Make a Difference in Your Own Backyard

Practical ways to make your neighborhood come alive from The Great Neighborhood Book.

LAKE FOREST PARK, WASHINGTON

How a shopping mall became a town square

One day a few years ago, Anne Stadler was in line to order lunch at the Town Centre mall in suburban Seattle, when she overheard two men next to her lamenting the state of business. Upon realizing they were talking about her favorite part of the mall, Third Place Commons, she introduced herself. One of the men was a community-minded developer named Ron Sher who had bought the failing shopping mall with the intention of turning it into a community gathering place. He'd been inspired by the book The Great Good Place by sociologist Ray Oldenburg that extols the benefits of meeting places outside the home and the workplace, Sher had established a store in the mall called Third Place Books--and a large Commons next to it with a stage and cafes. The bookstore and the commons immediately became a haven for local families, who had a new reason to visit the once-dreary mall.

After hearing of the Commons' financial troubles, Stadler was struck by an idea: Why not have the community that loves the Commons get involved in supporting and running it? She ran the idea by Sher, who agreed to donate the Commons area and stage to a new non-profit that would fund and manage the space. Thus was born Friends of Third Place Commons, a public/private partnership that includes: the City of Lake Forest Park; the local arts council, library, and community college; and a host of other non-profit and educational community groups.


A giant game of chess draws a crowd at Third Place Commons.

Today the Commons hosts a staggering variety of community events: cooking lessons, club meetings, sports team parties, theatrical and musical performances, and art exhibitions. It has become a beloved gathering place for the whole community, from college students to families with young children to seniors.

MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO

The bench that sparked a community renaissance

It doesn't take much to start a public space renaissance in your neighborhood. In fact, as Dave Marcucci discovered, a simple bench can do the trick. After attending a PPS training course in 2005, Marcucci came away inspired by the idea that every neighborhood should have ten great places. He returned home to Mississauga, Ontario determined to make his house, which occupies a prime corner lot, one of the great places within his neighborhood.

Marcucci started by tearing out the fencing at the corner of his front yard. As he got to work landscaping the area and constructing a bench, he received a lot of quizzical comments. "Why don't you build a bench for yourself in the backyard?" He would answer, "the bench is for you."

When the bench was finished, Marcucci and his neighbors threw a street party. The bench soon became a place where everyone in the neighborhood came to sit. Older people stop to rest on it during their evening strolls. Kids sit there as they wait for the school bus in the morning. Families out for a walk use it to take a breather.

The complications that Marcucci first anticipated have not come to pass. The bench has not been vandalized, nor has it attracted negative uses. It was installed without approval from the city, but no one has demanded to see a permit. "There have been no problems!" he exclaims. "It's worked out really well. I've met my neighbors, and other people I'd never met before."

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

A tomato grows in Brooklyn

Community gardens are especially valuable in neighborhoods where fresh produce is scarce in local stores. They give people the opportunity to grow their delicious and health food. Residents of the East New York neighborhood in Brooklyn took their community gardens one step further: They teamed up with four community organizations to start a market called "East New York Farms!" on a vacant lot donated by the City, enabling urban gardeners to sell produce to other people in the neighborhood.

East New York is a low-income neighborhood with large immigrant populations hailing from South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Russia. The strength of East New York Farms! lies in its ability to adapt to the diverse tastes and skills of local residents. People from the neighborhood run the market, organizing different themes and activities each week that celebrate the many cultures within the community.

Showing off the goods at an East New York Farms! market stand.

More than 45 percent of customers receive food stamps, which fill critical shortfalls in household budgets, so the market has obtained an Electronic Balance Transfer (EBT) machine enabling all vendors to accept them. In addition to expanding access to fresh produce in the neighborhood, East New York Farms! provides growers with an important source of supplemental income.

WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA

Bright Lights, Fun City

The City of West Palm Beach, Florida revitalized its downtown Clematis Street and then launched into tackling common problem cities today: downtowns that empty out after the offices close at six. The city's Community Events Division (CED) launched Clematis by Night, a weekly event that features live music with lots of good food, and drink. The event draws thousands of people to the city's most important public space, Centennial Square, located at the foot of Clematis Street and in front of the public library. Clematis Street is closed to traffic during the event.

The main activity is a concert series that features local and regional musicians playing styles ranging from blues and jazz to rock and reggae. Attendees can buy a variety of regional and ethnic foods, and more than 25 local art vendors and craftsmen are also on hand selling their creations. In an innovative touch, the CED set up a program enabling local non-profits to raise funds by staffing the two locations where beer is sold and taking home a percentage of the sales. In the early days of Clematis by Night, the CED relied on the non-profits to bring their constituencies to the event each week. This strategy helped overcome people's initial reluctance to go downtown, and gradually built a crowd comprised of people from every neighborhood in the city.

