Placemaking as Changemaking: Overcoming obstacles to create places of value

The workshop teaches participants how to translate creative ideas into sustained momentum in the face of skepticism, obstruction and indifference that often stymie places and districts reaching their full potential. 

The session begins by exploring why public spaces often underperform due to misaligned incentive structures. Participants then learn a proven seven-step process developed and implemented by the speaker to generate better places and activations when they lack full authority or resources. 

This process shows how to work with, rather than against, existing incentive structures to create a future different and better than today.

This program can be delivered as a stand-alone talk, keynote, or include a hands-on workshop where participants implement the practices through an onsite building exercise.

How To Create Valuable Places

What goes into creating a great place that supports our community life, relationships, and commerce? It’s all about the relationships between the physical environment, the care of that environment, and the activities and uses within that environment. Too often these elements are present but disconnected, leading to spaces that are empty, lifeless, and produce no social or commercial value.

Participants will leave this session with new understanding and insights into how they can craft more lively places, including the concepts of:

• Hierarchy of Habits

• How to get the most out of large events

• Design features that generate activity and comfort

• Fostering sustainable safety

• Transitioning from mere maintenance to hospitality driven operations

• Momentum building communication

• Engagement to grow a constituency

• Tailored strategies to meet audience interests, including: main street and commercial districts, office and industrial buildings, transit and transportation, innovation districts, wintertime, community safety, and residential neighborhoods