Ground Rules: Public Art and Transit-Oriented Development
Panel Discussion
August 14, 2026
On August 14h, Kene Okigbo, and Stephen Osberg sat down with Amplify’s Amy Cherko to discuss how public art transforms our streets, sidewalks, and trails into conduits for encounter and belonging.
Transcript
Title of Discussion: Ground Rules: Public Art and Transit-Oriented Development
Panelist 1: Kene Okigbo
Panelist 2: Stephen Osberg
Moderator: Amy Cherko
Date of Discussion: August 14, 2026
List of Acronyms: [KO] = Kene Okigbo; [SO] = Stephen Osberg; [AC] = Amy Cherko
[AC] Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for coming out in the rain. I am Amy Cherko and I lead public art at Amplify.
Today, we're discussing public art and Transit-Oriented Development. I'm gonna set the context, and then we'll do some intros. At Amplify, we believe arts and culture are not luxuries. They are essential public goods that shape how we belong, relate to one another, and collectively imagine what's possible. Like parks, libraries, schools, and public transportation, cultural experiences should be accessible to everyone and embedded into the places where people live, work, and move through their daily lives. This conversation is grounded in the belief that public art is not simply an enhancement to the built environment, but a vital form of civic infrastructure that contributes to individual wellbeing, community vibrancy, and long-term economic vitality. By positioning artists as collaborators in shaping public space, we can create environments that are not only more visually stimulating but also more welcoming and responsive to the people who use them every day.
To support that assertion, we look at theorists and thinkers such as Jan Gehl, who challenge the idea that the success of transportation systems should be measured solely by speed and efficiency. At the same time, we're interested in expanding the definition of public art beyond permanent objects to include participation, dialogue, care, and place-based cultural practice. Together, these fields ask many of the same questions. How do the spaces we build shape our relationships to one another? What makes someone feel welcome in a public space? How can streets, sidewalks, and trails become places where civic life unfolds rather than simply corridors for movement? Central to these questions is a recognition that mobility is fundamentally a human experience. Decisions about whether to walk, bike, ride public transit, or drive are influenced not only by convenience and cost but also by comfort, beauty, safety, identity, and belonging. Public art has the capacity to slow our pace, redirect our attention, encourage curiosity, and create opportunities for encounter that transform routine journeys into meaningful experiences. When artists collaborate with planners, architects, engineers, and communities from the early stages of civic projects, transportation infrastructure can become social infrastructure that fosters connection, strengthens neighborhood identity, encourages active transportation, and contributes to healthier and more resilient communities. In this way, investments in public art and mobility become mutually reinforcing strategies for improving quality of life while supporting local businesses, attracting and retaining creative talent, and building stronger regional economies.
We hope this discussion opens new ways of thinking about what's possible when we understand public art as a form of civic infrastructure and an essential public good that makes cities healthier, more vibrant, more equitable, and more resilient for everyone.
In today’s discussion, we’re joined by Kenny Okigbo and Stephen Osberg. Kenny is a Partner at RDG and Executive Director at Omaha by Design. His work spans markets of urban design, parks and recreation, healthcare, higher education, and sports. He's passionate about shaping places that enhance quality of life and consistently seeks opportunities to demonstrate the positive impact of design on communities. His goal in every project is to communicate the needs of a community through compelling design.
In addition to his design practice, he's a landscape architect, if I didn't say that explicitly. Kenny is deeply engaged in community and professional organizations. His work has been recognized through numerous awards, and he is a frequent speaker at universities and national conferences, where he shares insights on design, leadership, and the evolving role of his profession. He is increasingly interested in how landscape architecture contributes to relief, resilience, and recovery, especially in communities experiencing change or reinvention.
Stephen Osberg is Vice President at PGSA, where he guides the firm's urban strategies, communication efforts, and public-facing partnerships. With a background in planning, policy, and infrastructure, he brings a thoughtful systems-level perspective to complex urban redevelopment opportunities. Before joining PGSA, he served as the Senior Director of Transportation and Urban Development at the Greater Omaha Chamber, where he oversaw development of Omaha's Urban Core Strategic Plan, managed financial analysis underlying the Omaha Streetcar, and helped secure federal infrastructure funding for the region. Earlier roles include the City of Omaha and regional planning firms where he shaped land use policies, led multi-modal transportation initiatives, and managed stakeholder engagement across public and private sectors.
