Crowdsourcing Your Favorite Public Space

San Francisco's Grand View Park. 
Photo: Shawn Calhoun.

Planetizen is crowdsourcing the top 100 public spaces on Ideascale.


Each user gets 15 chips to spend how you like on voting for your favorite public space. Most spots with the high votes are on the east and west coasts.

I spent mine as follows



1 chip on Campus Martius Park
5 chips on Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
1 chip on Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park
1 chip on  Huron Clinton Metroparks

And I submitted a new place, my favorite place of all time, Detroit Eastern Market.

APA has released the 2011 selections for Great Place, including Public Spaces, Streets, and Neighborhoods.

What makes a "great place"?  Read APA's selection criteria for Neighborhoods, Public Spaces, and Streets.

The common denominators: great places are those  places scaled for and used by people while respecting their context, history and heritage.