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Four Top Findings for Placemaking Practitioners | Placemaking Weekly

Posted August 22, 2021 - 12:18

This newsletter from the Project for Public Spaces connects people who share a passion for public spaces to ideas and issues, news, quotes, places, and events from the placemaking movement.

Four Takeaways on Public Space Investment for Placemakers
The Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking recently released new qualitative research examining the relationship between public spaces and community well-being. The report dives into three sites Project for Public Spaces has worked on—Civic Plaza in Albuquerque, Canalside in Buffalo, and the Flint Farmers' Market in Flint—and shares learnings for more equitable and effective placemaking.

Nate Storring, the Deputy Executive Director at Project for Public Spaces, has written a wonderful piece summarizing the four takeaways from this report that every placemaker should know, including the importance of mission-aligned revenue streams. Read more.
 

More from the Blog


Flyover Park: Empowering the Next Generation of City Builders in Calgary
June 25, 2021 • by Ximena González

Social Alchemy: Jim Walker on Placemaking as Utopian Experiment
May 12, 2021 • by Jim Walker

Six Trends in Placemaking & Active Transportation from Walk/Bike/Places
May 6, 2021 • by Nate Storring

Events & Opportunities
September 19, 2021 • Award: 2021 Farmers Market Celebration, American Farmland Trust & Farmers Market Coalition

September 27 – October 3, 2021 • Porch Placemaking Week, Fourfold Studio  
 

Have an event or opportunity you would like to share? Email us at [email protected].

Public Space News
U.S. Census Results Are In. The results of the decennial census have been released. Though comparisons to results from previous years are muddled somewhat by methodological changes, it appears that trends of urbanization and diversification have continued. The new figures will influence the allocation of political power and government funding for the next decade. (Planetizen)

Cities in the South and West Keep Sprawling. The fast-growing cities of the American South and West continue to rapidly expand their geographic footprint. From 2001-2019, more than 14,000 square miles of land were newly developed. The growth shows little sign of slowing, despite growing evidence that urban density benefits both sustainability and quality of life, and that sprawl makes communities more vulnerable to disasters like flooding. (Washington Post)

Museums Welcoming Refugees. As the crisis in Afghanistan continues to unfold, the American Alliance of Museums is urging institutions to support immigrants and refugees with programming. The nonprofit suggests that Welcoming Week, a yearly event that involves museums across the U.S., is a prime opportunity to use institutional resources to help those who have been impacted. Welcoming Week runs from Sep 10-19. (American Alliance of Museums)

Why Smart Cities Fail. A new book explores why predictions about technology-driven cities so often fail to come to fruition. From Toronto's Quayside project to Amazon's HQ2, ambitious projects to remake the urban environment can fall victim to a range of cultural, political, and social challenges. These can include local opposition and concerns about data privacy and governance. (Fast Company)

UN Releases Climate Report. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body designated by the UN to evaluate climate science, has released their annual report. Citing new findings, the IPCC concludes that warming is occurring even faster than anticipated, and that global temperature increases of 1.5-2 degrees Celsius are now all but certain. The report also points out that some effects of climate change are already evident in increasingly severe weather patterns in multiple parts of the world. (IPCC)

Placemaking Playbook
As always, here is a roundup of 10 inspiring placemaking ideas from the week:
  1. The new data techniques helping revive rust belt cities (Strong Towns)
  2. This park in Chatanooga built with equity in mind (National Recreation and Park Association)
  3. A new model of civic engagement taking root in Cleveland (Strong Towns)
  4. An intergenerational project to help returning citizens reenter society (The Solutions Journalism Exchange)
  5. This four-part series on the importance of alleys (Strong Towns)
  6. A retail incubator helping online businesses open up physical stores downtown (Urbanize)
  7. A beautiful new park in Atlanta (Urbanize)
  8. Ideas to improve small towns with small-scale manufacturing (Planetizen)
  9. This city making it easier to repurpose shipping containers as dense housing (Urbanize)
  10. A call to bring back the corner store (Planetizen)

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