Our first question for you both: Transit systems are typically measured by speed, efficiency, and ridership, while public art is often evaluated through cultural impact. How can we better understand both as forms of public infrastructure that shape people's daily lives and experiences and sense of belonging?
[SO] All right. Well, thank you. And first off, thank you all for coming down here today. It's great having you here with us.
I just flew from an international trip. Got in at three AM. I'm massively sleep-deprived, so you're getting the raw deal right now. I think to your question, maybe it's to our detriment when we try to distinguish too much between what is infrastructure and art. And what I mean by that is both are cultural objects in a lot of ways. They both shape our daily experience and the ways that we interact with the spaces and surfaces around us. The problem is that we don't view infrastructure that way a lot of the time. We'll build things without thinking about how they impact our reality day-to-day. It becomes this distinction where it's like, "Okay, let's build this freeway on-ramp, and then, you know, maybe we'll slap a mural on it or something like that." But it's more about how we actually work to think through how every bit of this concrete impacts our experience of that space. And I think that's a real lesson that infrastructure designers can take from artists in many ways to think through it more on that front.
In London, there's a neighborhood called Barbican, which is kind of this massive urban redevelopment project. It's got housing, it's got open spaces, a large performance hall. It could have just been some buildings and a big courtyard, but the design of the buildings, the structural support beams, all of it kind of comes together to create this incredible brutalist but yet warm environment for people to come together and interact. So for me, the question is: how do we think about infrastructure versus public art? I think the more that we combine them into one way of thinking, the better.
[KO] Right now, I'm transitioning from RDG to a full-time role at Omaha By Design, and part of that transition involves wrapping up some high-impact community projects which I’m really excited to be part of.
One of them is a trail study that connects trail systems across town all the way to the Riverfront. When we think about trail connectivity, a lot of the first questions are about grades, conflicts, and navigating divides. Our approach also is to say, "Hey, as we're thinking about this connectivity, how do we connect the placemaking opportunities along the way?" And part of what we're talking about today is the placemaking. I'm a landscape architect, and landscape architecture is described as the art and the science of designing the built environment; thinking beyond the binary ones and zeros of how many cars you move from the west side of town to the east side of town, and thinking instead about the experiential quality of the space. How does it feel to navigate the space? What are the sensory inputs that impact someone's experience as they're moving from dot to dot? That thinking bridges us away from the functional aspects of how we navigate our built environment to how we improve quality of life. That happens when we push ourselves as individuals, and then as a community, to think about how an investment in art as part of infrastructure projects improves the way we live our lives and ultimately makes our city a place people want to stay.
[AC] Thank you for setting that up so well for the next question: Jan Gehl argues that cities should be designed at the speed of walking. How does public art change what people notice, remember, or value in the spaces they move through?
[KO] So again, I'm a holistic architect. Art for me is sometimes the very intentional sculpture or the very intentional mural. But other times, art is the way that we organize the space and the way that the space is adopted by the people who most frequently use it.
One of my favorite pastimes is people watching in public spaces. One of the things I love the most about the current iteration of Gene Leahy is that almost every seat is mobile. So if you sit down, every person who goes to sit in one of those seats–this is just humans; this is the way that we interact with these spaces–even if a seat is perfectly positioned for where you want to rest, you'll shift it a quarter of an inch, make it your own, and then sit down. I love seeing how people engage in those ways.
Last night I had the opportunity to work on the Belt Line, a trail in North Omaha. The trailhead is on Hamilton and Military. And as we were looking at the different modes of transit in this space, we thought about giving people a place to rest while they were waiting at the bus stop, and intentionally identifying where the trail starts and stops. At the trailhead, we also made space for kids to have an outdoor classroom and a performance space that something like Omaha Mobile Stage could use. And we chose to use Corten steel as our material for the shade structure, and what's interesting about Corten is that it’s the most raw, authentic material, which means when somebody decides, "I'm gonna make art, my contribution in this space," and places their tag there, whether or not that tag stays or goes, their mark is there forever. If you remove that tag, you're also removing the patina. So it is a directory of change within the community that will always be.
When we look at that project, we know that's gonna happen. That continual communification of what is owned by all of us. That is a beautiful amorphous form of art and a document of shared ownership in that space.
[SO] I love the idea of community ownership of space over time, and I think that is what makes a space important. Because when we think about transportation, it's not just connecting, as you said, point A to point B and moving cars or people from point A to point B, but it is those spaces in between.
