The Placemaking Round-Up
A biweekly newsletter with public space news, resources, and opportunities.
The Biweekly Bazaar
A curated dispatch on all things public markets plus the latest announcements from the Market Cities Program.
A biweekly newsletter with public space news, resources, and opportunities.
A curated dispatch on all things public markets plus the latest announcements from the Market Cities Program.
“I approached Project for Public Spaces because I knew they had a great track record…and I wanted to see what was possible…for civic organizing, especially in historically marginalized communities that don’t have a lot of public space. What could we do to help create that infrastructure so that people had a safe place to gather?”– Brooke Tucker, JD, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Program Administration
Place Evaluation & User Analysis
Community Engagement & Visioning
Place Plans & Design
In 2025, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation approached Project for Public Spaces with a concept and funding support to help close the civic infrastructure gap in underserved communities that has long hindered community leadership, social cohesion, and government accountability. The result was the Community Placemaking Grants: Civic Spaces program, which helped nonprofits create indoor pop-up spaces that fostered civic and social life in urban and rural BIPOC and/or low-income communities across the United States.
Project for Public Spaces worked in partneredship with CultureHouse to select two nonprofits to receive the grants: GrowHouse Design + Development Group, which created a home base in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, NY, and Springfield Cultural Partnership, which transformed a vacant storefront in Springfield, MA. Each organization received $60,000 in direct funding, along with planning, implementation, and capacity-building assistance from Project for Public Spaces and CultureHouse over an 18-month period.
Essential to each project's success was developing collaborative partnerships with local organizations and residents to identify locations for their pop-up indoor spaces that suited their goals. Each organization implemented three months of programming and learned to manage their space while promoting long-term civic engagement in their community. By strengthening these community connections, each project developed a reach far beyond the physical space itself, helping bridge a critical gap in civic infrastructure for BIPOC and low-income communities.
The Community Placemaking Grants: Civic Spaces program represented an important step in expanding access to civic space in communities that had long lacked it. By investing in placemaking, supporting local nonprofits, and providing hands-on capacity-building assistance, Project for Public Spaces, CultureHouse, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation helped bring to light the vital role civic spaces play in strengthening community leadership and cohesion.
Learn more about the civic spaces below.
Project for Public Spaces’ Community Placemaking Grants enable US-based nonprofits and government agencies to address inequality of access to public places that serve community needs by working directly with local stakeholders to transform spaces or co-create new ones. We do this by providing direct funding, technical assistance, and capacity building facilitated by Project for Public Spaces. Learn more about how to become a Social Impact Partner today.
Program Administration
Place Evaluation & User Analysis
Community Engagement & Visioning
Place Plans & Design
