Let’s Talk About Placemaking: Scaling Impact, Building Community

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to citytalk@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Mary W. Rowe It’s Mary Rowe from the Canadian Urban Institute, delighted to have so many people joining us for, let’s talk about placemaking. It’s about this, just saying, place. I don’t know how that shows up on the camera. It’s backwards for me, but anyway, it’s all about this. And I am so excited to have people joining us from across the country and across North America, actually, because we’re at a rather, low moment, I would say. And I think that the wonderful thing about this initiative and about this topic is that it is an uplifting, hopeful, constructive way that we build community, that we build a sense of camaraderie and opportunity and just what reminds us why we live in places. We actually live in places and we make them better through something magical called placemaking. And it’s not all magic, a lot of it is just good old hard work. But we have fabulous people joining us today. And just to say that this is the traditional territory of many First Nations, Inuit and Métis, as everyone knows. And in Canada, for our American colleagues, we really don’t start public events without some kind of acknowledgement of our obligation to find truth and to seek reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. And placemaking is a concept that is part of the Indigenous culture and manifests in a bunch of different ways. I’m sure my panelists will talk … my guests today will talk a bit about that. But today I happen to be in Toronto, covered under treaty 13, the Williams Treaty, with the Mississaugas of the Credit and it’s also home to the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat Peoples and, as I suggested, this is an ongoing process of reconciliation that we’re engaged in here. I’m going to ask my folks to turn their cameras on so you can see who’s joining us from different places and different, as I suggested, different climates. We were in the practice, we were sort of comparing notes, as Canadians do, I don’t know if Americans do this. I think Americans start meetings talking about sports. Canadians start meetings talking about weather. So there we are. And now at the moment, all we do is start talking, when we start meetings, we talk about just checking in like, how are you doing? How are you doing? So maybe when people come on today, they can, before they launch into why place making matters and what we’re doing and, my God, Ryan is, Ryan is moving furniture. I’m not sure what he’s doing. But you want to talk about this, obviously. We launched this report last week, probably the most popular report we’ve issued in a long time at CUI, so hats off to all of you that produced it and contributed to it. And what I love about it is that the bottom, this is in English and French, I’m just reading from the English one, but it is a bit of a coffee table book. I’m just saying, our doorstop book. It’s a bit thick, just saying. But at the bottom it says “in dialog with Canada’s placemaking community”. And maybe the next edition needs to be in dialog with the global placemaking community because that’s what’s so fabulous about this practice or discipline or experience or whatever it is that you folks who are in placemaking want to call it is that it actually straddles geography, it straddles culture, it straddles history. It’s something that everyone instinctively gets, you know we do a lot of work at CUI on Main Streets, and one of the reasons we used Main Street is it was a code for economic activity at the local level, and social activity at the local level and you can pretty much talk to anybody about where’s your main street, and no matter what size of community they live in they’ll be able to tell you. Could be a four corners, could be the back of a store, could be “that’s our main street”, and I feel the same way about placemaking. Even though people… We had colleagues this morning in the office who don’t actually know the term, they’re not part of the little internal workings of placemaking, but when you with them, they say, oh, oh, right. I’m a placemaker too. So I think that’s one of the lovely things about this, is that this is a dialog, it’s about you and other people and your experience in a place, how the place relates to you, how you relate to the place. So on that happy note, I’m going to ask Jacquelyn if she could start by talking a little bit about how this document came to be. And also, as I say, could we just start with a little check in about – how are you doing? So let’s start with the how you’re doing and then we can… And I, and you know, this is a safe space. Lots of people in the chat can offer how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. This is a respectful place, respectful space, and so we’ll listen to each other with open hearts and open minds to just check in on, how are you doing? And then we’re going to talk about this report. So Jacquelyn, over to you first. Just congratulations. Can I just say, I think the feeling that I have is that people were so ready for something positive, something hopeful, something tangible, and you’ve delivered that. Thank you. Timing is everything. Over to you, Jacquelyn. Great to have you on CityTalk.

Jacquelyn West Great, and yeah, thank you, Mary. And I’m so happy to be in Toronto today. I spent a lot of time in Montreal and I forget just the scale of difference when you come from a city like Montreal and you come to Toronto, which has really just become a Sim city. I really want to thank the panelists for joining us today. It’s been many hours on video calls over the last series of months, and I just want to thank the contributors for their very important work and contributions to this book, and then also to leverage their own networks for us to be able to talk to over a hundred practitioners. So when I started with the Canadian Urban Institute, we were facilitating a national practitioner network of over 6,000 placemakers across the country, facilitating a thousand projects across the country in placemaking as a response to the pandemic. And what was sort of strikingly apparent was just the outcomes, the unexpected new relationships, the cohesion, and the notes from the ground, the field notes that were coming forward. Just for a bit of context, Canada’s placemaking community was an initiative between the CUI and the Community Foundations of Canada that was looking to create a support network, a practitioner network of sorts, offering knowledge exchange, offering mentorship, and offering tools and promotion for the projects that were being facilitated across the country. And so what we wanted to do was we wanted to take what we were seeing and learning and find a home for it and find a platform for it, and in that, we opened that practitioner network from being that closed 6,000 to opening it to a broader and global audience. So it was at that moment that we expanded the conversation to our colleagues in the U.S. with Placemaking U.S., and also with Ethan Kent and his Placemaking X network, and we started to gather what we were finding in the field … That’s what you’ll see as this collected iterative document. I guess just to give a little context as to what you’ll find in this publication is practitioner insights from 100 practitioners, and with modesty we know that we didn’t speak to everybody that is doing this important work, and it is a huge intention of us to keep up this dialog and this ongoing conversation because what we’ve begun to find is just so interesting. We synthesized 21 definitions of placemaking that we found across a whole host of practitioners to, in a way, find a unifying language to talk about placemaking.

