Placemaking

Sub Topics: Placemaking

Economic Benefits to Implementing Arts & Culturally Informed Activations

As part of COVID revitalization efforts, three unique programs were created in downtowns across the country –Seattle Restored (Seattle), Arts on the Ave (New York), and Pop-Up to Storefront (Austin) – that activated spaces with arts and culture at the forefront to boost local economies. Explore each program’s implementation and economic impact, tracking strategies that can lead to diverse small business retention in downtowns.

How Partnership & Collaboration Produces a World-Famous Farmers’ Market

Get a glimpse of how successful partnerships come together to produce the award-winning Downtown SLO Farmers’ Market. Learn how you can leverage partnership opportunities with your city to support a vibrant downtown environment. Learn more about identifying City resources, realizing the financial benefits of working together, and empowering partnerships in order to provide your community with the best experience possible.

Dwight White II Master Talk

Dwight is a multi-disciplinary creative, with ideas and strategy that originate by thoroughly understanding people. He utilizes insights to inspire, innovate and maintain relevancy with culture through creativity. He has worked to build strategies for growth with organizations across industries by understanding complex societal structures and current behaviors of consumers.

GLOWing Downtowns

Light art festivals and interactive art installations are popping up all over the world. Illuminate the “how-tos” of creating public art experiences to differentiate your district, increase visitors and generate quantifiable metrics.

Vanier HUB

The Vanier HUB placemaking project activated an underused parking lot adjacent to the Mainstreet. By creating this one-of-a-kind community and arts space, the first of its kind in Ottawa, the ZAC Vanier BIA invited people to come rediscover Vanier – a community previously known for poverty and crime.

Advancing Places: Urban Acupuncture & the Archaeology of Local Knowledge

Within the realm of placemaking, there are many techniques and strategies to use to improve the quality of life, well-being, and health of people living, working, and visiting downtowns around the world. This webinar explores two case studies, demonstrating innovative and out-of-the-box solutions hoping to inspire others to create their own placemaking projects and programs. We will explore urban acupuncture, a process consisting of small-scale interventions that serve as a catalyst.

Placemaking & Operations Gone Wrong!

Learn from numerous practitioners working in the areas of placemaking and operations when their best laid plans just didn’t go the way they wanted.

The Surprise & Delight of Placemaking

Placemaking and activations can take many shapes and forms. Join this session to learn from seasoned professionals with a wide range of experience activating public spaces. With a focus on producing unique urban experiences and animating streets, parks, and public spaces, these panelists work to create opportunities for pedestrians to engage with public art, performances and events. Learn about their audiences and how they determine when and where to produce different activations

Place Management After Dark – Nightlife Challenges and Opportunities

An entertainment district means foot traffic, economic development, amenities and a unique set of challenges. Many districts – large and small – are developing new strategies to engage with their nighttime economy in terms of operations, placemaking and security. Come learn from experiences in Denver, Austin and Minneapolis to gain insights into managing a successful, safe and fun district.

Essentials of Placemaking

Learn the basics of how place management professionals can facilitate placemaking in their work to engage communities and foster vibrant, inclusive and authentic places. Learn practical definitions, identify the “why”, explore goals and strategies, discuss community-led processes and co-creation, recognize opportunities for financial and in-kind contributions, and apply the right tools for the project and/or program

Winter Placemaking – Outdoor Arts & Technology Festivals

Vancouver Mural Festival and Downtown Vancouver BIA’s year-round placemaking projects range from small to significant activations with many partners. Pitching innovative ideas to properties and businesses can prove challenging, but Canada’s first public Augmented Reality festival did just that as it launched amidst a pandemic in 2021.

Creating Transformative Places in Mid-Sized Cities

Explore the implementation of placemaking projects and use of tactical urbanism traffic calming funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Initiative in mid-sized cities throughout the United States. This session will include a deeper dive into logistics, challenges and successes experienced in Richmond, Virginia.   

Urban Acupuncture & The Archeology of Local Knowledge  

Through small urban contextually appropriate projects, urban acupuncture and the archeology of local knowledge facilitate social and physical changes in the larger context beyond the district. This type of placemaking technique serves as a catalyst for the regeneration of dormant social networks and capital exchange.  

