The first meeting of the Placemaking Leadership Council will take place in downtown Detroit, Michigan, home of the wonderful Campus Martius Park / Photo: PPS

For those of us who are passionate about the public spaces in our communities, this is an extraordinary time. The general awareness of the importance of a strong sense of place—to the economy, to our social fabric, to human health—is growing stronger every day. Placemaking is, at this moment, being transformed from a useful tool to a vital cause by people throughout the world. As one of those rare processes that can bring people with different objectives together under the same banner, Placemaking is uniquely suited to help us grapple with the complex challenges that we face in a globalized society. After almost four decades of working in this field, we are reaching out to peers new and old to form a Placemaking Leadership Council to consolidate and strengthen Placemaking as an international movement.

The goal of the Leadership Council is to build a culture of mutual support amongst the do-ers and deep thinkers at the forefront of the Placemaking movement, creating a community of practice around this important work. Through our work, we know many people who are actively engaged in creating great places today; many of these people—the ones we refer to admiringly as “Zealous Nuts”—have already agreed to join this Council. But there are also people we don’t yet know who should be involved. If you are one of these people, you already know who you are; you’ve achieved something beyond most peoples’ imagination, created one or more successful places, and are looking for an opportunity to share your stories and learn from others about how you might be able to raise the bar even more. If this is you, please read on.

At the inaugural meeting of the Council this April 11-12th, we will gather in Detroit, Michigan, the North American capital of resilience (Background on how Detroit and Michigan are leading the way on Placemaking), to debate, discuss, celebrate and develop a strategy for creating a global agenda around Placemaking in cities. Another gathering will take place in Stockholm this June, through our partnership with UN-Habitat and the Ax:son Johnson Foundation. The Detroit gathering will be centered on case studies and demonstration projects, publications, films, and social media as ways of demonstrating the true power in place. Discussion will be structured around four agendas that we feel have the potential to transform cities if the focus is on the idea of place and Placemaking.

• Creating healthier communities and improving streets by redefining transportation planning;
• Improving our built environment by advocating for people- and place-centric design through an architecture of place;
• Supporting sustainable local economies by highlighting the central role of public markets;
• And strengthening communities by creating new urban development models that re-orient our cities and towns around great multi-use destinations.

The Council will be organized around four sub-committees, each of which will focus on one of these critical aspects of place-centered development. (Click here to read about the Transformative Agendas in greater detail). Their agenda-defining discussions will be guided by the three strategic themes of Place Governance, Place Capital, and Healthy Communities. Outcomes for each sub-committee will include research topics, benchmarks, potential partners, and implementation strategies that will drive progress and innovation amongst Council members and the wider global community of Placemaking practitioners and community change agents over the coming year.

If your interest is piqued, please review the five criteria below to see if you might be a good fit for the Placemaking Leadership Council. If you meet several of these criteria, we encourage you to reach out and tell us more about what you do, and why you’re passionate about the idea of place.

1.) You know about and understand Placemaking. You’re well-versed in the movement’s history, and can appreciate the uniqueness of the current moment. You understand that Placemaking is a process, not an outcome. Ideally, you’re also familiar with the Project for Public Spaces and the way that we work.

2.) You understand and agree with what we are trying to achieve. You get that the Council isn’t about making money or networking, but working with like-minded individuals to drive large-scale culture change to put place at the heart of public discourse.

3.) You have substantial experience with on-the-ground projects and initiatives. You’re driven and you’ve got a few success stories under your belt–and probably even some failures that you’ve learned a great deal from. We’re looking for people who don’t just think about how to create great places–they roll up their sleeves, head on out, and do it themselves.

4.) You think holistically about place. You’ve worked on a variety of different projects, and you understand how various (sometimes unexpected) pieces fit together to create a great public destination. The term “silo-busting” gets your feet tapping.

5.) You have your own networks and organizations. You’re not a rock, or an island. You have a track record of working with people from different backgrounds, disciplines, and communities, and you understand how important unlikely partnerships are to successful Placemaking.

If you are interested in joining the Placemaking Leadership Council and attending our first meeting in Detroit this April, please click here to fill out a questionnaire that will help us to learn more about who you are and what you do.

We welcome inquiries for this first round up until March 1st, 2013, and will work internally to shape a Council that will represent a diversity not only in professional experiences, but also in age, gender, cultural heritage, and international backgrounds. Please also indicate whether travel costs will be an issue, as we will be able to provide assistance to a limited number of Council members, based on need, through the generous sponsorship Southwest Airlines and contributions by other members.

We’re very excited to announce this new initiative, and look forward to working with more of the passionate Placemakers who make this movement so dynamic.

Meet Matt!

In our new Citizen Placemaker series, we’ll be chatting with some of the folks we meet in our travels and through our online interactions to learn about the amazing and inspiring work that they do, and to see how creating great places goes far beyond the physical spaces that make up our cities.

This brings us to Matt Lechel (@mlechs), a community change agent in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Matt is one of the founding board members of the IDEA Association, a non-profit that works to create structures that improve community health. On the clock, he works as the executive director of Kalamazoo Collective Housing (an affordable housing cooperative that works to develop neighborhood leaders and engaged citizens) and as an event manager for Volunteer Kalamazoo, where he organizes community days of service, specifically focusing on neighborhood safety initiatives. We met Matt on Twitter, and were impressed by his deep level of community involvement. So now, without further ado…

What is it about your place (city/neighborhood/block/etc) that inspires you to do the work that you do?
Kalamazoo is filled with incredible art, bright music, a growing and somewhat progressive downtown, and for the most part, people who seem to genuinely care about making the place they live better. Kalamazoo is also filled with some fascinating juxtapositions. The city is home to award-winning innovators in the field of anti-racism training and yet some neighborhoods are still so racially segregated that, at times, I wonder how much progress we’ve really made since the Civil Rights Movement. Kalamazoo is a community of truly amazing philanthropy and community investment, yet a huge chunk of that wealth was made through extremely negligent pollution of the Kalamazoo River. My motivation and curiosity stems from a desire to understand why these conflicting truths exist, and what we can do differently or better to fix them.