I think the idea of a city built around the speed of the speed of walking is incredibly important. If you think about driving, right, you're like navigating this hulking pile of steel through some kind of urban environment. Obviously you wanna get where you're going, but you also don't wanna crash into anything or run over anyone. And the city has to be designed to accommodate that. When you plan a city around cars, it's gross-scale stuff. You need big driveways, you need big spaces between buildings, you need all that, and that doesn't really lend itself to art at, I think, a human scale.
Art kind of has to happen at a much larger scale, perhaps. That idea of designing for the speed of walking, though, that's where you introduce that magic into the shared space and the community space where people can come together and feel like they belong. And I find that really... I would say, again, going back to this trip to England, since I have a goldfish memory right now, there's a neighborhood there called Shoreditch. It’s full of old and new buildings, with great pedestrian walkways. Part of that mix of old and new is a lot of public art: murals, sculptures, paintings, and street art that's been painted over, scratched away, or drawn back up. The feeling of it was really cool, and I'm gonna carry that with me now kind of forever in a lot of ways.
I think that’s one part of it. But the other part is the movement within the space and how the space encourages movement. The skate park out here, for instance, at Millwork, is part of that. How do you make a space where people can kind of do something, whether it's getting together with friends, events, trying new tricks, all of that. Just walking, you slow down and look at the space in a different way, at a different speed, and with a different kind of shared ownership of the space.
[AC] Can you highlight some examples of how artists and designers have transformed transit corridors into spaces of social connection that support relationships, trust, and resilience rather than simply movement?
[SO] Sure. I think artists all around the world have played a really strong role in shaping, and I'm gonna take it beyond just transit to include transportation corridors. An obvious example is The High Line in New York City, right? It provided a pedestrian freeway through the city in some ways, with all of that elevated track that was converted to a linear park. There's so much attention to detail. Where you sit, the plantings, what art is incorporated, events that are temporarily staged there. It becomes a whole different experience of the city.
Another example that comes to mind: in Medellín, Colombia, there are these Paisas, or kind of informal developments, well-built, very high density, high rates of poverty. For a long time, these areas experienced really high crime rates too, but over the last twenty years now, some of them have transformed into totally different environments through the introduction of things like street lighting and better public transportation access, cable cars essentially, and public art also played a big part in that transformation. There's a project by the artist JR there, who makes these monumental banners that show photographs of people's eyes, pasted to the sides of buildings all up and down the Paisas. It gives this idea that the people living there now are looking down on everyone else. Like, "Hey, we see you. We see you, like what you're doing. Pay attention to us." And I think that collaboration between an artist and residents helped encourage reinvestment and rebuilt trust in an interesting way.
[KO] I thought of trials first. The North Omaha Trail is a phenomenal example of how art can be integrated. That trail connects the North Omaha Transit Center to the heart of North O, and phase two is being constructed right now, which will connect to the Old Market. But I'd argue that, equally as valuable as the built infrastructure of that project–many millions spent on that project–is the programming that goes along with it. Just Ride, for example, where a couple of times every year, people get together en masse to bike the trail. It’s free and another opportunity for people to get out and access the trail and the art along the trail.
[AC] Most transportation systems are designed to optimize flow. Public art introduces moments of pause, reflection, and curiosity. When does slowing people down create value for a community?
[KO] I love this question because value can be defined in a few different ways, but I'd say that slowing people down almost always creates value in all of the ways we traditionally think about value creation.
Anytime that I'm in front of a group that is more than, like, ten people, I always wanna throw up this stat. The American Heart Association, and if you've heard me say it before–sorry, you're gonna hear it again–a study that the American Heart Association did found that active transportation initiatives, and community investments in them, for every one dollar invested in active transportation, like a trail, saves three dollars in community health expenses. The integration of public art to get more people using these active transportation systems more frequently reduces all of our co-shared health expenses. Now, assigning dollar amounts to everything isn’t a great way of thinking about how we make our community healthier, but if that framework helps drive investment, then great. I'm all for it.
That’s one way of thinking about the value of getting people using shared transit space–the ones and zeros, and the dollars and cents. But there’s also value in the way we think about our community, what we each care about, who we each care for, and the intrinsic values that we all share. Public art is often a really potent expression of those values, and it helps us feel rooted in place and like we belong somewhere.
[SO] Well, I don't want to unduly disparage the whole traffic engineering profession, but I do think that we have to talk about the way we build cities. We've trusted the construction and design of our built environment to a certain subset of people who view the world in overly simplified terms. So, you know, the question around the goal of transportation systems often is maximizing flow or speed.
