their creations. They might ___________ a sculpture
or two, but that's about it. And for ___________, they are ideal. There's nothing to water, nothing
to maintain, and no ___________ people to worry about. But don't you think this is a ___________?

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For me, becoming a city planner meant being able to truly change the city that I lived in and
loved. I wanted to be able to create ___________ that would give you the feeling that you got in
Paley Park, and not allow developers to build bleak plazas like this. But over the many years, I
have learned how hard it is to ___________ successful, ___________, enjoyable public spaces. As I
learned from my stepfather, they certainly do not happen by accident, ___________ in a city like
New York, where public space has to be ___________ for to begin with, and then for them to be
successful, somebody has to think very hard about every ___________.

Part 4
04:34
Now, open spaces in cities are ___________. Yes, they are opportunities for ___________
investment, but they are also opportunities for the ___________ good of the city, and those two
goals are often not aligned with one another, and therein lies the ___________.

04:53
The first opportunity I had to fight for a great public open space was in the ___________ 1980s,
when I was leading a team of planners at a gigantic ___________ called Battery Park City in
lower Manhattan on the Hudson River. And this sandy ___________ had lain barren for 10 years,
and we were told, ___________ we found a developer in six months, it would go ___________. So
we came up with a radical, almost ___________ idea. Instead of building a park as a complement
to ___________ development, why don't we reverse that ___________ and build a small but very

PREP.VN
high-quality public open space first, and see if that made a difference. So we only could
___________ to build a two-block section of what would become a mile-long esplanade, so
___________ we built had to be perfect. So just to make sure, I ___________ that we build a mock-
up in wood, at scale, of the railing and the sea wall. And when I sat down on that test
___________ with sand still swirling all around me, the railing hit ___________ at eye level, blocking
my view and ruining my ___________ at the water's edge.

Part 5
06:09
So you see, ___________ really do make a difference. But design is not just how something
looks, it's how your body feels on that seat in that space, and I ___________ that successful
design always depends on that very individual ___________. In this photo, everything looks very
___________, but that granite edge, those ___________, the back on that bench, the trees in
planting, and the many different kinds of places to sit were all little ___________ that turned this
project into a place that people ___________ to be.

06:49
Now, this proved very ___________ 20 years later when Michael Bloomberg asked me to be his
planning commissioner and put me in ___________ of shaping the entire city of New York. And
he said to me on that very day, he said that New York was ___________ to grow from eight to
nine million people. And he asked me, "So where are you going to put one ___________
additional New Yorkers?"

Part 6
07:14

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Well, I didn't have any idea. Now, you know that New York does place a high ___________ on
attracting ___________, so we were excited about the prospect of ___________, but honestly,
where were we going to grow in a city that was already built out to its edges and surrounded by
water? How were we going to find ___________ for that many new New Yorkers? And if we
couldn't spread out, which was ___________ a good thing, where could new housing go? And
what about cars? Our city couldn't possibly ___________ any more cars.

07:50
So what were we going to do? If we couldn't ___________ out, we had to go up. And if we had to
go up, we had to go up in places where you wouldn't need to own a car. So that ___________
using one of our greatest ___________: our transit system. But we had never before thought of
how we could make the most of it. So here was the ___________ to our puzzle. If we were to
channel and ___________ all new development around ___________, we could actually handle that
___________ increase, we thought. And so here was the plan, what we really needed to do: We
needed to redo our zoning -- and zoning is the city planner's regulatory tool -- and basically
reshape the entire city, ___________ where new development could go and ___________ any
development at all in our car-oriented, suburban-style neighborhoods. Well, this was an
unbelievably ___________ idea, ambitious because communities had to ___________ those plans.

Part 7
08:57

PREP.VN
So how was I going to get this done? By listening. So I began listening, in fact, ___________ of
hours of listening just to ___________ trust. You know, communities can tell whether or not you
understand their neighborhoods. It's not something you can just fake. And so I began
___________. I can't tell you how many blocks I walked, in sweltering ___________, in freezing
winters, year after year, just so I could get to understand the DNA of each neighborhood and
know what each ___________ felt like. I became an incredibly geeky zoning ___________, finding
ways that zoning could address ___________ by block, we began to set height ___________ so
that all new development would be ___________ and near transit. Over the course of 12 years,
we were able to ___________ 124 neighborhoods, 40 percent of the city, 12,500 blocks, so that
now, 90 percent of all new development of New York is within a 10-minute walk of a
___________. In other words, nobody in those new ___________ needs to own a car.

