This week we say goodbye to Kathy Madden, co-founder of Project for Public Spaces alongside Fred Kent and Steve Davies. Kathy’s passing leaves a profound emptiness and a lasting legacy that will continue to shape how we think about cities, public life, and community.
With her curiosity, empathy, and quiet determination, Kathy helped us all see that the social quality of public spaces matters as much as their physical design.
Through her research and writing, she gave words and meaning to what would later be called placemaking: and in doing so, she helped generations of people rediscover the joy and power of shared places.
Remembering Kathy
As Hans Karssenberg, Board Member of Placemaking Europe, recalls:
“This is a day of deep sadness and of deep gratitude. Kathy passed away… co-founder of Project for Public Spaces, together with Fred Kent and Steve Davies. With her research, she gave depth and meaning to the social quality of public spaces — what was later to be called placemaking.
I remember meeting her for the first time at Plein 40–45 in Amsterdam, and many conferences after. In 2019, in Valencia, in front of 500 placemakers from all over the world, we honoured Kathy and Fred with a lifetime placemaking award on behalf of Placemaking Europe.
Our love is with the family, and with gratitude for the inspiration Kathy is and will be — with her great integrity and her enduring inspiration to the international community. We carry you in our hearts.”
Hans also shared a memory that captures Kathy’s spirit perfectly:
“That first workshop in Amsterdam is so fond in my memory because I felt like coming home. But also because Kathy and Fred were chairing while happily and playfully bickering with each other about the content of their presentation. It showed me: we’re not only here as professionals — we are here as human beings too.”
A true urban anthropologist
Charlot Schans, co-Director of Placemaking Europe, shares:
“I admire Kathy’s thoughtful observations of public life and what makes cities and places thrive. She was a true urban anthropologist — not necessarily by training, although she built on the work of Margaret Mead — but in how she observed, truly listened to, and amplified the voices and ideas in the community into a wealth of research insights and projects she led over the years.
We will cherish her modest and generous spirit and carry her ingenious wisdom with us in further growing the global placemaking movement. We send our warmest thoughts to the Kent family — Kathy will be dearly missed.” ❤️
Her living legacy
Kathy taught us that placemaking is not just a method or a movement. Iit is a mindset.
One rooted in listening, caring, observing, and connecting.
Her lessons live on every time a bench is moved into the sun, a market stall becomes a gathering point, or a community realises its power to shape its own surroundings.
On behalf of everyone at Placemaking Europe, and the wider community she helped inspire:
Thank you, Kathy. For your humility, your insight, and your belief in people.
Your work lives on in moments of connection across public spaces around the world.
