MW15-Center City’s Grand Public Spaces

Explore two of William Penn’s original squares – Logan and Center – and the public spaces that tie them together. Along the way learn about 300 years of planning history and varying contemporary solutions to reinvigorating, accessing and managing public open spaces. Penn’s surveyor, Thomas Holme, laid out the street grid and five squares still evident in City Center Philadelphia. Today, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway cuts a traffic-laden swath through the northwestern corner of the grid even as it visually and physically links Fairmount Park and the Philadelphia Museum of Art to Logan Square (now a traffic circle) and City Hall (which occupies the original center square). Several new parks and open spaces line the Parkway: Sister Cities Park, Love Park (aka JFK Plaza), the Municipal Services Plaza and Dilworth Park. Recent efforts to reimagine these public open spaces – to encourage more activity and enhance the surrounding architecture, businesses, and transit – feature varying approaches to landscape design, public engagement, management structure, and funding. Learn from those who manage these places about efforts to make them more multi-modal and less auto-centric.