Mary W. Rowe Thanks Jacquelyn. I’m just noticing that, just to reinforce, you know, my gut instinct about this, about how this is almost a universal language, placemaking, almost. I’m sorry for our French speakers that we’re not translating this simultaneously into French. I’m going to see if we can fix that for CityTalk so that we could always offer in English and French. The launch last week was en Français in Montreal and I see a number of Montrealer’s on the call. Jacquelyn’s in Montreal. We have a couple of staff now in CUI that live in Montreal, which is wonderful. But just scanning the chat, and I always encourage people, go on to that chat, if you’re a lurker, I was on a webinar yesterday that I listened to and I was a lurker, I was sitting doing other work and I wasn’t really watching, and if you’re one of those people, busted, and you’re sitting at the edge of the desk, you’re missing looking at the chat because people put all sorts of interesting things in the chat, including where they’re coming in from. So, I see Cape Town, Stockholm, Dublin, Surrey, San Francisco, New York City, Portland, Windsor, always good to have Windsor here. Montreal, and lots of Torontonians, obviously. Sioux Falls, come on. We have got fabulous people checking in from all sorts of places. So if you haven’t done that yet, and you’re a lurker and you don’t know how to use the chat functions, very easy, go to the bottom of the screen, go onto the chat, just tell us where you’re coming in from. It’s fascinating because it just reinforces that we are a large, diverse community. And Ethan, I’m going to come to you next because I know that a lot of these folks are Placemaking X people. Just saying. And that’s why… And you have an enormous reach and you and I have known each other forever, and you started in New York and with a project that was primarily U.S. focused, but somehow this has become a really porous movement. So talk to us about, first of all checking in, how you feeling, how you doing? And then talk to us about where placemaking is at now? What do you think the moment is? Halifax, thank you everybody. Just keep putting in where you’re coming in from. It’s fascinating. Go ahead, Ethan.

Ethan Kent Yeah, well, thank you, Mary, so much for hosting this conversation and so many of your CityTalks and anything you moderate are, you know, the highest level of urbanism conversations out there. So this is, you’ve been lifting the bar and bringing so many people together for years, and really you helped launch and really see the idea for what we’re doing now with Placemaking X, both launching the first placemaking week ever, which was in Vancouver, which was really our biggest placemaking conference that helped shape, get place -making principles into the New Urban Agenda and help establish sustainable development goal 11.7, was the year after I point out that actually the first Placemaking Canada gathering, so the Canada network building and movement building has really pioneered what we’re trying to build around the world. Placemaking Canada, formed as a network, thanks to the McConnell Foundation back in 2015, but became a model for networks now, there’s now more than 30 national and regional placemaking networks that we’ve helped to support covering really most of the world. And so it’s really fitting that this publication has again raised the bar on the quality of the placemaking conversation and broadened what placemaking can be. And the wonkiness and fuzziness of the word we find is what enables great conversation and debate. Who does it? Who is it for?

Mary W. Rowe That’s interesting, isn’t it? Isn’t that interesting that the, we’re so often accused that we’re not being precise enough, but this, the fuzziness and vagueness might be good.

Ethan Kent Yeah, part of, the most important part of the placemaking process is debating, you know, how it’s done and who’s engaged in it, and that’s, the approach to these networks is that it’s always about, you celebrate whoever’s leading it and what they bring to it, but you always realize that they’re blocking. So how do we always diversify who’s involved? And so that actually brings me to why we’re having the second Global Placemaking Summit in Toronto with you all and many partners that are on the call. You know, being shaped by the Canadian discourse and community, but also the global discourse and how do we chart the path for the next five years of the placemaking movement? Where does it go? We want it to be rooted in Indigenous placemaking perspectives that Canadians have really helped lead on in so many ways. We want it to really grapple with these challenges of nationalism and really the toxic, you know, politics that’s going on, mostly at the fault of my country right now. But how place leaders, placemaking experts can disrupt and reconnect more authentic power centers around the world, how we can decentralize power, but also realize that in places that people love and that they’re facilitated to give love to, those places will persevere. They will be, progress will be, you know, will continue to advance and innovate in places that are inclusive and welcoming and grappling with these deeper issues. And frankly, people are having more fun and being more creative and really thriving in great places. And that’s the way we’re actually going to really disrupt and overcome the darker forces that have been really challenging us this winter. But eager to, the others are the ones that actually put together this great product. And in the Placemaking Canada community, really took, what you guys did with that really took the conversation to another level globally. The model of how government supported it and the community foundations of Canada supported placemaking to come out of the pandemic, facilitated by CUI, really raised the bar on what national leadership and national NGOs can do to support placemaking impact and implementation. And now the question is, I think with the summit, is how do we build on that momentum, redistribute that power locally perhaps and build capacity to take the placemaking conversation to another level.

