Do our schools truly nurture young imaginations? Do they establish tight-knit bonds with communities and with nature? What if our schools were built on the belief that children must be free from fear before anything else can be achieved? Free from the fear of failure, the fear of being themselves? What if the main goal were to help them answer the one central question: What am I going to do with my life?
“One of the critical objectives of current EU policy is to maintain lively rural areas. Rural activators are the only ones able to change these areas' fate. However, the desire to restore the rural areas should lay to all of us since we benefit from it. Rural activators face various socio‑economic pressures that make their work hard to maintain.” Justyna Turek, CEO of HOLIS, looks into a possible future for rural life.
“Places need to be the armature of planning and design. And we can’t just concentrate on filling those places. We must put people first in planning and design instead of building cities that erase all that is meaningful about the places in which they exist and the people who call those places home.” Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader, wonders why new development often treat humans as an inconvenience.
“This essay attempts to debunk a common myth: creating a better world requires hard work. It argues that the most effective way to change our world is through play. Not just any kind of play – profound play. As you are about to discover, the great tragedy in our culture is that we have lost sight of the enormous, creative, transformative power of play. We have trivialized it as something we outgrow as we transition from childhood into adulthood.” David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International.
Open Cities Lab is using code to create social capital and civic engagement. “My one concern was that it was too simple to be useful,” said founder Richard Gevers. “Clearly it wasn’t and clearly this is something people wanted. If you create an enabling environment, people can and will participate.” This is how hundreds of thousands of voters were empowered in the South African 2021 local government elections.
“College campuses are the original “innovation district,” offering a rich density of minds that are concentrated for maximum intake and output of thought. The assumption is always that these minds will meet in serendipitous encounters and campus meeting places. But the reality often falls far short and campuses need to be much more intentional about creating the collision spaces where these interactions can happen.” Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader, lists the many benefits of campus placemaking.
“The mantra during this entire period has been, roughly, ‘build downtown for locals, not tourists. We’ve been pushed out by the tourists for too long.’ The return of locals only seems right, for what is one of America’s very oldest cities with a totally unique and authentic culture.” Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader, has been a driving force in the transformation of downtown San Antonio into a more welcoming place.
PLACED are excited to announce their 2022-23 PLACED Academy. Launched in 2019, PLACED Academy increases participants’ self-esteem, breaks down barriers to professional careers and develops skills. To date, 126 young graduates have benefited from the programme, which has had a positive impact on their lives and shaped their decisions about their future
Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader, invites us to turn our campuses inside out and go find the hidden treasures.
Town Team Movement and PlacemakingX are inviting you to become a placemaker with the launch of Placemaking.Education, a new online learning platform bringing placemaking to all corners of the world.
This article is an attempt to bring out some functional similarities between the two (un)-related fields, Urban Planning & Civil Aviation. The writing is based on the understanding and experience of an urban planner turned commercial pilot trying to connect the dots to bring out the best of both industries. You might think that the two fields have nothing in common with one being an insignificant part of other, however both fields have a lot of linkages and practices to learn and adopt.
“When it comes to local government, there are some really big elephants in the room which no one is willing to name or discuss. We tip-toe around them, and pretend they don’t exist because we really want to believe that local government is “democracy at work at the community level” and we turn a blind eye to any evidence to the contrary.” David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International, has a first-hand experience with the flaws of local government. In this article, he suggests seven nudges to make communities work better.
“There are five myths underpinning the concept of Community Consultation. Each one is a fatal flaw. The words “community consultation” or even “community engagement” have come to embody the five myths so strongly, in my opinion, they are irredeemable.” David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International, suggest a new term and a completely different approach.
Tightness of feedbacks refers to how quickly and strongly the consequences of a change in one part of the system are felt and responded to in other parts. The closer to home we experience the consequences of our choices, the more mindful we will become in our actions.
”For the first time in human history, people are systematically building meaningless places” – as written by professor of sociology, E. V. Walter, in 1988. Is it still true?
This is an invitation to a personal challenge. The first question is: What do you most deeply, most profoundly, love in this world?
What if we started building without drawings? What if the construction of big projects was built on the imagination and storytelling of the building owner and the interpretation and capacity of the craftsmen?
If we were aware of the true cost, value, and (possible) beauty of the stuff we buy, would our towns, cities, and world look any different?
