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 / Placemaking in Practice

Placemaking in Practice

Creative placemaking, though only gaining awareness recently as an approach, is showing exciting results already in regions as diverse as the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Los Angeles and Nashville. While new and “cutting edge” in some ways, it’s a logical extension of how regions already practice community engagement and participatory design strategies.

We can see a full picture of the evolution of this approach, and the potential benefits from it, in a longer case study detailing the recent experience of the Twin Cities in the building of their Green Line light rail connection between Minneapolis and Saint Paul. This longer case study is a great way to see what creative placemaking in transportation looks like from beginning to end in a specific context, and shorter stories from five other regions help illuminate other aspects of the process.

Click to read a story below

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If the first question for developing any project is “What are we doing and why?” the first question for tapping local culture might be, “How can the distinctiveness of this place and the people in it contribute to the success of what we’re doing?”

The Twin Cities, MN

The Green Line (Twin Cities)

The new light rail line connecting Minneapolis and Saint Paul would be a powerful economic driver, but officials were determined to learn from past mistakes and ensure that the line itself would … Read this story

Los Angeles, CA

Playing in the streets: Devoting right-of-way to arts, culture & fun

Los Angeles, California Few cities have devoted as much space, money and energy to moving cars around, over as long a period, as Los Angeles. Today, though, the birthplace of car culture is becoming … Read this story

Nashville, TN

Nashville gets more than a crosswalk

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. This story is … Read the story

Detroit, MI

Going beyond the data points in Detroit

Southeast Michigan’s metropolitan planning organization has good data, but a less foundational understanding of the lived experience of transit users. To change that, a local group partnered with the … Read the story

Portland, OR

Local visions fuel progress in Portland

In Portland, Oregon, arts-based engagement has helped improve communication between local agencies and community members while supporting local advocacy efforts to ensure that a new bus line promotes … Read the story

San Diego, CA

Promoting safer streets and cultivating ownership of a transportation asset in San Diego

In the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, community partners are helping improve the transit user experience, cultivate local ownership of a transit line, and improve a station area with … Read the story

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.