Mary W. Rowe Thanks Ethan. Listen, we’ve all got now full -time jobs just scrolling through the chats to see where people are coming in from, and I wanted to say that that, I mean listen I’ve just been looking. Scranton, Penetanguishene, Jacksonville, Phoenix, St. John’s, Calgary, Vancouver, London UK, London Ontario, a place in India I hope I don’t mispronounce it Mysuru, Amherst, Los Angeles, it’s fantastic. And I just think, here’s the moment we’re going to all enjoy with each other right this minute. We are people. We care about our communities, we care about our families, we care about our neighbors, we care about what is around us, and we are joined in that pursuit. And whatever national boundaries or borders or debates or high-minded acrimony is flying around, how wonderful for us to just remind ourselves that we share a common pursuit to make good lives for ourselves and for our neighbors, you know? And that’s what placemaking reminds us of. And I think that’s why this is such an important conversation. And we, those of us that are in placemaking, I don’t think… We’re not that lofty about it. We don’t think it’s really, we don’t think we’re all about world peace, but maybe we are. Maybe we are. Maybe this is how we, maybe this is how you build this kind of connective tissue. So Ethan, thank you for acknowledging that this is a movement that’s been building over decades and decades and decades. And it’s just, we’re all going to enjoy this hour together, reminding ourselves what really matters, communities, people, and place. So Ryan, let’s go to you next. You’re somewhere balmy. Let’s be nice about this, about, just saying the Canadians worry about weather. I also saw people are checking into the chat and someone has checked in, someone who we know well who’s a Canadian, just saying, has checked in from Brooklyn and then put “sorry” behind it. So people need to understand. That’s kind of funny because Canadians are the ones that say sorry, just saying. So thanks, Kendal, nice to see you here. Go ahead, Ryan. Talk to us about what your, first of all, how you doing, how you feeling, and then secondly, talk to us about placemaking and where you think we’re at, what’s the moment we’re at.

Ryan Smolar Hi everyone, great to be here with you. I’m Ryan Smolar from Placemaking US and we’re a national learning and sharing network around placemaking. I’m coming in from Asheville, North Carolina where it is a snowy, wintery day. We’re actually using placemaking here as a tool for recovery and rebuilding, because there was a hurricane here and a big storm. A lot of destruction in our arts community, and in outlying communities and rural communities. And so I’m actually here with some visiting placemakers from New Orleans who worked on community generated plans down there and they’re sharing their stories here today so that our communities can organize here on the ground. Also, every conversation definitely punctuated with the big issues that you’ve brought up, and seeing funding for placemaking, you know, nationally through programs like federal grants to different roadway reinterpretations, to federal aid programs overseas, you know, gutting programs that are geared at safety of, you know, really vulnerable populations. So it’s a tough time, but we’re placemakers. We’re always finding the silver lining and having fun and trying to work together for better days. So, great to be here at this monumental release of this report and congratulations.

Mary W. Rowe Thanks, Ryan. Great to have you. And the idea of placemaking as a tool for recovery is a very, very important principle, I think, for us to be reminded of. And this document is full of things like this, lots of examples and lots of practical ways in which communities have used placemaking differently. One of the things that we’re talking about is, the problem with producing a report is that as soon as you do it, you think, oh, but there’s also this and there’s that and what about and what about… So here’s, you know, that’s why, um… That’s why writing a book is hard, because as soon as you finish the book, you think, well, I really should have put in this, this, and this. So what we’re talking about now, I think we need to collectively, all of us think about this, is how do we create a living repository of best practice so that you can click on something and then you’ve got the latest updates. So those of you that aren’t in here and are feeling kind of sad or put out, it wasn’t intentional. They had to draw a line somewhere. Madeleine, I’m going to come to you next. And I think the question is, could we create some kind of a living piece? The other thing is, people that are asking, How do we get a copy of this beloved thing? We’ve not really worked that out yet. This is a labor of love, intensive, as I say, doorstop material. And the thing is, we don’t really want to be printing it in one place and shipping it with great carbon expense everywhere. So that’s why you can download it online, but let’s… Yeah, yeah, free online, but we’re going to think about how to, you know, share this. And also, as I say, update, keep it alive. So Madeleine, great to see you. We’ll go from one co-director to the other co-director, and tell me how you’re doing.

Madeleine Spencer I’m doing good, and I’m here in Southern California today and I’m excited about this talk, and also the launch of this dialog piece that has come out. I think that for me, one of the main things that I was really excited about in bringing, being able to contribute is the fact that I have been looking a lot at positive psychology with a couple of authors that have spoken about flourishing, and the importance of flourishing. And we had heard directly from people on the street, we were in New Orleans and they’re like, you know, we’re really tired of people talking about how resilient we are. And we, and just being able to survive, we want to be able to thrive and flourish. And I think that for me, it was really important to bring in that human flourishing might be like this audacious and deeply humanistic goal of placemaking, but I believe that it’s the initiative that we should be aiming for. So we were very excited to begin to bring in, and I know that we come from this sort of like enlightened century of a hundred years of like car-centric planning, zoning regulations, unmitigated pollution, housing issues, lack of access to green space, extreme weather and displacement are some of the new things that we’re dealing with, and so the thing is this question of, why would we be settling for survival when flourishing is what we should be working on? It is the blueprint for like our survival and how we’re going to adapt to all of the things coming up. Some of the beautiful things that were shared by authors like Setha Low who we brought into this document, is that there’s these different domains that she’s shown that have a lot to do with how we can look and evaluate if our placemaking goals are happening. And it has to do with like social equity, health, joy, economic opportunity, sustainability, and cultural identity. So I’m excited to continue our discussion and how we kind of grappled with all of these different things as we were putting together this work.

Mary W. Rowe Thanks, Madeleine, always great to see you. I’m just going to encourage people, now that I’ve chided you all, get on the chat. Engage in the chat. Make sure that you set your settings to everyone, otherwise, it just comes to me and the panelists, and we’re happy to hear you, but really, what we’d like is for you to post to everyone, so everyone can benefit from whatever wise thing you’re saying. Bridget, you’re in cleanup position here. There, it’s a sports reference. Did you like that? You’re batting cleanup.