Part 8
10:16
Well, those rezonings were ___________ and enervating and important, but rezoning was never
my ___________. You can't see zoning and you can't feel zoning. My mission was always to
create great public spaces. So in the areas where we zoned for ___________ development, I was
determined to create places that would make a ___________ in people's lives. Here you see what
was two miles of abandoned, degraded ___________ in the neighborhoods of Greenpoint and
Williamsburg in Brooklyn, impossible to get to and impossible to use. Now the zoning here was
___________, so I felt an obligation to create ___________ parks on these waterfronts, and I spent
an incredible amount of time on every square ___________ of these plans. I wanted to make sure
that there were tree-lined paths from the ___________ to the water, that there were trees and
plantings everywhere, and, of course, lots and lots of places to sit. Honestly, I had no idea how
it would turn out. I had to have ___________. But I put everything that I had ___________ and

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learned into those plans.

Part 9
11:29
And then it ___________, and I have to tell you, it was incredible. People came from all over the
city to be in these parks. I know they ___________ the lives of the people who live there, but they
also changed New Yorkers' whole ___________ of their city. I often come down and watch
people get on this little ferry that now runs between the boroughs, and I can't tell you why, but
I'm ___________ moved by the fact that people are ___________ it as if it had always been there.

11:58
And here is a new park in ___________ Manhattan. Now, the water's edge in lower Manhattan
was a ___________ mess before 9/11. Wall Street was essentially landlocked because you
couldn't get anywhere near this edge. And after 9/11, the city had very little ___________. But I
thought if we went to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and got money to
reclaim this two miles of degraded waterfront that it would have an enormous ___________ on
the rebuilding of lower Manhattan. And it did. Lower Manhattan finally has a public waterfront
on all three ___________.

Part 10
12:34

PREP.VN
I really love this park. You know, railings have to be higher now, so we put bar seating at the
___________, and you can get so close to the water you're ___________ on it. And see how the
railing widens and ___________ out so you can lay down your lunch or your laptop. And I love
when people come there and look up and they say, "Wow, there's Brooklyn, and it's so close."

12:58
So what's the trick? How do you turn a park into a place that people want to be? Well, it's up to
you, not as a city ___________ but as a human being. You don't tap into your design expertise.
You tap into your ___________. I mean, would you want to go there? Would you want to stay
there? Can you see into it and out of it? Are there other people there? Does it seem green and
___________? Can you find your very own seat?

Part 11
13:34
Well now, all over New York City, there are places where you can find your very own ___________.
Where there used to be parking spaces, there are now pop-up ___________. Where Broadway
traffic used to run, there are now tables and chairs. Where 12 years ago, ___________ cafes were
not allowed, they are now everywhere. But claiming these spaces for public use was not
simple, and it's even harder to keep them that way.

14:02
So now I'm going to tell you a story about a very ___________ park called the High Line. The High
Line was an elevated railway. (Applause) The High Line was an elevated ___________ that ran
through three ___________ on Manhattan's West Side, and when the train stopped running, it
became a self-seeded landscape, a kind of a ___________ in the sky. And when I saw it the first

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time, honestly, when I went up on that old viaduct, I fell in love the way you fall in love with a
person, ___________. And when I was ___________, saving the first two sections of the High Line
from demolition became my first priority and my most important ___________. I knew if there
was a day that I didn't worry about the High Line, it would come down. And the High Line, even
though it is widely ___________ now and phenomenally popular, it is the most ___________ public
space in the city. You might see a beautiful park, but not everyone does. You know, it's true,
commercial ___________ will always battle against public space. You might say, "How
___________ it is that more than four million people come from all over the world to visit the
High Line." Well, a developer sees just one thing: ___________. Hey, why not take out those
___________ and have shops all along the High Line? Wouldn't that be terrific and won't it mean a
lot more money for the city? Well no, it would not be ___________. It would be a ___________, and
not a park. (Applause) And you know what, it might mean more money for the city, but a city
has to take the long ___________, the view for the common good. Most recently, the last section
of the High Line, the ___________ interests, where some of the city's leading developers are
building more than 17 million ___________ feet at the Hudson Yards. And they came to me and
___________ that they "temporarily disassemble" that third and final ___________. Perhaps the
High Line didn't fit in with their image of a gleaming city of skyscrapers on a hill. ___________ it
was just in their way. But in any case, it took nine months of nonstop daily ___________ to finally
get the signed agreement to prohibit its demolition, and that was only two years ago.

Part 12

PREP.VN
16:48
So you see, no matter how ___________ and successful a public space may be, it can never be
taken for ___________. Public spaces always -- this is it saved -- public spaces always need
vigilant ___________, not only to claim them at the ___________ for public use, but to design them
for the people that use them, then to ___________ them to ensure that they are for everyone, that
they are not violated, invaded, abandoned or ___________. If there is any one lesson that I have
learned in my life as a city planner, it is that public spaces have ___________. It's not just the
number of people using them, it's the even ___________ number of people who feel better about
their city just knowing that they are there. Public space can change how you live in a city, how
you feel about a city, whether you choose one city over another, and public space is one of the
most important ___________ why you stay in a city.

17:52
I believe that a successful city is like a ___________ party. People stay because they are having a
great time.

18:01
Thank you.

18:03
(Applause) Thank you. (Applause)

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