Advancing Equity While Building Thriving Downtowns

Given the opportunities and challenges cities face to engage the multiple communities comprising their populations, three downtown organizations will share proven strategies for inclusive placemaking that acknowledge and respect community dynamics, develop authentic partnerships, foster trust and engagement, and empower a range of voices in order to create equitable downtowns.  

Guillermo Bernal Master Talk

Guillermo Bernal is the Executive Director of Fundación Placemaking Mexico and Board Member of PlacemakingX. With ten years of experience, he has worked with over 200 public spaces in Mexico, Latin America, and Spanish-speaking communities worldwide, focusing on creating participatory and sustainable communities.

TGIFood Trucks

TGIFood Trucks was a summer pop-up of a rotating variety of food trucks and cuisines. Open to the public and free of charge, the goal was to encourage community connection and gathering in a safe outdoor space during the pandemic, and increase the area’s reputation for being fun and a foodie haven.

Black Joy Storywindows

In response to the devastating cultural and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Black Joy StoryWindows was an effort to create a safe, outdoor, walkable and driveable, multi-media storefront gallery experience in the heart of downtown Oakland and simultaneously keep alive, and in the community’s consciousness, the power and beauty of the Black Joy Parade, an annual parade that follows the same footprint as our StoryWindows project.

Gallery Alley

Gallery Alley began as a temporary pilot project with the goal of creating more walkability and increasing safety. Downtown Wichita received a grant to reestablish the space as a permanent destination for an intersensory art experience. Five Kansas artists were commissioned to create sculptures with a multi-sensory approach in order to be accessible to those with vision as well as those who are blind, visually impaired, and for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Let’s Glow SF

Let’s Glow SF is a 10-night holiday activation, the largest holiday projection mapping event in the country. Shows were played in a continuous loop with custom music starting at 5:30 pm and ending at 10:00 pm. Each light show ranged in length from five to seven minutes. Let’s Glow SF received wide media praise for its innovative use of art and technology to bring visitors and workers back to downtown, which had been suffering under the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Neighborhood Now: Jackson Heights

Neighborhoods Now connects neighborhoods hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic with leading design firms. Early in the pandemic, Jackson Heights became the pandemic’s USA epicenter threatening the livelihood of the families running micro-businesses in the community. Given its deep root in the community and knowledge of small business’s needs, the 82nd Street Partnership was tapped to become the local partner helping connect volunteer architects and designers with the most needed businesses.

The Majestic

In October 2021, Partner Tulsa and Downtown Tulsa Partnership unveiled a 15,000sf mural titled “The Majestic” on the five-story façade of the Main Park Plaza garage in the center of the Downtown Tulsa Art Deco District. TPA collaborated with the Tulsa Arts Commission and Downtown Tulsa Partnership to undertake this public art commission focused on reinvigorating with activity and interest. At the time of the unveiling and today, The Majestic is the world’s largest augmented reality mural.

Peacock Alley

Peacock Alley emerged as a location from an initiative led by Centro to gather feedback from the community to develop a placemaking action plan for the Houston Street corridor. The placemaking effort set out to provide novel play experiences while supporting local small businesses and artists.

Root 107 Pop-Up Park

For decades, there has been a deficiency of park space in the downtown core. Recognizing this gap, the City of Edmonton set aside 1.7 hectares of underdeveloped and vacant land in west downtown to be the future home of a central downtown park in 2026.

DTSF ArtBox

The DTSF ArtBox gallery is a collection of 26 traffic signal control boxes wrapped with vinyl artwork from artists of all abilities from the area. Proposals were solicited in many languages, resulting in 176. A jury ultimately selected 66 artists, who were all paid stipends for their work.

Delightful Downtown – Grafton Park

As part of our DELIGHTFUL DOWNTOWN lighting installations, we developed a new light projection series that is being displayed onto the former Halifax Memorial Library building at Grafton Park from October 2021 until the end of March 2022. The series features a total of 12 different light shows over five months that changes to reflect relevant seasonal, heritage and cultural themes. Each month comprises of a main show that is accompanied with a shorter show.

Allegheny Overlook Pop-Up Park

The Allegheny Overlook, or ‘AO,’ was a brand-new pop-up park that transformed a portion of Fort Duquesne Boulevard in Downtown Pittsburgh, highlighting live performances, arts, and culture while showcasing one of Pittsburgh’s most iconic riverfront views. The pop-up park reimagined a peripheral boulevard and an underutilized riverfront park in the city’s urban core, creating a more vibrant Downtown in a city rebounding from the effects of the pandemic.

