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Distraction or Aspiration? Last week, many urbanists (including us) rushed to promote the photogenic Black Lives Matter street mural that appeared overnight near the White House in Washington, DC (New Yorker). But the DC chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement called the mural a "performative distraction," saying that Mayor Bowser had not done enough to fight police violence in the city. Last weekend, protestors reclaimed the message, repainting the mural to say "Black Lives Matter = Defund the Police" (Washington Post).
Since then, however, the idea has spread to cities across the country (CityLab), with Black Lives Matter murals popping up in Sacramento and Berkeley in California; Albany and Syracuse in New York; Charlotte and Raleigh in North Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Dallas, Texas; and Seattle, Washington. Not to be outdone, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City pledged to have one mural painted in every borough (though none have yet appeared).
On our social media, our posts about these murals prompted a lively debate with some agreeing with activists that the murals ring hollow without action on the issues they represent, while others argued that these symbolic acts still have meaning and a life of their own.
When Tactical Urbanism Forgets Community Process: This week, anthropologist and planner Dr. Destiny Thomas argued that by failing to consult the community, many of the celebrated open streets projects that planners implemented in response to COVID-19 have failed Black and brown communities (CityLab).
"If we want to see streets filled with joy and true low-stress access to quality of life," writes Thomas, "We have to be willing to disrupt what has been the default mode in urban planning—one that centers whiteness and silences Black and Brown people and low-income communities. This dynamic plays host to white supremacy by imposing pilots and experiments on low-income communities that deserve long-term planning and participatory processes."
While "lighter, quicker, cheaper" experiments are an important part of placemaking, at Project for Public Spaces we see these as part of the participatory process—a collaborative investigation with the community—not a replacement for community engagement.
A New Kind of Public Safety: The week began with the city council of Minneapolis, Minnesota, announcing that it would dismantle its police department, and work with the community to devise an alternative model for public safety (NPR).
Other cities around the country, from Los Angeles to St. Louis to Dallas to Durham, have pledged smaller but similar changes, reducing the amount of funding dedicate to police departments and distributing it to social services and community programs focused on addressing the roots of crime (CityLab). These changes could drastically change the experience of heavily policed communities in public space, and also open up new ways for placemakers to work with neighborhoods that have historically not had the resources to invest in the public realm.
One particularly noteworthy change comes from New York City, where the mayor has pledged to free street vendors from police oversight and create a civilian oversight committee, instead (Eater). While this is no panacea, it is one step toward legalizing the informal businesses of people who make a living in public space.
The Social Life of Small Face Coverings: An Italian scientist recently decided to measure the effects of wearing a mask on people's behavior toward one another in public space. He found that people tend to stay twice as far away from a person wearing a mask—an observation that could have big implications for the success or failure of ongoing physical distancing efforts (Seattle Times).
Who Will Save the Third Places? The commercial spaces that sociologist Ray Oldenburg described as the central settings of our public social lives are facing a potential extinction event as a result of the coronavirus (Grub Street).
Placemaking Playbook: Finally, here's a roundup of 10 recent innovative placemaking projects making headlines:
- Black Lives Matter street murals across the country (Forbes)
- Fencing around the White House becomes a memorial to Black lives lost to police violence (Insider)
- Confederate monuments removed by protestors around the United States—could highways be next? (NPR)
- Tips for COVID-19 safety on transit from Japan and France (CityLab)
- A guide to police reform (Next City)
- A temporarily free issue of the Journal of Planning Education and Research on “Planning beyond Mass Incarceration” (JPER)
- A story about how placemaking goes on during COVID-19 from Albuquerque, NM (ShelterForce)
- A comic about how people are protecting themselves from COVID-19 while protesting (The Nib)
- Libraries stepping up to be the frontlines of resilience (Governing)
- An ode to the humble porch (New York Times)
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