Placemaking

Friends Transform Vacant Building Into Popular Community Center

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El BANCO hosts workshops, film screenings, community festivals and concerts by local artists. Families and youth can participate in yoga classes and guitar workshops; they can paint, perform martial arts and practice Aztec dance. Some activities, like African dance, show the group’s interest in exploring other cultures.

The Woman Beside Wendell Berry: The Most Important Fiction Editor Almost No One Has Heard Of

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That’s the home Tanya Berry has made, in a rural community that endures—at least for now—because of people like her. Over those years, she has honed skills in farm work and the domestic arts, while serving as perhaps the most important fiction editor almost no one has heard of, married to one of the most important American writers almost everyone knows.

Come for the Fun, Stay for the Revolution

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In a world that’s been increasingly paved over and privatized, it can be hard to find open places and spaces to gather. As Lucy Gomez-Feliciano of Logan Square Neighborhood Association says, many grassroots collectives have to operate as a “road show” – occupying whatever living room, church basement, library or community center they can find– or heading outside to organize.

Building Tactical Resilience

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According to Michael Berkowitz, “Cities can’t just build resilience out of thin air—they need the right tools to do it.” So-called tactical resilience is the application of the tactical urbanism methodology to projects that do not just make cities better places to live, but that specifically address communities’ resilience challenges.

Cultures of Place with Alastair McIntosh

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Alastair McIntosh joins us via the wires to talk about growing up on an island community, experiencing Papua New Guinea, rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful and experiencing the poverty of affluence, and his life long work to emphasise the importance of cultures of place and his experience of rebuilding them after forcible displacement on the Isle of Eigg and in urban settings with his GalGael project. We also touch on the island Presbyterian heritage he shares with Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump who “was wrung from the loins of a woman from Lewis” and how the force can be turned to the dark side.

From Mobility to Community Building: Rethinking the Future of State DOTs

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In our current political climate, there is little appetite to build and resource huge new bureaucracies. Talent, expertise and the funding already exists within most transportation agencies. We simply have to re-tool the apparatus that was so successful in creating the high-speed network in the 20th Century.

Le Coop Verte Transforms Run-Down Historic Site in Quebec Into Vibrant Hostel

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Both the bar and the hostel are managed by Le Coop Verte (“The Green Co-op”), founded over a decade ago to create a “participatory network” of locals interested in promoting sustainable tourism in the area. It has about 500 members, from past hostel guests who purchase $10 memberships to support the hostel, to local activists, and former and current employees. Members who live in the area are asked to participate in occasional board meetings and seasonal chores such as raking leaves.

Berlin’s Holzmarkt Shows the Incredible Potential of Urban Villages

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Creative placemaking — a concept that employs a specific strategy to infuse the arts and culture into a space — can be seen in different forms all around the world. Now, one creative placemaking project along the waterfront in Berlin, Germany — near where the Berlin Wall once stood — has transformed into a robust urban village.

A Return to Democratic Space

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In our cities and towns, there isn’t a more democratic space than our streets and sidewalks. Buildings are exclusive—homes are private, offices are secure, you have to pay to get into the gym or eat at a restaurant. Yet, streets are inclusive, collectively ours, and the very essence of public space, shared by all citizens.

Youth for Public Spaces: (Place) Making Our Future

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At a time when a primary mode of interaction between young people is through social media, this group may be especially vulnerable to the possibility of forgetting the value of public space around them. Why play chess in the park when you can play it on Facebook? Why walk along the riverside when you can send Tweets instead? Why have lunch from a kiosk in a public plaza when it’s easier to post Snapchats of your food from home?

To a Faith in Place

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I don’t know who will turn a profit first, Stephen or I, but we’ll both keep putting in the labour. It’s what we do, bounty or not. Is he a farmer? Of course. Am I a writer? – I don’t know why that answer comes with more difficulty. But I look to the land, to my generation with its multi-year commitments: development, sustainability, security. To their faith in place. I have faith, too. I am a writer. And I keep farming.