Reclaiming Our Public Spaces, Post Pandemic

This session examines how cities are reclaiming public spaces after two years with little to no programming and activation. Learn from seasoned professionals’ experiences and creative approaches to breathing new life into the public realm as cities look to reengage with their residents and visitors and recover economically.

A Tale of Three Cities Fueling Recovery

This presentation focused on three cities (San Francisco, Berkeley, and Los Angeles) and how they identified challenges the pandemic presented to their downtowns and strategies being implemented to fuel the recovery. Challenges include the increase of homelessness and violence related to the civil unrest; lack of pedestrian traffic and downtown workers; and the role safety, security and cleaning played during the pandemic. Learn what strategies were implemented and positive outcomes achieved. 

Advancing Places: Public Safety Roundtable 

Public safety has always been at the forefront of the work of UPMOs. The reality and perception of crime in dense urban districts continue to impact the return of workers and vibrancy in the urban core. IDA is inventorying best practices and trends and will publish findings from this discussion and other data collection. Participants will be split into breakout rooms to maximize discussion time. Please note: the breakout rooms of this discussion were not recorded. 

We Aren’t Placemaking, We Are People Making

We have an opportunity to use experience, a pandemic and data to inform how we cultivate our greatest assets, our people. Before we can “reopen” our districts (as if they were ever closed), we must address the anxieties, fears, languishing, burnout and uncertainties of the past year. If we don’t, then we are asking people to walk out of a burning building, shake it off and build a new building. We can do better.

Reimagining Outdoor Dining and Public Space

Discover how a downtown pedlet program in Montana and streeteries in Maryland promoted local placemaking efforts, created public spaces, and spurred an outside dining movement that increased business revenue, supported local business, and created jobs. Attendees will gain the knowledge of how to establish these programs in their communities, learn of the wider economic impact in a downtown commercial district and how these can be viable tools in the post-pandemic recovery process.

Providing Value to Stakeholders through Curated Experiences

Dive into what makes a memorable experience and ways to drive value for local businesses through a curated passport platform. From identifying your assets to thinking about all aspects of your downtown experience, level up your programming with these unique tips. Learn how Tampa has driven measurable spending and supported local economic growth through their downtown passport program.

The Transformational Power of Public Art

Marc Chagall said, “Great art picks up where nature ends.” Public art in cities transforms public spaces, connects people and revitalizes communities. Hear from three cities utilizing the power of public art in ambitious ways, inspiring long-term positive change. Any community on any budget can benefit from the strategic targeted implementation of public art.

Public Art Murals Achieved by Public & Private Partnerships

The session will focus on public art murals in our downtowns with an emphasis on public and private partnerships to help finance the murals. Included will be simple instructions on how BIDs can manage the process for mural installation with an emphasis on regional artists to complete the murals and gaining access to funding and the walls in your community.

Adapting Public Realm Innovations to Post-Pandemic Downtowns

How can mixed-use downtowns build on learnings from COVID-19 to enhance the public realm and boost commercial vibrancy? This session explores opportunities for BIDs to adapt pilot projects developed in the last year (shared/pedestrian priority streets, temporary plazas and outdoor dining) into long-term initiatives to increase foot traffic, retail activation and entice office tenants to return to the workplace.

Advancing Places: Placemaking and Activations

What is placemaking? Why do we activate spaces in our districts?  Join this panel discussion and learn from three practitioners whose focus is placemaking and activations.  Learn how they manage their time, create workplans, measure ROI and develop relationships with internal staff, city partners, businesses, and residents.  We want to take this opportunity for you to participate and we encourage attendees to bring questions and share best practices with the audience. 

VMF Winter Arts

VMF Winter Arts is a free, augmented reality experience transforming public space across Vancouver’s downtown core into a free, interactive, open-air gallery. Winter Arts showcases the talented work of 26 artists and animates over 20 downtown public spaces in a completely new way. Blurring the line between the virtual and physical worlds, VMF Winter Arts highlights the convergence of art and technology to safely engage and connect art and people in public spaces over three weeks.