THE SCENIC ROUTE

Getting Started with Creative Placemaking

Our Eight Approaches

Great places rely on good infrastructure combined with a meaningful mix of programming, public spaces and diverse economic opportunity for the people who then inhabit and bring them to life. The eight approaches outlined below represent proven avenues to improve partnerships while better knitting together all of the above.

By using these approaches for tapping into the social networks built around arts and culture, you can earn the trust of your community. By identifying sites of cultural significance, you can be mindful and inclusive of them in planning infrastructure and redevelopment projects.

In The Scenic Route, we outline eight basic approaches to creative placemaking to help you get started. Each approach consists of three things: an intro page with some basic information about the approach, a section called “Get Inspired: Local Examples” that typically provides at least one local, concrete example to provide some inspiration, and a section called “Go Deeper” which provides more detailed resources. The eight approaches we unpack in this resource below are not a linear list, nor do they represent the limit of what’s possible for you and your region or community.

Click on any approach below to jump right in.

 

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  • What is Creative Placemaking?
    • A View From the Field
  • Start Here
    • New tools for a new era
    • What are the benefits?
    • What makes creative placemaking different?
    • Where did creative placemaking come from?
    • Development without displacement
    • How do I do it?
  • Our Eight Approaches
    • Identify the Community’s Assets
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Integrate the Arts Into Design, Construction and Engineering
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Marketing to Cultivate Ownership and Pride
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Leveraging Cultural Districts and Corridors
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Mobilize the Community to Achieve Your Shared Goals
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Develop Local Leadership
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Organize Events and Activities
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Incorporate Arts in Public and Advisory Meetings
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
  • Placemaking in Practice
    • The Green Line (Twin Cities)
      • Grassroots efforts transformed the project
      • How arts improved the construction process
      • Building identity with light rail stations
      • The Green Line altered the rules of engagement
      • Conclusion: Better projects and places
    • Los Angeles
    • Detroit
    • San Diego
    • Portland
    • Nashville
  • Featured Places
  • Appendix
    • Appendix – Measurement in practice
You are here: Home / Our Eight Approaches / Mobilize the Community to Achieve Your Shared Goals / Get Inspired: Local Examples

Get Inspired: Local Examples

Nashville gets more than a crosswalk

Nashville, TN
The new bilingual crosswalk on Nolensville Pike in Nashville. Photo by Rochelle Carpenter, T4America
The bilingual crosswalk on Nolensville Pike in Nashville. Photo by Rochelle Carpenter, T4America

In Nashville, the Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) dedicated staff time to engage a local Latino services organization in planning a corridor with a new bus line.

That organization’s local voice is helping engage more constituents, develop community-led visions, elicit unique concerns about and solutions to transportation/ development plans and ensure that stronger grassroots coalitions will take a front seat in determining how their neighborhoods change.

Their involvement led to the city’s first bilingual crosswalk (with instructions in both English and Spanish) that will soon be designed to reflect the neighborhood’s diversity and cultural assets. This is inspiring residents, local businesses and community groups to think of their own ideas for transportation improvements in the area.

Nolensville Pike

Nashville’s MPO has been a leader in demonstrating how an MPO can help build healthier communities, notably through incorporating new policies in 2010 that prioritized transportation projects with walking and bicycling infrastructure and dedicated funds for active transportation.

Next year, the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority will begin express buses along Nolensville Pike, a five-lane, fast-moving arterial with eroded sidewalks, few crosswalks and no bike lanes in one of the city’s most diverse areas that is also home to the majority of Nashville’s Latino population. With these upcoming transit improvements planned, the MPO saw an opportunity to engage community members in identifying concerns about and ideas for getting to the bus — while ensuring that the community has a hand in the vision for future changes in transportation and development.

Identifying a partner

The MPO partnered with Conexión Américas, a nonprofit that aims to integrate Latino families in all aspects of life in Middle Tennessee, as the means to best connect with Nashville’s growing Latino community on the project. The two are securing funding to support greater involvement of Conexión Américas. Conexión Américas has long integrated the arts and culture in its outreach work and in its flagship building, Casa Azafrán, in order to reach more immigrants, refugees, Latino families and individuals in Nashville.

Dreaming big and developing a vision

Project partners, including artists Jairo and Susan Prado, developed a vision for a colorfully painted, bilingual crosswalk as the first desired transportation improvement. This crosswalk would serve a few goals: first, to connect their headquarters at the community center Casa Azafrán with the local bus stop and parking spots for staff and visitors. Second, to solidify the corridor as a home for the Latino community. Finally, to inspire the imaginations of future partners to come up with their own ideas and participate in local planning processes to make them a reality.

