Placemaking

Placemaking aims to:

• Create vibrant public spaces that enable a variety of uses and attract people from all walks of life.
• Develop a place’s identity and incorporate it into the existing built environment, tying together social, cultural, and economic elements.
• Celebrate previously unidentified or overlooked aspects that give a place its own unique character.
• Empower residents to be a part of the community-building process and help transform and activate public spaces. 
• Enhance existing spaces to promote the health, well-being, and connectedness of the communities they serve. 
• Provide opportunities for better experiences – from large activations to small, everyday encounters.

• Technical assistance to organizations and agencies developing public spaces.
• Community outreach to solicit input on public spaces and placemaking in the County. 
• Evaluation of plans and policies to assess progress toward meeting goals.
• Administering initiatives and programs that implement policies in place.

• ISSUE: What issue can we focus on to improve the community, space, or experience?  
• IMPACT: Who is impacted? How does this affect the experience of the people living here? 
• COLLABORATION: Will the community lead or support the project? How can we give voices to the community?
• INVOLVEMENT: Can this community manage the project on its own? How much technical support will be needed? 

• Community residents 
• Local businesses 
• Other Planning Department sections 
• County Councilmembers 
• State and County agencies 
• Community organizations 

Placemaking is powerful. Projects can range massively in size and scale, and address any number of community desires or problems, with solutions from simple to innovative and experimental. To get the imagination running, examples could include: 

• Festivals celebrating local arts and culture (like our series in partnership with Better Block in Suitland, Riverdale, and Largo). 
• Transforming an abandoned tramline into a crowdfunded outdoor recreational area (Precollinear Park, Turin, Italy). 
• Reimagining Main Streets as more walkable, human-scaled, and easily identified (such as Montgomery Planning’s current Damascus project, jump-started by a Damascus Placemaking Festival). 
• An entire program of unique pop-ups, installations, games, and experiences focused on play (Playable City Sandbox, Bristol, UK). 
• Converting car parking spots into attractive bicycle parking (Seeds for Change, Gurgaon, India). 
• Colorful street wayfinding (like CivicBrand did in Downtown Waco, Texas). 
• Interactive block parties with art, culture, active recreation, food, drinks, and shopping (such as Chicago Loop Alliance’s Sundays on State series). 
• Initiatives that build community in neighborhoods experiencing rapid change (Crossing the Street, Washington, D.C.). 
• Livening up an underutilized laneway into a vibrant play space (Alley Oop, Vancouver, Canada). 
• A swing sculpture for all with wheelchair-accessible swings (Cloud Swing, Hamilton, NJ). 
• A series of urban beaches with riverfront relaxation for locals (Paris Plages, Paris, France). 
• Innovative street furniture that starts conversations (such as the benches at the London Festival of Architecture).

What can you imagine, Prince George’s County?