The Potential of Community Benefit Agreements | Placemaking Weekly

Posted July 18, 2021 - 12:44

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.

How a Diverse Coalition in Portland, Oregon, Is Centering Racial Equity in a Large-Scale Development Project

Rendering of the Broadway Corridor Development. Credit: ZGF Architects

Since 2018, Project for Public Spaces has been honored to work with ZGF Architects to produce a placemaking vision and support a masterplan for Broadway Corridor, a 32-acre redevelopment in downtown Portland, Oregon.

But as Meg Walker writes for the Bass Center on Transformative Placemaking, what stands out most about this project is its ambitious and accountable Community Benefits Agreement, which ties these new buildings and public spaces to furthering racial equity through jobs, workforce development, and affordable housing and commercial space. Read more.

Rendering by ZGF Architects.

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

Panel Recording: Piano Terra

Last week, Elena Madison of Project for Public Spaces participated in PIANO TERRA, a panel including the founders of TOPOTEK 1 and Openfabric that discussed our post-pandemic world, focusing holistically on the "ground floor" of the city, including both public and private spaces. Watch the Full Video.

More Events & Opportunities

August 1-7, 2021 • Event: National Farmers Market Week, Farmers Market Coalition

August 9, 2021 • Grant: Love Your Block, Cities of Service

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

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

Public Space News

Parks Shown to Benefit Health and Equity. A new report details the impact of parks access on community and individual health. In a survey of park professionals, the National Recreation and Parks Association found that 9 in 10 parks are taking specific actions to ensure that their programming advances health equity. (NRPA)

NY Tackles Street Noise. As cities return to pre-pandemic levels of activity, street noise is on the rise again. A new bill in the NY State legislature aims to reign in excessive noise from vehicles, which has been shown to contribute to multiple health problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes. (StreetsBlog)

Skyscraper: Free to Good Owner! The City of Memphis is soliciting proposals to redevelop a large complex downtown, and has let it be known that they'll throw in the building for free. The complex at 100 N. Main, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, features almost 600,000SF of space that the city intends to redevelop into a mixed use property to revitalize the city center. (NextCity)

Little Island is the Wrong Kind of Park. NYC's newest park, Little Island, has won plaudits for its elegant design. However, it does have critics. One author points out that Little Island, like many flagship park projects, does not actually provide the kind of green space the city's citizens need: a back yard.

According to author Alexandra Lange, large park projects are often built on the assumption that green is good—reserves of space built for a quiet stroll are the ideal. However, this comes with restrictions on use—such as prohibitions on music or sports—that make space less useful to citizens. (CityLab)

Placemaking Playbook

As always, here is a roundup of 10 inspiring placemaking ideas from the week:

These reclaimed industrial sites in LA (Planetizen)
A lifeline for business districts: the American Rescue Plan (Main Street America)
This park that also builds literacy skills (NAR)
A call to bridge the language barrier built into digital tools (SoJo Exchange)
An idea to turn vacant parking garages into affordable housing (Planetizen)
A project in Tennessee to increase equitable access to waterways (NRPA)
A mobility hub that reduces car trips in Buffalo (NextCity)
A new "Public Space Observatory" in the UK (Cardiff University)
The cities finding new ways to make data available to their citizens (CityLab)
A call to address inequities in beach access (Planetizen)