I go back to the first question of infrastructure and art being the same thing in some ways, cultural goods that define our shared spaces. We need more than those things, and we've always needed more of those things, not just speed and flow and all of that. There's this guy, Dennis Stack, who focuses on walkability a lot, and he describes some core characteristics that you need for a place to feel good, for a walk to feel good in a way that you might choose to walk over a different mode of transportation. I think it's true for really any mode of transportation, but these are the things that make it nice to be a human while moving around your environment: your movement needs to feel useful, so you're getting somewhere you need to go. It has to feel safe, obviously. And it has to feel interesting. I think art helps spaces meet those conditions across the board. It makes moving around a city more enjoyable, safer, and more interesting.
[AC] That’s fantastic. Thank you both. Last question, and then we'll open it up to the floor. If the ultimate goal is thriving communities rather than simply moving people efficiently, what policy changes would you make to encourage incorporating public artwork into transit-oriented development projects?
[SO] I think one huge thing we can do is offer flexibility in the way that we approach regulation and more opportunity for people to push the boundaries of what is allowed in public spaces, and doing so in a way that doesn't slow things down or increase the cost. Let’s just make it easier to try new ways of doing things.
Let's make the city a better place to walk too. And obviously there are many investments already happening on that front. Let's lean into it and do more.
Third would be making sure that public infrastructure projects include budget for public art right at the beginning, or even bringing an artist into the design team. In Calgary, Canada, they had started an artist-in-residence program where they are embedded in city planning. They’re involved with traditional public art projects, and they also show up at all sorts of meetings about infrastructure around waste management or water or public parks. Having an artist who knows creative problem-solving in the room can change outcomes substantially by proposing new solutions to old problems.
[KO] You mentioned funding and budgeting. I’m going to add to that. Yes, we should be budgeting for public art integration. The challenge with enshrining that in policy is that sometimes the artwork is viewed as a commodity, or an add-on to a project that comes as an afterthought. I still like the idea of that type of policy, like a percent for art program or an art for parks program, but public feedback, artists’ voices, and the public have to be invested in the process early on for the outcome to mean something to people.
I don't know what equivalent investment in active transportation like walking and biking and scootering is compared to our investment in driving, but to the argument that this entire conversation has been setting up, when we anticipate that we're gonna spend more time in the space we're moving through, then we're also more open to investing in that space. If we thought the space that we're sitting in right now was gonna be a back room that would never host human connection, we would have said, "Great. We don't need any of these beautiful features. We don't need any of these comfortable features. We don't need an artful expression of space. But in all the spaces that we've talked about where we do want to spend time, where we do want to spend our time and attention, we invest in those. I like this narrative of slowing down to begin the conversation of how to tip the scales of where we want to allocate more investment in modes of active transportation because what I've found in my career thus far–not the longest career, not the shortest career, somewhere in between–when people really, really care about a thing, we figure out how to do it. It's not a money issue; it's an attention issue.
[AC] Thank you both. All right, we have time for some questions. Does anybody have a question? I'll come to you with a microphone.
[Audience Member] How would you suggest that we have this conversation with the broader taxpayer base to make the point that both public transit and public art are necessities and core public goods we should all be able to access? And how can we equip our leaders with the tools they need to have those conversations with people in our communities?
[KO] I think one of the biggest communication challenges we have when we talk about what we’re doing is the tendency to oversimplify concepts. People are smart, and people care. We can be transparent and walk them through each stage of the process. We are a populace that is sophisticated enough to have the discussion about the value behind the money that we put into our public transportation system. I think we can get into a little bit more detail as we talk to the public about the different scales of problems that we're talking about and where they apply. I want the answer to be that human dignity requires that we do this and that we invest in high-quality design and art and materials for our public good and public spaces. I think that our public infrastructure is the altar of humanity. We all share in that space, and we should honor it.
[SO] When I think back to where I've had success in finding funding or policy support, it's been trying to understand what other people want to accomplish. What do they value? How do you align your goals with their goals? The Riverfront Park and Gene Leahy Mall is an example of a public space that was built with a lot of public money. There's also a lot of private money there, both tied to what investment in dynamic public spaces can mean for our economy.
How do we think about retaining and attracting talent to the city? We’ve all heard that question a million times. I think there's a strong case to be made that the emphasis we put on design and quality of public space, whether it’s parks, museums, or libraries, is the same for public transportation.
