How Your Community Can Thrive, Even in Tough Times

Philip Myrick is one of two presenters (The other is SCUPer Ann K. Newman of Shepley ZBulfinch.) for the upcoming March 11 SCUP webcast, Placemaking on Campuses: Creating Destinations That Build Community:

2008 will go down in history as a turning point. Unexpected new events and ideas surfaced, changing the way we will lead our daily lives in the future. Financial turmoil abruptly altered the economic picture, forcing people to shift their thinking about everything from the household budget to global interconnectedness.

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In our view, this is the way forward in an era of budgetary constraints. A bottom-up method of decision making offers effective and cost-efficient solutions to the economic, environmental and social problems around us. For Project for Public Spaces, this is more than a fashionable theory du jour—it’s based on three decades of experience building and repairing communities around the world using an approach we call Placemaking.

Placemaking is central to many of the powerful trends shaping the world today. The stumbling global economy, a vulnerable energy supply, and loss of confidence in far-flung markets are balanced by an upsurge of interest in things local: producing local food; promoting local businesses; preserving local character; protecting local open space and public places; finding meaningful ways to belong to a local community.