placemaker

Working for resilient communities. Managing Principal PlaceMakers.com. Urbanist, Engineer, Mom, Runner, Walker, Biker, Cook, Gardener, Blogger, Connecter

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Pandemic Toolkit: Actions for rebuilding health and opportunity

In the seven months since I blogged last, many of us have turned our attention to cataloguing and collecting planning practices of how cities, towns and suburbs are responding to COVID-19 in an att...

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This is Part II of a two-parter on community engagement strategies in a new era. Part I is here. This conversation is the third in our series addressing planning challenges for local governments in...

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Code Score

Super excited to launch www.CodeScore.org, a compendium of benefits of walkable urban places. http://www.placemakers.com/2019/10/01/code-score-a-new-aid/ 

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Code Hackathon: What can go wrong with form-based codes?

We often talk about how places can hack their zoning code to enable livability. The Project for Code Reform is taking this idea to the next level, helping cities look for the lowest hanging fruit o...

For fellow code nerds, see you in Louisville in June?

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In the weeks before the Congress for the New Urbanism conference in Savannah, GA, May 15-19, we’re presenting interviews with experts contributing to a day-long exploration of “Affordability: The I...

Ben Brown continues his weekly blog series in lead-up to the day-long exploration at CNU Savannah, “Affordability: The Intersection of Everything.”

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In 2001, a new book came out with my name (and those of two colleagues) on the cover. It was a book of case studies of smart-growth alternatives to suburban sprawl, divided into three categories: ...

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Plotting a Persuasive Story? Better have a happily ever after

On my PlaceMakers business card, my job title is “Storyteller.” I figured a graduate degree in English and a two-decade career in journalism gave me a certain amount of credibility in that departme...

Ben Brown shares essential cliff notes to placemaking storytellers everywhere.

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PlaceMaking@Work

Participate live or get content now, on-demand, from our growing library of tutorials. Whether you're a community leader, municipal staff person, developer or citizen advocate, the PlaceMaking@Work...

PlaceMaking@Work webinars are free this week, to provide a little food for thought for those of us who are not attending the FBCI Forum or Placemaking Week -- these two conferences are all about this webinar education series.

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Civic Space: Creating Community

Public space, or as many urbanists refer to it, civic space, sets the stage for community building. The study of how we use public space has been refined by Jan Gehl over the last thirty years, sin...

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Those of us who spent extended time in coastal Mississippi and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 are watching the weather and reading the news with a serious case of Groundhog Day. It’s res...

Small steps may make us more resilient than politically-challenging paradigm shifts.

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Land Use: Preserving the rural landscape with agrarian urbanism

As the harvest starts to come in here in Manitoba and conversations with my farming friends point to a good yield, I’ve been thinking about how to preserve these lands. Rural communities are often ...

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They may not be new but I was recently introduced to a series of comics by English artist Grayson Perry taking on the world of creative arts, particularly one entitled “Gentrification.” The tale is...

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Frustrated with efforts to pull your little kingdom together for long term strategizing? It could be worse. You could be caught up in the public outreach drama in Westeros. The battles renew on Sun...

Game of Thrones provides way more sex, blood and dragons than your typical comp planning project but the dynamics can be instructive, particularly in places where demand for the high-quality amenities of urbanism outraces the supply.

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Downtown Winnipeg Minecraft Lounge

Last summer in Winnipeg, me, my mother, a couple of my friends, and the Downtown Winnipeg BIZ put together a Minecraft lounge. Now some of you have probably already read a blog last year that my mo...

Want to engage kids in your summer city planning projects? My son and his "digital native" friends give some pointers on how to host a Minecraft lounge in your downtown.

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The Other Side of Anxiety? Realism. And maybe hope.

When the dust settles after the current traumas, I think we’ll see this time in our lives and in our nation’s history as a period in which what we’ve learned about human psychology, democracy and p...

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Beuvron-en-Auge: 15th century town planning stands the test of time

Every month or so, we add to our collection of lessons from livable places. These are the neighbourhoods where walking the streets and looking carefully at the urban forms provide insights into wha...

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Chuck Marohn was in my town last week with his better-than-ever demonstration of the lies we tell ourselves about infrastructure finance. Chuck’s message and that of Joe Minicozzi prod us to get ou...

Ben Brown helps us come clean on the lies we tell ourselves.