THE ART ADVANTAGE: Creative Placemaking Strategies For Your City, National League of Cities 2015 Congress of Cities, Nashville TN
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From the National League of Cities: "Nashville is a brilliant example of placemaking: capitalizing on a local economy's assets to create spaces that promote people's happiness and well-being. Your city will also benefit from collaboration with arts-based community development specialists, and an action plan to incorporate arts and cultural practice within your community's development infrastructure. Come hear dynamic presentations from leading creative pacemakers, followed by a discussion about strategies for cities of all sizes."
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THE ART ADVANTAGE: Creative Placemaking Strategies For Your City, National League of Cities 2015 Congress of Cities, Nashville TN
- 1. THE ART ADVANTAGE CREATIVE PLACEMAKING STRATEGIES FOR YOUR CITY N a t i o n a l L e a g u e o f C i t i e s 2 0 1 5 C o n g r e s s o f C i t i e s , N a s h v i l l e T N Mallory Baches, The Civic Hub @mallorybaches
- 2. source: Imilious via wikimedia commons
- 27. Mallory Baches, The Civic Hub @mallorybaches
Editor's Notes
- My name is Mallory Baches. I’m an urban designer, and my firm The Civic Hub provides services that help create a bridge between urban design and communities. So creative placemaking has been a central part of my work the past 15 years, but today I want to focus on a particular project I led just down the road, in Chattanooga.
- Most people here know the Chattanooga Story by now, so I’ll be brief…back in the 70s, Chattanooga was economically depressed, the downtown was dead, and Walter Cronkite had described it as “the dirtiest city in America” on the national evening news. That struck a nerve. So in the early 1980s, the Chattanooga Venture came together, a group of citizens led by the late great Mai Bell Hurley (who if you don’t know about, she was truly an urban visionary…she passed away just a couple months ago – she was known for repeating the phrase, “Be hopeful and be helpful,” about city-building). They created the landmark Vision 2000 forums which brought Chattanoogans from all walks of life together, in downtown Chattanooga (when going downtown was unheard of), to consider what was great about the city and what could make it greater. Since then, Chattanooga has worked hard to be the downtown success story that we know…but like many cities that have seen similar revitalization, it has stopped short of neighborhoods beyond downtown. One of those neighborhoods is East Chattanooga, and running through it is Glass Street.
- Glass Street is a historic two lane ‘main street’ corridor lined with 1920s storefronts. It sees 11,000 cars a day and happens to be the most direct corridor connecting Downtown Chattanooga to the Enterprise South employment campus outside of town, which together are Chattanooga’s two centers of economic growth.
- Glass Street is also home to a small nonprofit called Glass House Collective. Their strategy is centered around creative placemaking: and they use the following definition “strategically shap[ing] the physical and social character of a neighborhood…around arts and cultural activities…[that animate] public and private spaces, [rejuvenate] structures and streetscapes, [improve] local business viability and public safety, and [bring] diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired.” Glass House Collective sees the potential in Glass Street and in surrounding East Chattanooga, but they are also conscious that the conditions of the corridor today reflect decades of disinvestment… 64% of the residents in East Chattanooga live below the poverty level, and the area is known for high-crime and gang activity.
- In spite of its challenges, the founders of Glass House – Katherine Currin, Garth Brown, and Teal Thibaud -- believed they could make a difference, and so in 2012 they set up shop on Glass Street. They renovated a storefront and activated this beautiful building that had previously been vacant.
- They started conversations with residents about the potential needs of the neighborhood, brought more feet to the street, and created relationships with their neighbors. They were hoping to spark positive change along Glass Street while adding to the vibrancy of their city as a whole. From 2012-2014, with the financial support and guiding structure of an ArtPlace America grant that supported creative placemaking, they helped define and implement a vision led by citizens, artists, and partners, to make Glass Street cleaner and more inviting.
- The community-informed plan that resulted became a blueprint for action that was truly supported from within the community. Through in-kind services donation, a technical streetscape plan was completed from the input meetings, and the city of Chattanooga adopted this plan in 2012.
- As a result of their early work, today 6 historic buildings have been purchased, renovated and stabilized, five facades of which have been vastly improved or entirely renovated.
- In addition, a unified Glass Street brand was created with local artists, and the streetscape has been transformed. Street banners were installed, two neglected green spaces were transformed into usable pocket parks, three high-aesthetic, large-scale, community-based murals grace Glass Street’s major gateways, three brand-new public art bus shelters have been installed and four blocks of new ADA accessible sidewalks featuring 16 traffic-calming tree wells, 18 street lights, five functional art benches have been installed.
- Although that sounds like a lot of BIG wins, the majority of their work focused on small moves, that collectively, ended up making a big impact while the larger investments were underway.
- Glass House worked with artists and residents to build temporary tree planters and install them along the street. They hosted a Better Block event. They commissioned an artist to erect a sculpture of 400 borrowed ladders from in and around the community to animate a vacant lot, which is now home to a pocket park. This temporary animation continued momentum until the pocket park could be designed and created. The installation is called “Rise Up” by Charlie Brouwer, and he has replicated this installation across the Southeast – you can bring his work to your town…
- And after initially focusing heavily on public infrastructure, Glass House expanded their scope to invest in an artist residency. With their support, three artists set up studios along Glass Street in 2014 to share their skills with the neighborhood. One of the three artists, Rondell Crier, has secured his own funding and continues to be a strong positive force in the community. Glass House also helped form the Good Neighbor Network, where 8 active residents from the community came together, set priority areas for themselves, and went to work, establishing new community leadership that has become contagious throughout the neighborhood. Glass House adopted the leaders’ priority areas, and continues to work alongside this group.
