Making a difference

By: J. David Chapman/April 13, 2017

I recently attended the University of Oklahoma’s Institute of Quality Communities biannual Placemaking Conference.

It was the third time OU has held this conference and I have attended each one. I believe placemaking is a scheme that developers and citizens can use to make a difference in their community. I applaud President and First Lady Boren in their efforts to promote this idea and movement.

This conference is at no cost to participants. This is important because many local governments will not pay for employees to attend these types of conferences. I have noticed that each year has seen an increase in city planners and elected officials from local cities and towns. This increase is no accident, and it is critical. These government employees have seen the efforts of these concerned community leaders, citizens, and developers doing this thing called “placemaking” and are now “drinking the Kool-Aid” and seem to now believe the efforts are worth institutionalizing and the practices worthy of consideration in city planning.

Placemaking, as an activity, strengthens communities by actively engaging and exploring resilience and sustainability. The community is the expert. Those exploring placemaking must first listen to what the community wants and how the community desires to use public space and the built environment. It is up to those of us in the real estate industry to listen and organize the excitement and passion of the citizenry, ensuring they understand what they are currently getting and helping them understand what they want.

The outcomes of good placemaking are inclusive, healthy and sustainable. It starts with multi-use of public space and built environment – mixed use. Our separation of spaces by roads and parking lots must stop. Placemaking is about temporary uses, a temporary-to-permanent strategy. It is not a design process; it is a use process, or the way we use space. If you design your environment for traffic and cars, you are going to get more traffic and cars. If you design for people and pedestrians, you get people in public places. We are starting to see the benefits of the efforts of pioneers in placemaking, like Jill Castilla, Steve Mason, Blair Humphreys, Mickey Clagg and Allison Bailey, with some unlikely areas becoming popular residential, office, retail, and entertainment venues.

J. David Chapman is an associate professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).