Transformative placemaking: A framework to create connected, vibrant, and inclusive communities – Brookings Institution

The September media headlines were not kind to Pittsburgh. Prompted by a new report on racial and gender disparities in the city, articles such as Pittsburgh: A Most Livable City, but Not for Black Women began to surface, highlighting a troublesome contradiction.1 By numerous measures, the Steel City is on the rise. But much of its growth and prosperity are concentrating downtown and in a handful of adjacent neighborhoods, while other neighborhoodshome primarily to people of color and high-poverty householdshave yet to feel the lift.2

This story is hardly unique to Pittsburgh. After decades of sprawl and suburban dominance, many U.S. cities are experiencing rebounding populations, growing employment, and new public and private sector investments in both people and places. Yet many communities are being left out of the revival.3 Throughout the country, the challenges wrought by our widening geographic inequitiescharacterized by stark income, wealth, and race-based disparities across neighborhoods, cities, and regionsare becoming even more apparent, thrusting place to the forefront of many economic policy conversations.4

One year ago this month, Brookings Metro dove into this fray with the establishment of the Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking. The impetus stemmed from the recognition that market disruptions, coupled with changing demographic and household structures, are sharpening the nations long-standing spatial dividesand that new sets of place-led policies and practices are essential to bridging them.

The patterns of concentration, dispersion, and racial and economic segregation that characterize the American landscape are not new, nor are they static. Across the country, research by our Brookings colleague Mark Muro and others has shown that large, coastal metro areas such as Seattle, San Francisco, and New York City are capturing a disproportionate share of todays digital-economy growth, while small and midsized cities and rural areas fall behind.5 Within metro areas, poverty and racial isolation remain persistent in historically distressed and disinvested urban neighborhoods, even as many downtowns, waterfronts, and innovation districts are undergoing significant revitalization and reinvestment.6 Meanwhile, many suburban communities are grappling with aging infrastructure and rising numbers of poor residents, amid auto-centric designs that lack the walkability and connectivity demanded by the businesses needed to serve them.7

Residents and workers in these areas understand that in todays economy, opportunity is increasingly dictated by geographyand theyre putting pressure on federal, state, and local leaders to take action.8 Yet lingering tensions remain, rooted in deep-seated fears about neighborhood change and the lack of community voice in the process.9People want to see their communities improve, but those who have long been excluded from growth and investment are rightfully wary about who decides the meaning of improvement, and who will reap the gains. In short, how can residents trust that the benefits of investment will finally reach them?10

We launched the Bass Center a year ago with the aim of inspiring public, private, and civic leaders to respond to this questionthat is, to work deeply with communities to make the kinds of investments in place that will generate widespread social and economic benefits. Twelve months and a lot of listening later, weve developed an outcome-oriented framework that definestransformative placemakingas a new form of integrated practice for getting there. The frameworkmeant to be adapted and refined to reflect community priorities and realitiesis designed to provide stakeholders in urban, suburban, and rural areas with a holistic template for creating connected, vibrant, and inclusive communities.

Over the past several decades, planners, community development groups, and other place-focused organizations have elevatedthe importance of place and placemaking in fostering more inclusive development. However, for all their successes, those efforts are constrained by dated structures that fail to keep pace with the changing needs of businesses, institutions, residents, and workers in regards to placeand are thus unable to substantively turn the tide on the nations unequal growth patterns. For example, for all of the evidence showing the benefits of proximity and density, many of our policies and investments still largely support decentralized developmentand the auto-dependency, environmental degradation, and fiscal waste that come with it. Further, when public and private sector leadersdo prioritize place-based investments, they often focus on either mitigating the symptoms of entrenched poverty or catering to the perceived demands of well-off workers and residents. In neither case is more equitable and inclusive economic growth the main objective.

So, what makes transformative placemaking different? And what distinguishes it from creative placemaking, tactical placemaking, and other efforts with a seemingly similar ambition? The answer can be boiled down to three distinct qualities that set transformative placemaking apart: its scope, scale, and level of integration.

When Brookings Metro established the Bass Center last year, we put forth a case for why the Center was neededthat is, the major challenges it would address and the gaps in knowledge and practice that it would work with the broader field to fill. But we needed more time to define what success might look like on the groundin other words, what locally deployed transformative placemaking should aspire to achieve. To this end, and with significant input from several other individuals and organizations, the Bass Center has developed a four-part, holistic framework that defines the practice and lays out a broad set of outcomes against which local efforts might be gauged.11 (Download the transformative placemaking framework.)

Transformative placemaking aims to:

For example, in Wytheville, Va.a small, rural community facing industry decline and a diminishing populationpublic and private sector leaders are coming together to support local entrepreneurship by providing small downtown businesses with access to capital, free business classes, and mentorship and networking opportunities. Combined with investments in street improvements and new amenities, the town is taking an integrated approach rooted in its homegrown assets to catalyze revitalization.

For example, as part of its larger riverfront revitalization strategy, the Memphis River Parks Partnership is increasing connectivity between disadvantaged neighborhoods to the north, south, and east of downtown by defining pedestrian and cycling corridors between the riverfront and surrounding neighborhoods and using a long-overlooked park as an anchor for new neighborhood investment. Combined with efforts to nurture long-term skill development, support women- and minority-owned businesses, and promote unity among diverse neighbors, they are using the riverfront to bring social and economic gains to all Memphians.

For example, in Philadelphias University City District, a local partnership of anchor institutions, small businesses, and residents are coming together to not only fund quality public spaces and programming, but to ensure they are deeply inclusive. Through the Just Spaces Initiative, UCD stakeholders are using a web-based tool to track who utilizes the public space they manage, offering more diverse and culturally relevant programs and events, and implementing historic signage programs to highlight the role of notable women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community.

For example, in Washington, D.C., Building Bridges Across the River is encouraging locally managed civic infrastructure by finding creative ways to engage community members, municipal leaders, and nonprofits throughout every step of their effort to develop the citys first elevated public park. It offers Community Leadership Empowerment Workshops to teach residents how to effectively organize and lead meaningful change, provides resources for residents and others to create inclusive, community-driven plans of their own, and is continually adapting its Equitable Development Plan to meet residents changing needs.

This framework is designed to be relevant to any community aspiring to pursue large-scale development or redevelopment that promotes widespread economic and social benefits. It is neither prescriptive nor static, recognizing that the specific strategies to achieve transformative placemakings objectivesin whole or in partmust be tailored to the distinct needs of places and populations, and constantly evolve in response to new market forces, trends, and opportunities.

In practice, this framework can serve as a template for public, private, and civic sector leaders to guide program development, policy reform, and resource allocation decisions, to set impact goals and metrics for assessing them, and to measure progress over time. It encourages them to establish a more holistic vision for what a place can become, and to understand the role that intersecting transformative placemaking effortslocally designed and advancedcan play in achieving that vision.

At the end of the day, this framework is about creating livable places for everyone, not just those at the top of the ladder. It encourages places like Pittsburgh, and other cities and towns facing place-based inequities, to take a hard look at who has benefited from investment in the past, who is benefiting now, and how leaders can partner with communities to ensure that more people benefit in the future.

Go here to read the rest:

Transformative placemaking: A framework to create connected, vibrant, and inclusive communities - Brookings Institution