Bridget MacIntosh I see what you did there. That’s great.

Mary W. Rowe Talk to us, first of all, how you doing? Let’s check in and then talk to us a little bit about this whole effort and what you’re seeing.

Bridget MacIntosh Definitely. So first, I’m feeling very thankful. I have been able to work with some fabulous collaborators, present company included. And so just feeling very inspired and just very pleased, very thankful about the work that I’m able to do. And yeah, just to echo how there was so much information, so much knowledge, so many different examples that we wanted to be able to include, and so just to draw that line and figure out, oh, goodness. In terms of approaches and looking at things from the policy angle, and what are municipalities and areas doing to help support flourishing, to help champion networks, all of this good stuff, I tried to bucket it into four areas just as a start. Again, like not exhaustive, but like it’s a start. So first thing, a lot of work in cultural districts, just pulling from examples from the book, especially here in Toronto, we have work that’s happening on a cultural district program and especially the Little Jamaica Project and definitely want to acknowledge the work that Jay Pitter has done with that particular initiative, but lots of great cultural district related programs that look at protecting and celebrating the authentic feel and vibe of place, and associated with cultural districts are certainly community land trusts. So how do we put in frameworks or policies that help safeguard that area, that protect against gentrification? And quick shout out, Arts Build Ontario, they are having a webinar, I think on April 3rd, that specifically looks at community land trust, so I highly recommend joining in on that. And then over to nighttime strategies, cities that are realizing the potential of the nighttime economy and the role that placemaking has in that. So, looking to Ottawa as one example, Matthew Gondin is doing great work there. Also in Toronto, there was a night economy study that was done with VibeLab, an organization, I believe based in Europe, that is also exploring this nighttime placemaking, nighttime economy type work. Edmonton has just recently done a nighttime economy strategy, and I think even Hamilton now is just getting started on that type of work. So certainly looking at policy and infrastructure on. that side of things. Another area that cities are exploring are in between or connecting spaces. So we’re seeing a lot of policies and frameworks that are supporting placemaking in alleys and in those spaces that connect one place to another. Vancouver is doing some great work in terms of an alley support. I don’t have the exact title, but a strategy or framework to support alley activation. The Seattle Clear Alleys program is one of the pioneering frameworks or approaches in this regard, as well as Denver. And in the book, we talk about the Meadoway and other connecting opportunities and policies such as that, which are fantastic. And finally, I’m probably going on, are the stewardship shifts. So the book talks a lot about just finding that sweet spot in between government-led and community-generated. So municipalities that are enacting policies and frameworks that shift the power, and shift stewardship back to the people and the communities that are using these spaces and who are living in these spaces. So just want to give a shout out to Vancouver, their Plaza Stewardship Strategy, the New York DOT program, the New York Plaza program is another fantastic example. And again, some of the cultural land trust related work there is also echoing that. So lots of great different buckets, but I think that’s a good start, and I encourage everyone to read the book and continue the conversation.

Mary W. Rowe I’m going to ask everybody to put their camera on and we’ll go into the Hollywood Squares section, where everybody can see everybody. You have to be of a certain age to know what Hollywood Squares is. But Madeleine, you must remember Hollywood Squares, you’re nodding.

Ethan Kent It’s actually coming back. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing, but Hollywood Square is coming back and a friend of mine is the lead writer for it.

Mary W. Rowe They’re not going to bring Paul Lind back. He was hilarious, and he’s dead, but we’ll need a new Paul Lind, of which there are many, I’m sure. So I have a couple of things for us generally to talk about. And as I say, if you’ve got a brilliant suggestion as to how we can make this available in an affordable way and that people could get access to it, send somebody a message. You can… Don’t put it here in the chat, but just email one of us and say, Mary, here’s the solution. We’re keen to hear it, because we want to get this out to as many people as we can. But we also want to update it. And as I suggested, another thing to do on this chat would be, if you’ve got other resources, and you want to point us to them, just put the domain names, just put the links into the chat. This usually makes the chat blow up. When I say, okay, put some links in the chat, and then all hell breaks loose and people put a gazillion in. So do it, because we post the chat and then everybody can see it. So we’re, you know, we used to talk about this in a way that wasn’t fearful. We want this to go viral. See what I mean? As predicted, the chat now blows up. We want this… Placemaking has gone viral, I guess. That’s what’s interesting and uh… Ethan, that would be very important to your family because your dad was one of the early early early advocates for this, and now it’s everywhere. So I want to talk for a sec about obstacles. In your research when you were putting this together, and Madeleine, you kind of hinted at a few, what do we think the key obstacles are to implementing placemaking? Who wants to take that first? Otherwise I’ll call on you, but… Ethan, you want to? Somebody else, who, Madeleine was it you?

Madeleine Spencer I can start. One of the things that I keep hearing and what people keep talking about is governance structures. And I think that one of the fabulous featured writers right now, Sheila Foster, wrote Co-Cities about really talking about co-governance, how to have an enabling state, how to have pooling economies, how to have tech justice in our cities. So I feel like, this is a huge dialog right now that, we have to start reorganizing so that we’re adaptive and breathing. I mean, Jane Jacobs is the one who says that it’s a… Cities are living and we have to have places that are allowing places to breathe along with the changes that are occurring continuously.