Probably wherever I called home, I would still have an insatiable desire to work in whatever small ways I can. But I do think Kalamazoo offered some special inspiration to me, particularly in terms of its cultural and political community.  As I began my journey to understand and know Kalamazoo (which is ongoing and mostly a learning experience), the real inspiration came from the people I met. I found people at the end of nearly every discovery or realization I made waiting for me with open arms, saying, “Glad you’re up to speed Matt, we could use your help, dig in.” In a town like Kalamazoo, it feels like every door is open; it just depends on if you want to step through it or not.

It sounds like your route to community involvement was very organic. Can you say a bit about what kinds of things you saw happening around Kalamazoo that led to the creation of the IDEA Association?
There was a coffee shop in Kalamazoo called the Strutt that likened itself to a public cafeteria—and it wasn’t that far off. People flocked to The Strutt: artists, bohemians, poets, weirdos, hipsters, square dancers; it was such a vibrant cultural hub. As someone who works in the nonprofit/social entrepreneurship field, I started to think about the impact this place was having. This bar was a haven for artistic expression, group planning meetings, drawings and poetry—it was probably one of the most important places that existed for some locals. That’s an important and empowering realization: that “Places” don’t have to be formal, long-standing institutions; in fact, sometimes the best places are ones that sprout up out of nothing and lack traditional forms of structure or policy.

IDEA Association was created in an attempt to help fill the gap between art, culture, and social progress—and support the creation of organizations that improved Kalamazoo while operating outside of those traditional structures. We started organizing these weird, unique events all over Kalamazoo where we would have live music, participatory community art projects, and we would survey attendees, asking all sorts of questions about what the most important relevant social issues were to them, and what solutions they knew of or imagined.

The Open Roads Bike Program was created by neighbors who saw a problem on their street and wanted to make a difference. / Photo: IDEA Association

You describe what IDEA does as “participatory project design.” What exactly is that, and how has it worked in past projects?
Strengthening connections between cultural experiences and social problem-solving was only one part of the work we wanted to do. We wanted to accomplish something tangible. For the first few years, we batted around lots of ideas about  how participatory project design would manifest itself. Eventually, through our work with the Kalamazoo Community Foundation and O.N.E. Place, we realized that there are many people seeking to do amazing work in our community who lack 501(c)3 status, and are thus ineligible to receive even small grants. On top of that, many nascent groups struggle with communication and organizational development issues—some of the very same issues IDEA had worked through. As a result, we began to serve as a fiscal sponsor to emerging grassroots projects in town.

An early success project is the Open Roads Bike Program. Open Roads was started 36 months ago by Ethan Alexander and a couple of neighbors who saw a problem on their street in Kalamazoo’s Edison neighborhood and wanted to make a difference. They started hosting weekly “Fixapaloozas” in Ethan’s garage. Pretty soon, kids and parents alike were coming to check it out, neighbors started to donate bikes, and by the end of the summer every single kid on the street had their own bike—and the skills to fix it themselves. Open Roads considered becoming their own 501(c)3 nonprofit, but decided they’d rather focus on doing what they love: working with kids, fixing bikes. This past summer, through fiscal sponsorship with IDEA, Open Roads got a significant grant from the Kalamazoo Community Foundation that took their program citywide.

We’ve found that there are so many people just like the Open Roads crew, who are outrageously talented and simply want to make an impact. They just need some of the community’s resources pointed in their direction. We help them identify and go after those resources.

"Kalamazoo feels like a small enough place that you can literally get to know every single person in it if you try hard enough." / Photo: Paladin27 via Flickr

One of our key Placemaking Principles is that “you can’t do it alone.” How important is collaboration in your efforts to improve Kalamazoo?
For me, collaboration is just a way of life. When someone brings me a new idea, the first thing I want to do is connect them to everyone in town who cares about similar issues. And Kalamazoo feels like a small enough place that you can literally get to know every single person in it if you try hard enough.

While collaboration can feel forced these days as it becomes a mantra for foundations and funders, when it happens organically and cooperatively, it’s so obvious and simple. IDEA’s fiscal sponsorship work is collaborative by its very nature. There are these really fantastic Zen-like moments when we’re meeting with various partner organizations. We’ll have 10 people in a room, all of whom have these grand visions, but only $1,000 in seed funding. People start to realize the immense amount of resources it will take to achieve the impacts that match their visions, and finally someone will speak up and say something like, “Hey, all of our resources are so limited…shouldn’t we be asking ourselves what investments we can make together that serve all of our collective needs?” And then they create these masterful program collaborations that incorporate several emerging grassroots projects instead of just one.

If you could give one piece of advice to people who are interested in tackling challenges in their communities but aren’t sure where to start, what would it be?
Start today. Just show up. Start showing up and don’t stop showing up at community events, neighborhood watch meetings, nonprofit board meetings, city commission meetings, art shows, local concerts, political rallies. Volunteer at events related to the things that you are passionate about; sometimes you’ll be invited to participate, sometimes you’ll have to invite yourself. Just remember that there is no one more qualified to impact your community than you.

• A new food system in the stimulus package. [Grist]

• Michigan farmers markets double in number since 2001. [Lansing State Journal]

• Washington Governor threatens to close thirteen state parks. [The News Tribune]

• Over 700,000 acres of land in California to be reclassified as Federally protected wilderness. [Los Angeles Times]