How Can We Dismantle Barriers in Retail and Real Estate during COVID-19?

1. Safety and comfort in public space are foundational, and their meaning is deeply personal.
2. Real community engagement means real power, real choice, and meeting people where they are.
3. While open street policies could help businesses, permitting and implementation remain major barriers—especially in communities of color.

You can learn more about these three takeaways, plus two more in our summary of the panel on the Project for Public Spaces blog. Read more.

More from the Blog

Black Lives Matter
June 1, 2020

A Placemaker's Perspective from Wuhan
May 29, 2020 • an interview with Zheng Yue (郑玥) 

The Recovery Will Happen in Public Space
May 16, 2020 • by Phil Myrick

Communities in Nairobi Compete to Contribute to Public Space
May 1, 2020 • by Miki Takeshita
 

More Events & Opportunities

Webinar Recording: How will we ensure equitable access to parks and public spaces? Canadian Urban Institute 

Missed our most recent webinar about equitable development in the recovery from COVID-19? Watch the video.
 

A Call to Courage: This month, Black designers, planners, urbanists, and un-urbanists have written a remarkable collection of articles and led insightful discussions about how to dismantle systemic racism in the United States (CityLab). Many of these events and writings include concrete steps that organizations and individuals can take to help dismantle the systems of white supremacy that shape our public spaces (LA Times). (For white urbanists seeking to integrate equity into their practice, now is a good time to listen, learn, support, and follow, rather than to reinvent the wheel.)

For placemakers, one standout is Jay Pitter's "Call to Courage," written for the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI). As she writes, "The public realm and built environment are not simply a backdrop to the current civil unrest; urbanism has contributed to the racial inequities inciting it." Besides its eloquent encapsulation of the current moment and its deep roots, her letter also includes a learning agenda and appendices on equity-based placemaking.

The Arsenal of Exclusion: Often the tools that reinforce systems of white supremacy are, well, boring. They are our haphazardly designed, built, and maintained sidewalks (CityLab); they are curfew laws that echo the history of sundown lynch mobs in the United States (CityLab); they are the arcane mazes of bureaucracy that make rezoning a process of racial displacement in the name of affordability (Next City). After public outrage recedes once again, will our organizations have the endurance to work through the minutia of oppression?

Public Space on the Chopping Block: Parks have proven to be important outlets for recreation, mental health, and sociable distancing during the pandemic. Yet as state and local governments contemplate budget cuts in the coming year, public space could be on the chopping block (US News).

This comes at a time when many cities are reconsidering how much funding they provide to police departments as a means of addressing police violence against Black people, while also addressing the roots of crime (Brookings). What if, instead, our cities invested in ensuring that every community had access to the services they need to thrive—including a safe, comfortable, dignified, and lively public realm? 

Places in Recession: Just as the current recession and ongoing pandemic restrictions affect cities across the country in different ways, they also affect our neighborhoods differently.

Downtowns face severe declines in tourism, foot traffic from downtown workers, and tax revenue (Governing). New York's Chinatown faces all of these challenges as well as barriers like language, technology, low profit margins, and an aging population (Bloomberg). Meanwhile, huge swaths of residential neighborhoods must grapple with another looming foreclosure crisis, though there is hope that land banks may help prevent some of the knock-on effects of vacancies (CityLab).

Placemaking Playbook: Finally, here's a roundup of 7 recent innovative placemaking ideas making headlines:

1. A primer on Juneteenth, a holiday on June 19th that marks the day slaves in Galveston, TX, finally learned they were free—over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation (Vox)
2. A short history of door handles in a time of touchless design (Apollo) 
3. The autonomous zone in Seattle as an experiment in asset-based planning (The Urbanist) 
4. A collection of COVID-19 data sources for city planners (Planetizen)
5. The stoop makes a comeback as social space in New York (Gothamist)
6. Libraries reclaiming their role as "community living rooms" (New York Times)
7. New evidence says transit can be safe during COVID-19 (The Atlantic)