Community Engagement

Founders Award for Civic Leadership 
 

James O. Gibson is honored for his leading advocacy in urban revitalization, community development, and race relations. His demonstrated commitment to social equity for more than three decades on issues ranging from civil rights to economic opportunity has provided critical progress for our country’s social fabric.

Entrepreneurial American Leadership Award 

Richard C.D. Fleming is honored for his commitment to building livable and sustainable cities as a civic entrepreneur for more than 30 years while engaged in private sector and civic initiatives to revitalize cities and metropolitan communities in Atlanta, Denver, and, for the past 17 years, St. Louis.

There is a new buzz word in the battle against urban decline and vacant retail space—“pop-ups.” Simply put, a pop-up is a short term use of a retail space. Sometimes they come in the form of holiday stores, which close down after the season, while Target and other large retailers use them to promote specific products or lines.  Urban development initiatives, however, have begun to use pop-ups as a tool to reinvigorate declining shopping districts and main streets by changing perceptions of the neighborhoods they open in and demonstrating to potential investors and entrepreneurs the value of investing in these communities.

Pop-ups fill under-utilized retail space, and often feature works of local craftspeople and artists. They also may feature community outreach and events that bring community members together and encourage new collaborations.  Pop-ups not only serve the immediate neighborhood, but often draw visitors from surrounding zip codes, providing an opportunity for an entire business district to attract new patronage.

The September/October edition of Main Street Now, the bi-monthly magazine of the National Trust Main Street Center, includes a center piece article on pop-ups, detailing a number of projects across the country, strategies for implementation, and their impact on the community. One of the pop-ups featured, the Mt. Pleasant Temporium, ran from February 18 to March 13 and was directed by Partners’ senior program officer Jessica Scheuerman, with Partners’ Liz Bieber coordinating special events and Brian Miller directing marketing.

The Temporium was made possible by a grant from the DC Office of Planning’s Temporary Urbanism Initiative, which funds pop-ups across the city. The Main Street Now article highlights some of the strategies that brought success to the Temporium such as recruiting arts organizations and other partners that have ties to local artists and other potential vendors or that provide marketing opportunities.

For more on the Mount Pleasant Temporium, please visit:

http://mtptemporium.com

or contact Jessica Scheuerman at:

jscheuerman@livable.org

In the recent online poll, conducted by Outdoor Magazine, Chattanooga was recently voted by readers as the top choice in the “Best Town Ever” contest of 2011.

Undoubtedly the turn of the 21^st century has been a crossroads for communities across America. Planners are becoming more uncertain of which road to take to towards livability, the latest and most thought out models of revitalization being thrown into disarray by constant redevelopments in technology and the unforseeable factors that mediate the outcome. But as the unfolding of the digital age propels us into the unknown, there is one thing that is certain—education is a key to building a more vibrant and sustainable community.

"So, what is the point of public art? ” This question, posted online by Voice of San Diego's Kelly Bennett, came in response to the city of San Diego’s recent pull from public art funding; after its release on Twitter the post quickly turned viral. Responses to the post ranged from views of public art as superfluous and its place in the public sphere as luxury, to public art as necessary for community well-being, safety, and cohesiveness. 

Many of us believe in the arts as integral to the livable community— but when measuring out our federal dollars,  the arts are usually the first to go. But what if we could prove that in addition to instilling neighborhood pride and value in our public space, public art could actually serve as a deterrent for crime and violence?

Seniors in Service of Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay, Florida

For many of the older adults living in HUD assisted housing in the Tampa Bay region, routine inspections by landlords are mandatory. In short, inspections are implemented mainly to ensure that the older tenant is able to sustain an independent lifestyle, without the need for continued monitoring of their health, well-being, safety and living environment. For many of the older tenants, life in such households can often come at an aberrant cost.

Realizing that this little known problem was an ever-pervasive threat to many of the older residents in Tampa Bay, Florida, the local organization, Seniors in Service of Tampa Bay (SIS), partnered with a host of regional education institutions and businesses to address how to assist older adults avoid eviction because they are unable to maintain their living environments.

We’ve all walked past a vacant storefront or an empty lot thinking, “If only that was a….”. Now, designer and urban planner Candy Chang has created a fun way to get all that wishful thinking out in the open. Chang is distributing fill-in-the-blank stickers that read “I wish this was…” for New Orleans residents to stick on forgotten places in the city. Click here to view photos of the results.

Entrepreneurial Livable Community Award

For the community’s entrepreneurial spirit in its transformation to become a model for sustainable development and prosperity today.

Bridge Builders Award

For the Initiative’s innovative approach to creating sustainable cities through the cross-disciplinary engagement of scholars, community leaders, and project partners.

Partners’ recent forum with the Hirshhorn Museum, “Building Livable Communities: Creating a Common Agenda,” served as a positive platform to re-announce a new and exciting agenda for architecture, design, and social experimentation: The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s Bubble Expansion and book store renovation. Attended by Congressional representatives, federal agencies, think tanks, cultural institutions, and community development leaders alike, Director of the Hirshhorn Museum Richard Koshalek discussed the museum’s upcoming plans.

The "Bubble,” as it is called for the short-term, is a joint venture of Koshalek and Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, a renowned New York-based design firm, to re-invent the Museum as an intentional classroom and illustrate intersections of public and private space. Additionally, the museum book store will undergo a transition from a common commercial entity to becoming integrated as a part of museum exhibition space, through a renovation and move to the basement of the building.

Perhaps this new agenda comes from the idea that we need to adapt spaces to peoples’ readily changing needs. Perhaps this comes from Richard Koshalek’s desire to make the Hirshhorn a world class modern art museum with a daring new exposition. Perhaps this comes from the need to blur public and private space by incorporating The "Bubble” as an almost space-less entity into a negative, or void, of the concrete mass building; and the book store as an experiment in museum exhibit space. Or perhaps this agenda just comes from a need to make the stolid flimsy, the serious fun, and the patron part of the exhibit. 

Public libraries have transformed themselves from mere book-lenders into hubs of social and economic activity.  In a recent column, journalist Neal Peirce details how libraries are adding new services ranging from lending gardening tools and hosting chess club meetings, to providing job search assistance and English instruction.  Peirce quotes Partners’ president Robert McNulty regarding the transformation:

"Central libraries, notes Robert McNulty of Partners for Livable Communities, can be “the great good place in the city” — as a literacy, Internet and special film center, or as a place for lectures, for local performing arts and exhibitions. Or as a coffee house. Or as an information center for visiting tourists, or a safe place for kids."

Long considered by many as the center of high society and fine art, museums have established themselves as the elite foundation for what many museum directors proudly describe as the, “cathedrals of culture.” In vibrant metropolises, urban museums have sought to find a composite group of high class patrons amongst the density and heterogeneous nature of the city. Up until recently, museum collections sought out only the most exclusive and rarest of art as a top priority in the agenda held by longtime directors. In the current era, however; a major trend has occurred amongst many of the directors who are facilitating new programs that allow each institution to provide a focused area for creating a multicultural setting in the local community.

America’s public libraries, fast turning themselves into “one-stop shops” for digital job searches, appear to be staging one of their great historic transformations.

Planning and public service provision have not always been open to constituent input at all stages of the development process. The past few decades, however, have brought increased public desire to provide input, and technology has further helped to facilitate this participation in more efficient and effective ways.