Learn and discuss how transformative placemaking can unlock the hidden potential in your community. Transformative placemaking, as described by the Brookings Institution’s new
Bass Center, expands the scope of placemaking to include efforts aimed not only at improving our social, emotional, and physical well-being, but at remaking the relationship of place and economy in ways that generate widespread, and locally-led, prosperity. To this end, transformative placemaking suggests investments that expand beyond the design and programming of individual lots and plazas to focus on sub-areas of cities and regions where a critical mass of economic, social, and civic assets cluster and connect. Moreover, it suggests that such investments be targeted not only in downtowns, waterfronts, and other high-amenity, already highly-resourced areas, but in communities where such assets have long been overlooked and undervalued by both the private and public sectors.
The Brookings Institution launched the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking in November 2018 and has been conducting research to make the case for why place matters to people and economies, to better understand where and how place investments should be prioritized to foster more inclusive economic growth, and to uncover and describe new approaches to placemaking that benefit more people and communities. Jennifer Vey, the Director of the Center, and its key partners, Project for Public Spaces (Meg Walker) and National Main Street Center (Lindsey Wallace), will discuss these issues, with a focus on best practices and findings they have encountered in their work. After a brief presentation from the panelists, breakout groups will discuss how transformative placemaking could make a difference in their home cities and towns.