Mary W. Rowe I love that. We need places to breathe, to breathe with us. What a wonderful way to phrase that, Madeleine. I hope that somebody on the CUI research team can just Google, quickly, Sheila Foster, who has, and her whole notion of co-governance. Because as you suggest, placemaking is a little microcosm of larger urban governance. So we’re talking about placemaking and the most effective placemaking approaches, but it’s the same kind of process to deal with mental health, or to deal with accessibility and transit, or to deal with building a green building. It’s all about this interactive, collective process that we engage in, or process. That was my bi-national thing, process process. It’s all about that, that cities are fundamentally, and communities, even small ones, are fundamentally an act of this kind of collaborative, we’re adjacent to one another, we’re going to make it work together. Who else wants to talk about obstacles? Ethan, you started, I think.

Ethan Kent I could jump in. Certainly, yeah, we, you know, in every part of the world, you know, people are actually facing similar obstacles. And that’s why we wanted to sort of network this globally. But everyone’s coming at these discussions from different strengths and different weaknesses. And so, different parts of the world are figuring how to lead this from government, from the private sector, from grassroots activism. But whoever’s leading it is also blocking it to an extent. So that’s why we need to always keep balancing and diversifying who’s involved. But governance is really ultimately where, has always been the biggest obstacle and biggest opportunity for placemaking. Really, place and public space falls between the cracks of different departments, different sectors, different disciplines. Nobody’s job is to create great places, but when it becomes everybody’s job, you know, we’re not really trying to make it a separate profession or, you know, even necessarily a separate cause, but one that disrupts and reconnects draws out the best in many. And so place governance has always been, you know, you mentioned Main Streets and, you know, Toronto started the first BIAs, the first, you know, those are different innovations in place governance efforts. And so that’s really been central to all of the place making conferences going on around the world. How do we always diversify the participation in governance? Informal governance is often the biggest, the most successful public spaces are actually informally governed in a sense. It doesn’t mean you always make it more formal, but we will have, Tim Tompkins is helping to lead our global agenda on that. Our board chair, Peter Smith in Australia, There’s a lot of great minds on place governance that will be coming to Toronto for the summit. I know Toronto’s already having some internal discussions about these types of topics. But place governance is actually one of 40 different agendas that we are creating, just like we’ve created these 30 networks around the world that are geographic. What we launched with the first global placemaking summit in Mexico City a little over a year ago was cross -cutting agenda networks that are all dealing with different obstacles to better public spaces. So whether it’s Indigenous placemaking issues, or refugee placemaking, or equity or women in placemaking, there’ll be leaders on all these different topics coming to facilitate and learn from Canadian local discussions to connect the dots in these efforts, to challenge these conversations, take them further, you know, network the learning, the advocacy, and ultimately the impact on these cross-cutting topics.

Mary W. Rowe You know, this is always a consonant test for a CityTalk listener. You will hear people talking about governance. A -N -C -E, governance. Not to be confused with E -N -T -S, governments. So this is about governance. All the different ways that we arrive at shared decision-making. Jacquelyn, do you want to talk a bit about your experience on this? Because the Quartier des Spectacles is, of course, the great banner example for many of us. And so there are two places that, if you haven’t, for those of us that are coming in from other places, you’ve got to go to Montreal and you’ve got to see the Quartier des Spectacles. It’s just breathtaking when you see it. And then you have to come to Toronto to this summit, that Ethan and a bunch of us are going to host with him in June. But Jacquelyn, can you talk a little bit about that, about how you’ve been able to figure out the stewardship piece of QDS and the governance of it?

Jacquelyn West Yeah, thank you. So the Quartier des Spectacles is a central cultural district, downtown Montreal, sort of a transition from what was a bit the, red light district. And it was…

Mary W. Rowe We should learn from that. We should learn from that. We’ve got lots of cities here that have their own red light district. Here you go! A way to democratize space and maybe make it a little more inclusive. Go ahead. So it was the red light district. Carry on.

Jacquelyn West It’s a one kilometer squared territory that was delineated for the cultural organizations that bring so much vibrancy, entertainment and destination value to downtown Montreal, to have a permanent space and a permanent place. So what’s unique to your point, Mary, is that from the beginning, it was a collaborative governance structure. So the governance of the territory is actually the 80 cultural organizations that call it home. And there’s a whole series of subcommittees and administrative councils that help direct it for everything from speaking with one voice to promote the activities of all of the organizations that are operating in this space, but also to look forward and plan forward, and what an interesting statistic about the Quartier des Spectacles was a summit of Montreal that sort of instigated this idea, and it was the socialization of this idea across all levels of government and cultural organizations say, “okay, you know what, we’re going to make a $220 million investment. We’re going to create a world class tourist destination”. And what they’ve come to see over time, and we have some direct impact data that I can pull up, but it’s in the environment of a four billion dollar retomber, like a result from that initial investment in additional investment that has come to the area.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, it’s interesting again, one of the things that I always want to take from this is, there’s no one way to do this. And part of when we, the hesitancy always around creating best practice, is that you somehow sideline a gazillion of other approaches, so we always want to just talk about possible practices, or I don’t know what the current euphemism is but, because the way they did in Montreal may not necessarily work with the way they should do it in Dublin or the way they’re going to do it in Amherst, so that’s important. We all have different approaches to this, but there are some common principles, I guess, around governance, and I see some folks suggesting that the resources are too tightly controlled centrally. What’s interesting, let’s talk about resourcing. Bruce Katz a fellow at CUI, and based in the U.S., is saying that he feels that the transition that you’re all witnessing in the U.S. with the way in which the trump administration is initially behaving, the decisions it’s making, is that it’s going to decentralize and push more resources, and certainly more authority to local governments and local communities. That’s an interesting take, I have to think about that. But, placemaking is fundamentally a local thing. Bridget, when you look at the examples of placemaking, and the possible practices do you see any kind of through-line that is consistent? I just suggested, someone had suggested informal, I think Ethan said informal is often most successful. Anything else, any other through-lines?

