Placemaking Week

Bringing together their experiences from Philadelphia, New York City, and Baltimore, urban planners Ben and Nicole will provide a deep look at how simple physical improvements integrated with thoughtful programming in our public pools can bring deep, lasting impacts into our neighborhoods. In 2015, Ben won the Knight Cities Challenge with The Pop-Up Pool Project, bringing color, shade, seating, and games to a public pool in north Philadelphia, sparking cities and neighborhoods to transform their long-neglected public pools to vibrant community hubs. Since the first pop-up, Philadelphia and NYC’s Parks and Rec Departments started the Swim Philly and Cool Pools programs. In the summer of 2017, inspired by her work with Ben, Nicole co-led the Marian Anderson Pop-Up Pool in South Philadelphia, and is currently co-leading a similar project in Baltimore, both 100% volunteer-funded and driven. The impact and spectacular public responses to these projects have led to far-reaching impacts, from large usage increases, increased civic engagement, regular volunteer clean-ups, highly active social media communities, and friendships that extends well past the summer season. The workshop will provide an overview of past pop-up pool projects both city and neighborhood led-- and a playbook to help guide any placemaker to activate these largely underutilized public assets. Below summarizes the workshop’s format: INTRODUCTION: Overview of previous “pop-up pool”; images, summary: (1) Local coordination, (2) Funding, (3) Design, (4) Feedback & Evaluation, (5) Tips & Key lessons learned, (6) End of Season.