Today, between 3000 and 5000 people regularly attend on nights with good weather. The economic impact on downtown has been tremendous, with 42 percent of attendees also visiting downtown merchants. It has also been a welcome supplement for local non-profits: Since the event started in 1995, beer sales have netted over $600,000 for participating groups.

TORONTO, ONTARIO

Coming together to reclaim a troubled city park

Jutta Mason, a young mother in Toronto, faced a dilemma. She lived near Dufferin Grove Park but was afraid to go there with her children because it had become a hangout for kids who were viewed as the "local toughs." Still, she didn't want to stay home stuck in her house. Mason debated whether to endure boredom or confront fear? She chose to overcome her fear, and in the process made a great difference in her community.

Her approach was simple. She struck up a conversation with neighbors about the park and how it could be improved. Together they started talking with the “tough” kids, who, as it turned out, also thought the park needed improving. They all worked to make the indoor skating rink in the park safer. Then they planted flower beds, resurfaced the basketball courts and renovated the playground—projects that were all based on ideas from local residents.

One of their most inspired improvements was the creation of a large Portuguese-style bread oven, which members of the neighborhood use to cook community dinners and throw pizza parties. They also constructed a fire circle, and many neighbors now cook meals over the open fire. This outdoor kitchen has become a center of social activity in the neighborhood. Dufferin Grove Park has been turned around, in large part due to the community effort launched by Mason; a new school has even been established next to the park.

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

The power of dreams in reviving a business district

From the southeast side of Seattle comes uplifting evidence for the important roles that a clear community vision and a vivid sense of imagination play in improving neighborhood life. The Columbia City district was founded in the 1890s as a new suburb around a rail station and was later absorbed into fast-growing Seattle. Although rundown, the neighborhood had a distinctive historic character which boosted community-led efforts in the 1990s to revitalize the area. But one half-block stretch of its downtown proved stubbornly resistant to change. Even while substantial improvements were being made throughout this working-class and ethnic community, merchants could not be persuaded to open up businesses in these particular buildings. The shop windows remained boarded up, giving the neighborhood a blighted look despite all the progress.

"The buildings had been empty for twenty years," notes Jim Diers, a local resident who at the time headed up Seattle's innovative Department of Neighborhoods. Finally at one local meeting, "someone suggested that if the community couldn't attract real businesses, they could at least pretend," he recounts in his compelling book Neighbor Power.

And that's exactly what Columbia City residents did. Working with artists from the Southeast Seattle Arts Council they painted the communities' dreams upon the plywood covering the windows: an ice cream parlor, a toy store, a dance studio, a bookshop, and a hat shop.

"The murals looked so realistic that passing motorists sometimes stopped to shop," Diers writes. "The murals also captured the imagination of a developer and several business owners. Within a year, everyone of the murals had to be removed because real businesses wanted to locate there."

Columbia City saw its dreams come true in the form of a new Italian deli, a brewpub and a cooperative art gallery, which itself grew out of a town meeting in which local where local residents offered visions for the neighborhood.

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

Stir up a little hope

The biggest problem for struggling communities is despair as everyone--inside the community and out--loses faith that anything can change. The goal then must be to crack through that sense of hopelessness, showing that change is possible.

North Philadelphia, among all the struggling communities across the U.S., stood out as one of the saddest. Vacant lots strewn with rubble dominated the landscape just as you see in photographs of bombed-out Berlin at the end of World War II--a testament to the economic, social and psychological devastation of local residents.

That's when Lily Yeh entered the picture. She was an art professor at the Philadelphia School of Fine Arts, whom a friend consulted about what to do with a particularly grim stretch of abandoned lots near his dance studio. Yeh was shocked at the state of the neighborhood, and didn't quite know where to start. But she knew something had to be done, so she began cleaning up the trash, which drew the attention of local kids who wanted to know, she remembers, what "this crazy Chinese lady" was up to. Soon their parents were watching too, and Yeh realized she had some collaborators for what was to be the most important art project of her life. Soon everyone was involved in cleaning up the area, painting murals, and creating an "art park," which the became the pride of the community.

Twenty years later, this predominantly African-American neighborhood is still poor, with 30 percent unemployment, but hope is returning thanks to the Village of Arts and Humanities. That's what the small art park in a vacant lot has grown into--a tangible symbol of renewal that encompasses 120 murals, numerous sculpture gardens, mosaics, community parks, performance spaces, basketball courts, even a tree farm. Six buildings have been rehabbed into workspaces for Village projects with local residents getting on-the-job training in the construction trades. A daycare center has been established, along with a new initiative, Shared Prosperity, to tackle economic conditions in North Philadelphia.

The Village of Art and Humanities has changed how residents of North Philadelphia think about their home--and how everyone else does too. Philip Horn, director of the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, notes it, "changed the perception of the [wider] community from 'there's something wrong with these people' to 'there's nothing wrong with these people'."