Placemaking

Conference Call Notes

Thursday, February 10, 2011, 4-5pm EST

We used a live version of this document to collaboratively add questions, collect

thoughts, and transcribe important talking points, before, during and after the
Placemaking conference call. You can access this document via this link:
http://bit.ly/gtjNLK

Moderating
• Bonnie Shaw, Partner, BYO Consulting, LLC

Speaking
• Ethan Kent, Vice President, Project for Public Spaces – http://www.pps.org
• Paul Dreher, Planning and Zoning Director, City of Newport, VT –
http://www.kevaco.com/NEWPORTVERMONT/

Agenda
• 15mins – Introduction to Placemaking
• 35mins – Open for questions/discussion
• 10mins – What actions can you take?

Call Introductions

Ethan Kent:
• Placemaking = the Community is the expert
• When you focus on place, you do everything differently
• It requires broader set of skills than any one person can hold
• The urban disciplines are becoming Facilitators
• It takes a community to create a place and a place to create a community
• 5 trends in PPS Placemaking:
a. Transportation - biggest limiting factor is how a community relate to its
transport infrastructure
b. Local Economies - healthy food hubs, a combination of public markets,
farmers markets, etc
c. Architecture of Place - The role of architecture is to create great
destinations, not just create beautiful objects - focus on civic buildings,
libraries, community anchors
d. Multi-Use Destinations - places set up for public purposes first and
foremost
e. Lighter Quicker Cheaper - shorter low cost projects, test ideas that
can be made permanent later - how can we help communities build
themselves

www.communitymatters.org Placemaking Conference Call Notes 2/10/11

Paul Dreher:
• The first thing an FBC process asks the community is how it sees itself,
what it wants to be, and what are the places it wants to see and replicate?
• FBC emphasizes the form of the public realm and the buildings. “Good
form promotes varied, multiple-use places.”
• “Every place has a DNA” and you can code that DNA through a Form-
based code. A code creates a form on which Placemaking can occur.

Questions and Discussion occurring on the call and simultaneously in the Google
doc

• What have you found to be the most productive questions to ask

citizens or exercises to do with citizens to get them thinking about the
future of their community and placemaking? (Laura Pfeifer)
o PPS has two resources on this topic: “The Power of 10” and “The Place
Game.”
o Ethan: “A great place has at least 10 reasons to be in it.” People can often
come up with those reasons or uses if you press them on it. Asking people
to come up with those taps into their wisdom.
http://www.pps.org/articles/the-power-of-10/
o The Place Game is a set of questions that gets people to step back from
their single issue or area of expertise and see how a place performs from a
series of perspectives. Asks what people like or dislike about a place, what
they could do to improve it, etc.
www.pps.org/pdf/livemem_placegame.pdf
o Paul uses similar tools in small New England towns - contacting as many
people as possible through various means, asking them to show up, and
then physically take them out on the street and ask them to talk about
places they like, what make them great places, etc. “The moment you start
to say, ‘I’m listening to you,’ they respond.”
o What would happen if we incorporated “time” into the Power
of 10? I have often thought that destinations can be attractive if the
change over time - so that you see something new every time you visit
(though stability is good too.)(Stafford)

• It seems like many Placemaking projects are in urban areas. Is there a

difference between Placemaking in small towns and big cities? More
broadly, are there certain types of communities or characteristics that
are particularly well suited (or poorly-suited) to Placemaking?
(Rebecca Stone)

• The blog post says “’Placemaking’ is both an overarching idea and a

hands-on tool” - how do you get people to move from thinking to
doing?

• Can a town that is predominantly a suburb still create “places”? What

about towns that are known only as the place where strip
development or malls are? Can we create great places there? How?

www.communitymatters.org Placemaking Conference Call Notes 2/10/11

 o Form based codes were designed specifically to tackle the challenges of
the suburbs
o The suburbs are outreaching to us! How do we get that crossroads feeling
again?
o “Sprawl repair”

• What should ideally come first--programming/policy or design?

(Andrew Deci)

• Are placemaking initiatives more likely to succeed if they are

grassroots generated or initiated by planning
staff/governments/decision makers? (Andrew Deci)

• Please also further explain form-based codes… What is form based

code and why is it important?
o “A form-based code (FBC) is a means of regulating development to
achieve a specific urban form. Form-based codes create a predictable
public realm by controlling physical form primarily, with a lesser focus on
land use, through city or county regulations.”
o See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form-based_code
o See Form-Based Codes Institute: http://www.formbasedcodes.org/

• Should form based codes and place making always go hand-in-hand?

In other words, does a form-based code ensure one is creating great
places or do we need more?

• Is ‘placemaking’ a tool to build social capital, or is it a product of a

community with healthy social capital? Or both? Do we need to focus
on building social capital through programming first, and then deal
with design and places? (Andrew Deci)
o Social Capital: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital and
http://www.bowlingalone.com/
o PPS uses the term “place capital” - the idea that investing in place may be
a way to build social capital
o In Newport, creating a new code was most important as a way to build
capacity, community strength, identity and involvement.

• How does new technologies integrate into Placemaking? How are you
collecting data or engaging in open data? How can this inform
Placemaking?
o Digital Placemaking - crowd sourcing placemaking efforts, sharing with
an international audience.
o Bristol Rising uses a Ning site to connect people online -
http://bristolrising.com/
o Keypad polling - http://www.planitex.org/tool/keypad-polling
o Google Sketchup - http://sketchup.google.com/
o Survey Monkey - http://www.surveymonkey.com/ great, easy way
(reasonably priced!) to deploy a survey to an entire community and
receive the data in an easy way to digest and share
o Use Google maps as an open tool to let people identify and share places
that they like - http://maps.google.com

www.communitymatters.org Placemaking Conference Call Notes 2/10/11

 o Collect data through online surveys or forums and conduct forums that
best serve the issues in the community

• What tools can PPS bring to a town and how do we get you to assist
our town? Is it a day long process or multi-day process to evaluate and
assist a town? costs?
o And what is your process for partnering with different orgs/entities?

Resources (Reading, weblinks, great examples of Placemaking projects)

• CommunityMatters on Placemaking:
http://communitymatters.posterous.com/vibrant-places-happening-spaces-join-
a-confer
• Check out Placemaking 101 Articles, Resources and Tools at www.pps.org
• Ethan mentioned: The Power of 10 and the Origin of the Power of 10
• An article by PPS’s Gary Toth How Can Transportation Support Rural Livability?
• We are just beginning a process in the North Fork Valley in Western Colorado.
We have an incredible sense of place and are needing to build out from that
platform. Listening to the FBC info, it sounds like what we are doing.
o I helped write and now review variances for the form based code in
Colorado Springs. If you like, you can contact me with any questions.
mwhitley@ozarch.com.

Actions You Can Take (how can you get involved in Placemaking in your
community?):
• How can you think differently?
o what are your favorite 10 places?
• How can you start small and scale?
o http://my.parkingday.org/
• How can you get people engaged in the conversation?
o Build life long placemakers! Find the youngest people we can!
o Look into janeswalk.net - great event to get people talking about their
communities (design, planning, art, personal stories, etc) - can be started
anywhere

www.communitymatters.org Placemaking Conference Call Notes 2/10/11