Bridget MacIntosh Shifting into more of the funding type of considering.

Mary W. Rowe Let’s talk about money.

Bridget MacIntosh Yeah, definitely. So I think just a through-line as well, is that building relationships is fundamental to placemaking and for it to be successful and for it to be authentic. And building relationships takes time. So in terms of funding mechanisms to support placemaking, as funders, whether that’s municipal, provincial, federal, to really change their concept of time and their focus on when outcomes need to emerge. We need to look at funding models that support these community-led initiatives that really factor in the time that it takes to build relationships, the time that it takes to consult and meet with the community. And along with that, recognizing the labor that goes into building a strong community placemaking initiative, and so, taking into account honorariums and compensating community leaders for their time, just because, you know, it is difficult, we’re in trying times. And along similar, you know, funding discussions, I’m just going to say it loud and proud, like operating costs. So, you know, just separate from just, you know, smaller micro-initiatives, looking at all of the practitioners in the community and how the operating costs that go into supporting those types of initiatives and how it’s not a bad thing. It’s a fact that the operating costs money and to have investment along with that.

Mary W. Rowe So we’ve all got horrible anecdotes about this, where some magnificent investment is made and then there is no budget for operating costs, or also it may be a beautiful space, but no programming, and so it ends up being a beautiful but dead space. Ryan, when you think about the different projects that you’ve supported and that you visit and that you’re aware of, how do we build in what Bridget is referring to here? I think we have to be patient. It can’t be one and done. It’s not fast. What are the tips that you’re observing in terms of that, and also to make the space sustainable so that it doesn’t end up being neglected?

Ryan Smolar Yeah, so we really love like a phase zero approach. So before you even build anything, start building the culture around it so that when there is time to build, you’ve grown into what needs to get built. We often try and build things and then have community form to those things. And even though it was on some wish list, if it wasn’t through an embodied activity over time, you really didn’t build that muscle to deserve that object.

Mary W. Rowe I mean, this is this whole concept of placekeeping that, and I love all these new words that are being added, place-stewardship, placekeeping. And placekeeping is, I think it comes out of the Indigenous community. Jacquelyn, help me on this. I know that you talk about it in the report. Placekeeping, is that part of the ingredient? Ryan’s kind of getting at that, that we can neglect that piece, go with it.

Jacquelyn West Yeah, thank you. I mean, this is part of what we were calling our placekeeping for a new, placemaking for a new generation chapter, where we were really looking at some of these emerging concepts, these emerging ideas and these emerging terms. And when we talk about placekeeping in the context of the of the publication, we’re looking at BIPOC communities at large, but also the role, specifically the role that it’s playing to help indigenize cities, and we had the beautiful pleasure of being able to reprint a very important guide that Evergreen had published, which is called the International Indigenous Design Charter.

Mary W. Rowe I see TJ’s on the chat. TJ, can you post a link to the IIDC, the charter that Evergreen did? I don’t know if it’s still available. We reprinted it. Is it in here? Jacquelyn, is it referenced in here?

Jacquelyn West It is in here with a beautiful forward from the author to introduce the concept. And as well, Madeleine and her work in the U.S. has really been, I think, leading some of the thoughts and new practices. There are some examples through some of the, looking through the Six Domains of Flourishing, especially around how, you know, the practice of placemaking can support cultural, you know, cultural identities and sort of, you know, the countering of gentrification’s effects. And I don’t know, maybe I can even just like pass the mic over to Madeleine if you wanted to share.

Madeleine Spencer I think earlier when Ethan brought up, like placemaking to me, if I was going to use a biological term, and it’s funny because I was just out on an urban agriculture site yesterday, we’re like the mushrooms, the mycelium. If you don’t have mycelium in your soil, it doesn’t matter if you’re rewilding a place and making it, trying to create flourishing again, you can’t actually, it doesn’t work. You have to have the mushrooms that is the connective tissue between these things that make it grow. So what’s interesting to me is like, when Ryan is talking, and it’s not just, I mean, those Indigenous practices and Indigenous psychologies and as well as the way of building, that’s been around way before any of this. And it’s about the stewardship of place and land. And it’s not our deductive reasoning that scientism in America has kind of built up where it’s divided from. So when we’re talking about places, each place is contextual and it has to have this base to have growth, so that what gets built there, it gets accepted because the people themselves are embracing that it’s a natural organic structure, not something brought in from outside and that colonial kind of, you know, imposition and right now, that’s what placemaking does, and it’s a distinctive thing that, over years of planning, we’re saying, look, the community itself has a life, a context and a way of being, and it wants to grow naturally. And it needs to have some leverage to make that happen. And it needs to be listened to, essentially, so that it can happen.

Mary W. Rowe Yay. A thing about this, Madeleine, that I love about placemaking, is it’s tangible. You know, I think so many people that work locally, sometimes they just can’t see progress. You know, oh, I’ve been at it and I’ve been at it. Placemaking actually has something that you can actually touch, feel, experience. I love the tangibility of it. With the time left that we’ve got, you know, as with every movement, now the risk we all have, of course, is that the market’s going to get a hold of it. And suddenly, placemaking is becoming, and we’re hearing from lots and lots of folks in the commercial real estate and development sector who love this. And I think lots of them love it for all the right reasons, because they want to benefit the community that they’re investing in, and they want to be able to see that as part of their competitive advantage when they’re trying to sell a unit. But let’s talk a little bit about how you work with the private sector and with the development community. Who would like to take that on? Tell me a success. Go ahead, Ethan.

