Elena Madison is a Vice President at Project for Public Spaces and a veteran of Placemaking. She is an urban planner with rich experience in the planning and design of parks, plazas, campuses, civic and cultural institutions. An expert in collaborative visioning, concept development as well as management and programming for public spaces; she works closely with designers, economic development experts and public space managers to seamlessly bring the concepts developed in the public visioning process through design development and into implementation. She is currently working on placemaking initiatives in Detroit’s Belle Isle and Campus Martius, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond; at Houston’s Central Library; on Astor Place in New York City; and at the healing gardens of Stanford University’s Medical Center.

Elena has been the keynote speaker, presenter and trainer at numerous national and international conferences, seminars and convenings. Most recently she was a featured trainer in Penang, Malaysia with partners ThinkCity; the main trainer at the Lively Cities kick-off meeting in Aberdeen, Scotland – a transnational public space project of the European Union for North West Europe and a featured trainer at the Public Spaces as a Catalyst for Sustainability, Culture and Social Justice training in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In her own community of Jackson Heights, Queens she is a founding member of the Jackson Heights Green Alliance, a grassroots group organizing the 78th Play Street/Plaza in an effort to expand public space in the neighborhood. Elena’s communitybased efforts include also the Place and Play Grassroots Fund – a joint initiative of Project for Public Spaces and Playborhood.com aiming at linking grassroots activism to tangible improvements to parks, play, and public spaces at the local level.

Learn more about the Project for Public Spaces