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Hampden

Jul 31
0

Close Encounters of the Creative Kind

By | Art & Social Change, Art That Counts | No Comments

In a previous column, I explored a bit of the what and why of creative placemaking.  But what about the placemaking that’s happening here and now in Baltimore?

Earlier this summer, as I walked around Highlandtown with a group of friends, I stumbled upon two remarkable things…

The first was the Maryland Traditions Folklife Festival was wrapping up as we approached the Creative Alliance. The street was filled with music and smiling faces of all ages. Even though it wasn’t our destination, it was a kind of random joy, the sort you experience just from discovering the cool things going on in your city and the people enjoying them.

Further down the block, we discovered new benches and yarnbombed trees at the intersection of Conkling and Eastern. What had previously just been a street — fairly unremarkable — was now an inviting and creative space.

Yarn-bombed tree in in Yellow Springs, Ohio

Yarn-bombed tree by the Jafagirls. Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Both of these encounters touch upon the strength of creative placemaking: Spaces are transformed and, as a result, they pique your curiosity, invite you in and just plain make you notice them. For residents, the process not only improves your immediate area, it also forges a sense of place and identity.

The public space at Conkling and Eastern is one of the neighborhood improvements that’s come out of a creative placemaking workshop held last May by the Southeast Community Development Corporation, the Creative Alliance and Banner Neighborhoods and facilitated by Deborah Patterson of ARTblocks. The workshop involved a wide cross-section of the community, including residents and area merchants, and resulted in a list of short-term and long-term goals for the community and the Southeast CDC. Creative placemaking is just one of the tools the CDC is using to promote and improve the community, but it’s a significant one because it allows so many voices to be heard and for residents to not only benefit from, but also participate, in the process.

That focus on improvements generated and determined at a grassroots level is the work of Deborah Patterson and ARTblocks and is informed in the placemaking process developed by Project for Public Spaces. I admire the work Patterson is doing because, while the process is consistent (i.e., public workshops soliciting community opinion on issues and solutions), the end result is awesomely varied:

  • A living chair in Druid Hill Park
  • A ceramic mural in Pimlico
  • A guerilla crosswalk in Hampden
  • Elephants in Mondawmin (coming soon!)
  • A mosaic mural on the facade of Westside Elementary (coming soon!)

Photos courtesy of Druid Hill Farmers Market (leftmost) and ARTblocks.

I also appreciate that ARTBlocks projects are happening all across the city, not confined only to designated arts districts. While I’m also excited for the developments in those areas (like the Bromo Tower crosswalks and Europe-Baltimore collaborative placemaking project Transit), I also applaud efforts by ARTblocks and The Baltimore Love Project to make all neighborhoods surprisingly and delightfully artful.

So much of what’s happening in Baltimore is relatively recent, so it’s difficult to quantify the impact of these projects. Next, I’ll be diving back into the numbers, though, and exploring the challenges of communicating the impact of creative placemaking.

Jun 24
0

When Planning Hurts

By | The Good Plan | No Comments

For someone usually upbeat and positive about city planning, I was hit this week by the story of the Baltimore Free Farm, and how the City of Baltimore is poised to sell part of the Free Farm to a developer, citing ‘highest and best use.’ It was an example of the government responding to, what I can only imagine, is immediate economic gratification at the sacrifice of long-term good. And when I tried to think about this week’s blog entry about social justice and urban planning, it seemed a farce to try to tie the two together. Maybe there isn’t social justice in urban planning — maybe sometimes we just get lucky, and other times money continues to dictate decisions of land use.

According to the Free Farm website, these lots had been cultivated for two years, producing hundreds of pounds of free food for the community. I don’t blame the developer; they’re simply doing their job to build and gain revenue. I do, wholeheartedly blame the city — and while I know our words won’t change things, I do hope that they allow the officials to realize what they’ve done and what they’ve displaced in exchange for a buck. I hope they are a bit ashamed of themselves, and in the back of my mind I have the resounding phrase on repeat, ‘this is why we can’t have nice things.’

I don’t like to think of myself as a pessimist or a cynic. Skeptical, maybe, but cynic rarely — I’m not the type to picket line with a sign (What do we want? Farming! When do we want it? NOW!). That isn’t me. Rather, I feel I’m a realist. I sigh and shake my head and move on, bettering the situation as best I’m able. So as I sat around with a group, talking about the Free Farm and thinking of the practical next step.

I not so eloquently exhaled exhaustedly at the suggestion of a fundraiser. My hunch is if the city is selling, they’re selling for money, and the amount of capital that developers can access doesn’t come close to what a group of passionate people can raise at an evening fundraiser with a beer sponsor. We can raise a hell of a lot more than money — love, advocacy, education, engagement, after school activities, facilitating the growth of youth and healthy living for families — but millions of dollars isn’t how we, as changemakers, constitute highest and best use.

If we are going to continue our attempts to better the community, it is the responsibility of those enacting the laws to balance community benefit over economic benefit, and long-term change over immediate satisfaction. Money is necessary for sustainability — I won’t pretend that we should live in some freewheeling socialist society. I do think though that as a public officer there’s a greater responsibility to respond to those making a difference, like providing free food, in a way that perpetuates goodness.

Isn’t this the city in which we want to live? Wouldn’t it be easier to govern a place with less hunger and more access? This isn’t just about those two parcels, its about that stakeholder identification to find people who really care about a place and who are working to make it better — since we know you, the public official, can’t do it all. We’re trying to help; so let us.

IMAGE CREDIT. [With thanks to Bmore Do It Yourself for photo].