Ethan Kent You know, thank you for bringing that up. That’s a big one. And I think actually will be a big topic at the summit. We’re getting tons of emails, great interest from developers, and frankly, the placemaking movement didn’t start with the private sector. It started more from the perspective of advocates and how do we make public spaces more inclusive, and prevent it from being privatized. Though now I think to grow up, to have a bigger impact, we’ve been good at that sort of, the lighter, quicker, cheaper, the tangible impacts. That’s sort of going viral around the world, but it’s not yet really shaping land use. It’s not systemically shaping governance and development. The dominant paradigm of the private sector of development is still place-taking. It’s still taking value, sucking value from the shared public realm. Though, we know there are developers in every part of the world that get, very well, that when you lead with public space, you drive the market. You don’t just follow the market, and you capture some of that value. And those are the projects that really become most loved, become resilient, or become resilient to market downturns. And so we think there’s a virtuous cycle between place and development, that you almost want everyone to co-opt a public space a little bit, if you set it up right. You want everyone competing to contribute to the space. So that will be a big topic. The suburban issues and growth are a big issue. UN Habitat will be a big part of this, because most of cities are not yet built around the world. And how Toronto and Canadian cities deal with growth in the coming years, and deal suburban issues. How do they see development on the terms of local people to attract investment on their terms, to add to their vision for their places? It’s a key opportunity. There’s no one better than Canadians and people in Toronto to figure this out. The leading urbanists have always been there. There’s no more diverse city, no more pluralistic city. So how you all figure this out, with support from people around the world doing pieces of this will be key, and will be a key message of this global summit. Now, one last point is that, so we have developers everywhere, but Mary, you reminded me that you actually got us started on this path with your idea called, you were calling it the “place core”. And so, you know, the Peace Corps, you know, came out of the 60s, we did, you know, a new revolution. And we do need to connect, there are people coming and trying to connect placemaking and peacemaking. People that have done it, there’s people from Palestine coming, there’s people from Northern Ireland that are doing this work. So that’s a big topic, but how we really connect in a very distributed, authentic leaders around the world and show that authentic power of people caring for place. They’re not alone. They’re not isolated. They’re not crazy. That’s what this is all about. We’re all the mycelium. We’re all key nodes in this mycelium and these places and the communities that we represent and are building together, are these nodes of innovation, of creativity, of hope, of authentic power that ultimately will overcome the sort of more top-down, place-taking power that unfortunately no one embodies more than our president right now.

Mary W. Rowe Madeleine, you mentioned about the concept of resilience, and I cut my teeth on all of this just observing and trying to keep my mouth shut, and just learn. In New Orleans for the five years after Katrina, so many people came into New Orleans and started telling them what they should or shouldn’t do. And I was chastened enough, quickly, to just, you know, as they say in common parlance, shut the fuck up and just listen and try to watch what was going on. And the resilience concept, we used it there because it spoke to building a muscle of being adaptive, but it was Tracy Washington, who’s still active, a lawyer, a social justice lawyer in New Orleans, who said resilience is becoming a word like you can just hit us again and we’ll just keep bouncing back. It’s not permission to just keep throwing things at us. So I think that’s the watchful component of this. And in terms of the place core. You know, I think we already have a place core, Ethan. I think this is what this book and the movement that you guys are all catalyzing is about. You’re just connecting the dots and creating more ways for us to have a sense of commonality and affinity with each other. So we are the place core. I’m going to challenge my colleagues at CUI to put into the chat the report that Gail and the Bentway just produced on the social prescription, or the social benefits of placemaking. And then let’s take a few minutes to talk about that. I hate to have to do this, because the cultural sector forever has had to justify investments in them, that it has an economic return. But are we able, do you think, do you think we’ve got the data to build the case? Bridget, do we have the data to show that placemaking generates financial returns? Do we have it?

Bridget MacIntosh I think we do, definitely. I think one of the challenges ahead of us too is the knowledge exchange piece, and, so with the Healthy Communities Initiative, have to champion how that knowledge was shared, the funding and the investments that were made, the outcomes were shared. There were webinars that talked about the projects, what the outcomes were, and it was easily accessible. I know that there are so many municipalities and all the cultural bureaucrats on this call, I see you, I know you’re working hard, I know you’re doing a lot of work on all these strategies, but it has great information. So finding a way to somehow even collect all of that data and all of that information, so it is easily accessible for cultural bureaucrats and policymakers across Canada to be able to pull those reports, pull those staff reports, which are so rich in data, the council presentations, the actual strategy itself, and share that amongst the bureaucrats and the policymakers, who are in positions to influence the policy and influence investments on the government level.

Mary W. Rowe You know, I think one of the things we have to remind ourselves is, whether you’re in an environment where money is being removed from the public sector, or whether you’re in an environment where the public sector is actually flooding and putting more money in, both of those conditions can exist and the interesting thing is that there is money in the system. So the question is, how do we actually make ourselves as flexible as we can be to invest money wisely in infrastructure, because that’s the future. Ryan, something to you, I’m going to go around quickly to everybody for a couple of last words. Ryan to you, then to Jacquelyn, and then I’ll go around the room. Go ahead, Ryan.