DSC_2210
The product of a community visioning session for Nolensville Pike and Road in Nashville from June 2015. Photo by Rochelle Carpenter, T4America

An MPO staff member dedicated time for the project. The MPO and Conexión Americas reached out to the Metro Department of Public Works to advocate for the crosswalk; Conexión Américas was an essential partner in making the case. While obtaining approval for the creative design is still in the works, the Department of Public Works and the Tennessee Department of Transportation delivered the state of Tennessee’s first bilingual crosswalk, one that welcomes their diverse visitors with instructions in both Spanish and English.

Continuing collaboration

nashville casa azafran

The involvement of Conexión Américas will be integral to both creating an artistic crosswalk in the near future and leading others who want to do similar projects. Further, Conexión Américas and the MPO will host a series of interviews with community members, workshops, and community meetings with residents, business owners and community organizations. This effort will result in a community-led vision for transportation investments in the corridor, identify unique concerns about and ideas for transportation in their neighborhoods and energize community members to participate in future planning processes.

Momentum from the project has already helped catalyze additional community-led ideas for complete streets designs like improved sidewalks, new crosswalks, new bicycle lanes, improved lighting, traffic calming and new streetscaping, as well as more public parks along the corridor.

nashville casa azafran

Lessons learned:

  • Having dedicated staff from government agencies to help navigate regulations and decision-making processes can help the community realize their visions.
  • Having an arts-based focal point can build momentum and support for public works projects.
  • Engaging effective local messengers to voice the vision, explain the need and make the ask can make a world of difference when budgets are tight, backlogs exist and transportation projects compete.

Next: Go Deeper with Mobilizing the Community to Achieve Your Shared Goals

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Eight approaches to creative placemaking

Integrate the Arts Into Design, Construction and Engineering

Menu: Eight Approaches

  • Our Eight Approaches
    • Identify the Community’s Assets
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Integrate the Arts Into Design, Construction and Engineering
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Marketing to Cultivate Ownership and Pride
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Leveraging Cultural Districts and Corridors
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Mobilize the Community to Achieve Your Shared Goals
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Develop Local Leadership
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Organize Events and Activities
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples
      • Go Deeper
    • Incorporate Arts in Public and Advisory Meetings
      • Get Inspired: Local Examples

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Master Cultural Planning

At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad … Read More...

Identify the Community’s Assets and Strengths

Identifying the existing arts and cultural assets — whether places, people, artists, groups or institutions — provides local leaders with invaluable opportunities to build powerful relationships in … Read More...

Leveraging Cultural Districts and Corridors

A cultural district is a labeled area of a city in which a high concentration of cultural facilities and programs serve as the main anchor of attraction and are marketed together. This is one of the … Read More...

Mobilize the Community to Achieve Your Shared Goals

Local units of government can tap local nonprofits or area organizations to identify and showcase support for projects or related community improvements. Who can do it: Metropolitan planning … Read More...

Develop Local Leadership & Capacity

Support community-led visions and let the community work for you Local nonprofits can use arts-based tools to bring attention to and build momentum for desired plans, projects and development … Read More...

Organize Events and Activities

Events and activities provide a draw and bring positive attention to an area. And they can also be a forum for gathering new ideas and public involvement. Who can do it: Local units of government … Read More...

Incorporate Arts in Public and Advisory Meetings

Almost nothing gets built today without some level of public engagement and most large-scale planning efforts engage the public to some degree. But whether this input is truly inclusive, timely or … Read More...

About Us

Transportation for America

Transportation for America is an alliance of elected, business and civic leaders from communities across the country, united to ensure that states and the federal government step up to invest in smart, homegrown, locally-driven transportation solutions — because these are the investments that hold the key to our future economic prosperity.

t4america.org

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Thank You

This report was made possible through the generous support of the Kresge Foundation.

The Kresge Foundation “focuses on the role arts and culture play in re-energizing the communities that have long been central to America’s social and economic life,” believing that “arts and culture are an integral part of life and, when embedded in cross-sector revitalization activity, can contribute to positive and enduring economic, physical, social and cultural change in communities.” Kresge also supported projects detailed in this report in Nashville, Portland, San Diego and Detroit.

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Visit the new version of the Scenic Route!

Visit our new updated, refreshed, and re-conceived version of The Scenic Route at http://transportation.art, released in April 2021. We revisited and updated many of the stories in this old version, in addition to adding brand new profiles and stories about more recent developments. (Nothing worth reading here has been excluded from the new version!) Check it out!

This older Scenic Route guide (v. 1.0) will be eventually retired, though still available for archival purposes.