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19 of the most beautiful public spaces in the world, according to urban designers

Business Insider asked over a dozen urban designers and planners to tell us their favorite public spaces. Here are their answers.

Cars clogged the streets of Borehamwood, England, an outlying suburb of London, for decades. But in the mid-1990s, the town added pedestrian-only areas to its center.

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The change transformed the town, according to Esther Kurland, the director of Urban Design London, a nonprofit that connects urban designers and planners in the city.

"This was one of the first ‘traffic calming’ shared space schemes in the country," Kurland tells "And I was fascinated in how the behavior of both drivers and pedestrians changed."

Here are 19 of the world's most beautiful parks, libraries, streets, and plazas, according to people who design them for a living.

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Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois.

"It was clearly a game-changer, not only for Chicago and the real estate that surrounds the park, but for its influence on cities everywhere," says Carol Coletta, the VP of Community and National Initiatives for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Coletta manages millions of dollars annually in grants for city design, and says Millennium Park is the ideal public space. I

"Lurie Garden, tucked in the park’s southeast corner, is one of my favorite places in the world that somehow manages to remain deeply calming in the midst of the chaos of the larger park," she says.

Spruce Street Harbor Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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The central square in Seaside, Florida.

The streets of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York.

"It is so many things to so many people and really serves all of the communities around it," Julie Ember, associate director of design at New York's Bryant Park Corporation and 34th Street Partnership, says of Brooklyn's largest park.

"It is simultaneously a beautiful escape into nature while being fully representative of the city and the human touch. It is a great balance of open-ended space and programmed space; and maybe most importantly, its landscape is really varied and interesting and never fails to surprise me."

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Hosier Lane in Melbourne, Australia.

Washington Square Park in Manhattan, New York City.

"I

La Trobe Reading Room at the State Library in Melbourne, Australia.

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Strietzelmarkt in Dresden, Germany.

The main atrium of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, New York City.

Though visiting the Guggenheim's atrium is free to the public, you need to purchase admission to see the rest of the museum.

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The Ryōan-ji Zen Gardens in Kyoto, Japan.

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The Zen Gardens feature "patterns that are timeless, yet always changing, filled with stillness and life that call us to pay attention," says Jonathan Rose, the president of Jonathan Rose Companies,

The Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver, Colorado.

This 9,525-seat outdoor amphitheater is "set in an astounding red sandstone formation that feels large and intimate, contemporary and historic, epic and humane, and reminds us that our most exuberant gestures are so much smaller then nature's," Rose says.

Point State Park Promenades in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The streets of Borehamwood, England.

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Trafalgar Square in London, England.

Los Bosques de Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

River Street in Savannah, Georgia.

Savannah's historic River Street formed around 200 years ago, and still features its original cobblestones. Once lined with warehouses, the waterfront street was redeveloped in the late 1970s to include shops, restaurants, bars, and art galleries.

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Place Jacques Cartier in Montreal, Canada.

car-free zone

The Live Oak Friends Meeting House in Houston, Texas.

Completed in 2000, the

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