Ryan Smolar Yeah, I think it’s important because placemaking is not sort of a defined category, that it really has to be represented in the room, on people’s lips. They have to understand what a placemaking program looks like, that is funded. I think the hidden hero of your report is the program that you guys operated nationally because you got the money into the hands of small scale and medium scale placemaking projects, and that’s just not happening enough where funding, and technical assistance and support are made available to communities, where it can be put into play much more effectively, cost effectively with them leading the cause. So we definitely want to encourage that practice across the land.

Mary W. Rowe Thanks, Ryan, and just hats off to our partners at Community Foundations of Canada, who worked with their chapters and their members across juries and all sorts of processes to get those resources. And the catchword I always use is, we always need to find ways to make money smaller. Because large size governments, and also private sector and pension funds, are accustomed to writing big checks. And in fact, what we need are ways to get money that are in smaller increments that can make an extraordinary. difference to a particular community. Doesn’t always have to be large. Doesn’t always have to have gazillions of zeros. Jacquelyn, Bridget, and then last two, Ethan and Madeleine. Jacquelyn, last words to you.

Jacquelyn West Yeah, well, I just wanted to just touch on your question about the private sector. And I think what we’re seeing now is sort of, as the practice of placemaking gains momentum and people start to understand a little bit more, like, you know, finding out what do people want from their public spaces, and finding this intersection between top-down, large investments and bottom-up community direction. And I think that we’re having a really exciting moment in city-building and development when we are bringing the placemaking perspectives and the placemaking practitioners in earlier in the process. And I just, I really applaud that, and I, you know, we see some large scale city infrastructure projects that are really using these tools, you know, the beautiful new Mabel park, and, you know, again, some of these amazing parks.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, yeah. And as you say, it operates at every scale, so I would encourage people to read the book, but also just look around you. You can see very modest aspects of placemaking and then very ambitious ones, but they’re all equally important. Bridget, then Ethan, and then Madeleine, last word to you. Bridget.

Bridget MacIntosh Really quick, when we talk about the collective, we and us also want to challenge everyone to shake the able-bodied mindset and recognize that both able-bodied and other, disabled, people with disabilities, disabled people, I want to recognize my colleagues, Steps Public Art published a great toolkit, Accessible Art and Placemaking Toolkit. So just to keep that in mind as well, as we approach our placemaking work to really look at all the perspectives and ability in engaging with space.

Ethan Kent So my great hope and energy through this tough winter has really come from being lucky to get to spend half of my day every day talking to Canadians, and reading from this report and looking at examples like this. We need to make a silver lining from these challenges right now. And the increased attention on Canada, the focus on, for better or worse, on local economies and the need to support them. You know, that is an opportunity to really reconnect and reinvent, you know, how places and people building each other up through placemaking can be a solution globally. So how we figure this message together, you know, how we bring in the private sector in new ways, you know, look at government leadership on all levels, but celebrate and support, you know, grassroots leadership. The narrative is coming together, the stories are there, the ideas, we have the expertise locally and globally on this. I’m really excited to work with you all, you know, over the coming months and we’ll gather in person and feel energized and supported together.

Mary W. Rowe We’re going to gather in a place.

Ethan Kent Many great places in Toronto.

Mary W. Rowe Many great places, yes yes. I love that you’ve brought the button back you guys, I have a button, look. Talk about place, can you see it? And I love the fact that you’re making the point that it’s about talk … that talk is proxy. Maybe it isn’t verbal talk, but that we are experiencing something and communicating with one another in a place. Madeleine, last word to you.

Madeleine Spencer I just wanted to say that you mentioned this making money smaller, and one of the beautiful things that I’ve been seeing with our own network is like, Katie has started this placemaking school in Jacksonville, Florida. And one of the things is what she’s been doing, and she’s been doing it ever since she was in Flint, is making these micro loans, which are like about $2500, or more, for people who have these creative ideas in place that they can actually implement in their cities. So you’re getting this grounded approach of people in their cities sharing ideas that they’ve had for years that they want to see enacted. And so it gives this iterative ability to actually start to see how and what the community is asking for. And the other thing is, like a dream thing for me when I just even have these dialogs is, if there’s 500 people who are coming into, from all over the country, I would love to see this kind of like, you remember hero with a thousand faces? That was a book, I would love to see the placemaker with a thousand faces, and the big thing to me is the narrative shift has to happen where, people are seeing, and I feel like it’s such an exciting thing really, because if this mycelium is able to grow in these places and they’re contextually developing in their own cultural formats, in these places, and we’re able to see them. It really gives us this very exciting ability to see something new happening, and we have to share these narratives. So if all the people on this chat were to give a three-page essay about some amazing project in their city and we were able to compile that, we would be able to put together this placemakers with a thousand faces.

Mary W. Rowe There’s the challenge, well we’re almost there, we have almost a thousand. So placemakers with a thousand faces, we leave you with that challenge. So go out today and look at a place, make places better, better places, better lives. Just to say that here at CUI, we are also continuing to monitor the economic impacts of the uncertain times that we’re in. And so watch for a launch next week of Main Street Canada, and also for what we’re calling, affectionately, the tariff tracker, just saying. But what we have to do is just ground ourselves in the reality. The other thing is, in a couple of weeks, you’ll see in the chat, we’re doing another very granular CityTalk on a very practical solution to housing shortages, which is single stair sessions. And listen, I know it sounds a bit wonky, but it’s going to be riveting. Single stair sessions, you heard it here first. Thank you for just bringing some hope and inspiration to us today, gang. Ryan, Madeleine, Jacquelyn, Bridget, Ethan, thanks for this. Thanks for this, for today. And we’ll look forward to seeing you in Toronto, Toronto in June. Thanks everybody.