[Audience Member] What I've recently seen and experienced in Omaha, for the most part, is very successful and beautiful, well thought out and intentional, but my heart hurts when I look at the trail. I'm calling out the North Omaha Trail specifically as an example of something so beautifully built and designed that gets little to no use. So my question is: what happens after all of this money has been spent on something and it’s not being activated? When do we go back to the drawing board?
I love the outdoors, and I love walking, and I love to be in the fresh air, but when safety is an issue, that’s a problem. How do we fix that and make public spaces and public transit corridors that get used so that people feel safe using them and actually benefit?
[KO] Thanks. Thank you for that. It's a totally great point that’s really related to the idea of co-ownership of the space. Even if you're the one building the infrastructure, it doesn’t belong to just you. It's all of ours.
The public safety question is so multifaceted, and I don't know all of it, and I can't pretend to. But from a design perspective, or my perspective, I think sometimes with infrastructure investment, it's a really forward-looking thing. And so it's, it's always like we're building something that will eventually result in something else, and sometimes it’s like, "Okay, people aren't using it. Let's keep doing these other things. Let's keep making these other interventions and think about how it’s all going to connect over time."
Minneapolis, where I used to live, comes to mind as an example of a city that early on built out this string of interconnected parks, green spaces, and lakes way beyond where anyone lived in the city. Now they're really well-known. They're safe, and they're well-used. That's an early design concept–busy places are generally safer. But it took a while for them to get to that level of use. They weren't used for a long time until the city grew around them. I think a lot of what we talked about–whether it's public transportation, or trails, or other infrastructure investments–we need to think about how people are using them in the short- and long-term.
I think sometimes with the built environment, you’re playing the long game. Omaha’s in a building phase right now. There’s construction everywhere. The trail system is also in a building phase, with all these sections that, in the end, will connect down through UNMC and Field Club and the North to the Omaha Trail. The hope is that when that connection is complete, people will use the trail system to walk and bike places all the time. Designers are dreamers. We put pen to paper and make these plans, and sometimes it takes 10, 20, 50 years to see them come to fruition.
I'm really excited that so many people are interested in arts and infrastructure, policy, and what's next for the city. It feels like there is so much momentum for where we're going, who we want to be, and there are so many of us signed on and ready to do the work. I haven’t experienced momentum like that before, and it is a very exciting thing to build on. So, thank you. I was really happy to be here.
[SO] I’ll echo that. I'm just gonna say I care about this stuff. I'm happy that you're all here, and that you care about it too, so thank you for coming out.
[AC] Thank you. We look forward to keeping the conversation going and adn seeing all of you again soon.
*This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Kene Okigbo, PLA, ASLA, is a partner at RDG Planning & Design whose work spans the markets of urban design, parks and recreation, healthcare, higher education, and sports.
He is passionate about shaping places that enhance quality of life and consistently seeks opportunities to demonstrate the positive impact of design on communities. His goal in every project is to communicate the needs of a community through a compelling design.
In addition to his design practice, Kene is deeply engaged in community and professional organizations. His work has been recognized through a number of awards, and he is a frequent speaker at universities and national conferences, where he shares insights on design, leadership, and the evolving role of the profession.
He is increasingly interested in how landscape architecture contributes to relief, resilience, and recovery, especially in communities experiencing change or reinvention.
Stephen Osberg is Vice President at PGSA, where he guides the firm’s urban strategies, communication efforts, and public-facing partnerships. With a background in planning, policy, and infrastructure, he brings a thoughtful, systems-level perspective to complex urban redevelopment opportunities.
Before joining PGSA, Osberg served as Senior Director of Transportation & Urban Development at the Greater Omaha Chamber, where he oversaw development of Omaha’s Urban Core Strategic Plan, managed financial analysis underlying the Omaha Streetcar, and helped secure federal infrastructure funding for the region. Earlier roles additionally include the City of Omaha and regional planning firms, where he shaped land use policies, led multimodal transportation initiatives, and managed stakeholder engagement across public and private sectors. Osberg’s planning expertise and public-sector insight help PGSA navigate the intersection of policy, place, and investment—advancing projects strategically to deliver both impact and value.
About the Moderator:
Amy Cherko oversees Public Art at Amplify Arts. She is a lifelong Omahan, proud and passionate about our arts and culture communities. She is a biologist, project manager, and compassionate communicator who believes joy should be centered in the everyday. Before joining Amplify, Amy worked in environmental consulting, supporting a wide range of natural resources projects, which shaped her appreciation of vast spaces, the kindness and care of community, and the importance of interdisciplinary connections.