CITYLABS USA
  • Home
  • REIMAGINING A LIVABLE CITY
  • CITYNOTES
  • ABOUT CITYLABS
    • CITYLAB PEOPLE >
      • BALTIMORE CITYLAB NETWORK
      • 2017 CITYLAB USA TEAM
      • 2017 BALTIMORE TEAM
      • 2014 BALTIMORE TEAM
      • CITYLAB ACADEMIC TEAM
  • DC CITYLAB
  • BALTIMORE CITYLAB
    • HISTORIC JONESTOWN MASTER PLAN
    • CENTRAL CROSSROADS
  • CITYLAB STRATEGIES
  • 21CC
  • GOVEX

                                       
​
CITYNOTES

placemaking: A tale of two cities

8/30/2014

3 Comments

 
Picture
Humans are creatures of place -- as much as we might travel, we can only be in one place at a time, and the quality, look, and feel of a place really matters!  City planners, developers, health professionals, employers, and economists are finding that it's not just our own property that matters to us; public places make a difference in how we feel about living, working, and playing in a city.  The term "placemaking" captures the dynamic sense of active involvement in creating the kinds of places where we love to be.

Whether we think about it or not, all of us are placemakers. In 2006, when the Project for Public Places asked people what they thought about placemaking, they got hundreds responses from all over the world.  IN 2010, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the US Conference of Mayors (USCM), and the American Architectural Association (AIA) launched a creative placemaking initiative as a key strategy for revitalizing American cities.

In the US Capital Cities Metroplex, stretching through Baltimore and Washington DC from Belair to Fredericksburg and Hagerstown to Annapolis and the Eastern Shore, over 10 million  people are placemaking in hundreds of neighborhoods in the fourth largest metro area in the US. In the two anchor cities, Baltimore and The District, placemaking is an active part of the urban livability agenda.

Baltimore

Baltimore's Inner Harbor is a model of placemaking based on natural assets. Led by the Downtown Partnership, Baltimore is launching a plan to create a network of public places linking 125 blocks of Downtown Baltimore. BMORE media features creative placemaking initiatives all over Baltimore.

the District

DC is placemaking at an astonishing pace, with few neighborhoods untouched by  the transformation of public spaces.  Union Kitchen is just one example of how placemaking works to revitalize local economies as well.  CrowdsourceDC features DC triple-bottom-line placemaking initiatives.
Where are your favorite Capital Cities Metroplex neighborhoods? What placemaking initiatives are you involved in? What kind of placemaking initiatives would you like to see in your favorite neighborhoods?
3 Comments

cities and social entrepreneurship

8/29/2014

4 Comments

 
Cities across the country -- and the world -- are booming with social entrepreneurs.  Stretching from the Eastern Seaboard through the Rust Belt and to the Northwest, social innovators and entrepreneurs are changing the face and feel of cities.  

Urban social entrepreneurs share a passion for making their cities better for people -- whether they are techies, artists, or foodies, they want to combine livelihood with livability.

BALTIMORE CITY is a hotbed of social innovation -- Baltimore Social Enterprise, the Social Innovation Lab, Social Innovation Journal, and, of course, CityLab.  Video production libraries for film makers, community gardens for food deserts, maker spaces for inventors, and collaborative kitchens for foodies make Baltimore's eclectic collection of Downtown, Charles Street Corridor, and Harbor Waterfront neighborhoods a mecca for creative, enterprising people. 

One of the coolest new Baltimore social innovations is Section 1, Richard Best's public art park in Station North underneath the Jones Falls Expressway.
Picture
What is social enterprise?
Not everyone is on the same page about social enterprise -- or "social entrepreneurship" and "social innovation" -- there are various terms and definitions for the activities people undertake to create social good.  Some people define social entrepreneurship within the domain of strictly nonprofit philanthropy; others look to for-profit businesses with a social mission as exemplars; others reject narrow definitions.


While many are impatient with the traditional model of philanthropy, others are not so quick to marketize good will and social enterprise.  See the The  Atlantic for a critical look at the for-profit trend in philanthropy in "Is For-Profit the Future of Philanthropy?"

How do you define social enterprise? Social entrepreneurship? Social innovation?
What kind of social enterprise is going on in your neighborhood?

4 Comments

The metro revolution

8/19/2014

2 Comments

 
Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley call the dynamic transformation of cities a "Metro Revolution" that blurs jurisdictional boundaries between cities and suburbs. People and institutions in metro areas share broad economic, environmental, social, and infrastructure networks that define and shape lifestyles and livelihoods. 

Two-thirds of Americans live in one hundred metro areas on twelve percent of our land mass and generate 75% of US GDP. These metro areas are the economic and cultural engines of the US. 

  • Are you a metro person?
  • What does that mean to you?
  • Do you envision a lifetime of metro living?
  • How are you shaping the future of your metro area?



2 Comments

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    November 2016
    April 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014