- However, by the end of 2014, their initial workplan had been achieved: the street *was* cleaner and more inviting. So I began working with Glass House this past spring to help define the next phase of their commitment on Glass Street. We launched with a two-day intensive urbanism workshop we called ‘The Next Big Thing.’ The workshop brought over 100 respected professionals along with East Chattanooga residents together to define Glass House’s new workplan. With donated services, some small stipends, and a list of local sponsors donating everything from coffee to AV equipment, we truly embodied a lighter-quicker-cheaper workshop model to match our lighter-quicker-cheaper design brief. We were able to bring three expert mentors on the team: Maurice Cox, who is the Planning Director for the City of Detroit, Mike Lydon who among other things is the author of the book Tactical Urbanism, and Stroud Watson, who is the design father of Chattanooga’s urban comeback and founded the Design Studio there nearly 40 years ago. The project mentors roamed the workshop space while 9 teams comprised around 10 members with diverse disciplines and local knowledge were led by expert team facilitators, one of which was my co-presenter today.
- Teams were asked to consider how improved urbanism could have a positive impact on the needs of the neighborhood:: business viability quality public spaces access to services improved housing options increased public safety opportunities for the community to engage and contribute.
- Our teams worked within a specific set of balanced values: Places ⇔ People : their designs were to value the places – both figure and ground -- that give form to the community, while always valuing the people that give life to the community. Movement ⇔ Access : their designs needed to address the movement to, from, and through the community, while being sure to address the equity of access into, out of, and within the community. Investment ⇔ Character : their designs were to encourage investment in the community and by the community, but were to do so by encouraging activation of the existing culture and assets of the community
- What resulted were dozens of creative, realistic, and scalable urban revitalization tactics for improving residential, commercial, and public space within a 5 minute walk of Glass Street. Designs specifically addressed implementation within 1 month, 1 year, 3 year time frames. Not all the proposals generated will be implemented exactly as designed, but Glass House Collective is now working with the neighborhood to adapt the designs, using a bunch of little things to create the next big thing on the street.
- Glass House is bringing the workshop ideas to the people, literally. This cart was built by artist-in-residence Rondell Crier, and is designed to be able to carry maps and drawings, a cooler, chairs, and surveys to residents, so they can help prioritize and refine the ideas in person with Glass House Collective staff and volunteers.
- And to ensure they continue involving artists and residents in temporary projects that lead to permanent change…Glass House is now working to launch their second How-To Guide, highlighting the ‘lighter, quicker, cheaper’ projects identified in the workshop. Each project within the guide will identify a resident and artist lead, both receiving stipends for their leadership. Examples of projects in the guide include tree plantings, bike repair stations, pop up movie night, public art gateways, and more.
- The elbow grease that Glass House has put into their work, as a tiny organization with big and meaningful goals, makes working with them on The Next Big Thing some of the most authentic work I’ve done. So, the lessons learned from that work…
- #1: EVERY COMMUNITY needs a Glass House Collective! They are the workhorses for what are otherwise just “good ideas.” They are the face of accountability for good healthy change on Glass Street, and they are there on the street every day…that’s powerful. This is a very small group of people – right now, it is actually only 1 person – and they do the daily work of turning the aircraft carrier that is this neighborhood’s challenges. I couldn’t respect them more.
- #2: Creative placemaking isn’t a luxury, and it isn’t a band aid for broken arms; it is a communication device! This sort of work is meaningful, not just because it is an investment in a place, but – if it is done authentically– then its meaningful because it is a reflection of the place. Especially in communities like East Chattanooga, that are transitioning or vulnerable or evolving…creative placemaking is using art to support the assets that the community already has – its people, its culture, its history, its social capital.
- #3: Community engagement is absolutely central to creative placemaking. To create an authentic expression of place, you have to know and love the place (warts and all). And that work can be hard, it can be time consuming, it can be uncomfortable. But when you are accountable to a community, you earn the autonomy of their trust. (story of Teal, Garth, Katherine being blue-eyed blonde-haired “trust fund babies” when they first arrived…and now Teal has been asked to join the local NAACP chapter)
- #4: Urban design begets creative placemaking begets urban design. There is both hardware and software to great places…and you need to invest in both. Urban design is the hardware, it is the zoning changes and the streetscape plans and the public hearings and the park masterplans. Creative placemaking is the software, it is the community events and the public art installations and the artists in residence and the citizen leadership. If you only have hardware…you have a stage-set. If you only have software…your environment will always be a barrier. You have to have both, and the story of Glass Street over the past 4 years has shown how one begets the other.
- #5: The final lesson from Glass Street is that the story isn’t fully written… Community isn’t a “project” that you draft up, render impeccably, and then complete as designed. As more cities are turning to budgeting for outcomes, its important to keep in mind that that is very hard to do when you’re working in communities that are challenged, because community-based work like I’ve shown today is RESPONSIVE, it has to be nimble to react to the ever-changing needs of the neighborhood. So, Glass House now has a workplan that they will follow for the next 3 years, and beyond that…they aren’t sure. In the life of a challenged community, 3 years is a LIFETIME and to try to predict now what the needs of Glass Street will be in 3 years is nearly impossible. What IS possible is to plan little things that can have a big impact. This photo was taken less than 3 years prior to when we had our workshop in that same space this past April, in the Alabama Furniture Building on Glass Street. The building was broken, but the owners slowly worked to stabilize it and then start to repair it…and this is what we were able to do in that space as a result:
- Pretty transformative, and it happened in less than 3 years.
- The work that Glass House is doing speaks up for what the community already knew: that with love, dedication, collaboration, and some hard work, the neighborhood can be a vital part of the Chattanooga Story. That description is what you get from creative placemaking, in a nutshell.