Category: Place Leadership Project Collaborations

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Place Leadership Project Spring Workshop

Placemaking:  Creating catalytic campaigns to deliver local and global outcomes

An Interactive Forum of the Place Leadership Project 

On May 13th, the Georgetown Place Leadership Project hosted a workshop for place managers across the region. Included in the agenda was an engaging and insightful presentation by the Social Life Project’s own and placemaking pioneer Fred Kent on “The 11 Transformative Agendas to Restore Social Life.” The presentation and collaborative discussion generated thoughtful insights on place-based innovation and strategies that were created as a result of the pandemic.

“Place” has become a strategic organizing principle for stakeholders to plan, develop, invest, curate and empower communities in cities.  Place is leveraged as the common catalyst for groups of stakeholders to align their interdisciplinary efforts to strengthen economies, enhance quality of life, and create socially inclusive communities. 

The workshop convened our regional network of over 50 place management organizations together with our new partner, the Placemaking Fund’s Social Life Project.  This interactive session explored global innovations in placemaking strategies catalyzed by the pandemic and sought to establish a new framework for place-based innovation across the Washington, DC metropolitan region.  The first of many future workshops, it was an incredible convening of ideas and place managers from across the region to discuss themes emerging in a post-COVID world.

Uwe Brandes introducing the workshop and giving an update on the Place Leadership Project’s current state of affairs
Participants engaging in discussion about their communities following Fred Kent’s presentation
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Emerging Partnership With the Social Life Project

A Partnership to Explore Research, Knowledge Management and Global/Local Networks as a Force for Community and Global Change

The Georgetown Place Leadership Project has built a metropolitan-wide network of over 50 place management organizations, which includes business improvement districts, main street programs, government campuses, public-private urban development districts and anchor institution districts.  It represents one of the most innovative and thriving communities of practice advancing the professionalization of placemaking in the world. 

A community-based participatory research project dedicated to advancing the global practice of placemaking, place leadership, and place management across a community of decision-makers in Washington, DC, the Place Leadership Project has partnered with the Social Life Project to engage local professionals, community leaders, and other involved stakeholders to identify key areas of research, broaden adaptation, share lessons learned, and promote a network of leaders in the field advocating for placemaking. 

Working together, we seek to impact our ultimate goal of a healthy, sustainable, and resilient planet. The next logical stage in this evolution is to launch city-level or regional campaigns and catalytic projects framed by the 11 Transformative Agendas and strategically connected with other global networks and movements. As we emerge from the global pandemic, during which time public spaces have taken on new importance, it is important to view placemaking as a catalyst for change in cities. Previous work and research done by the Social Life Project will be essential to helping this partnership elevate placemaking to a larger global audience. 

“The city is not created by top-down planning, but by people walking the sidewalks; people walking the city into existence.  The stories they tell, the encounters they have on the street corner, and the memories they share literally become the city.“

– Philip Sheldrake, Author, The Spiritual City

The Place Leadership Project of the Georgetown Global Cities Initiative and the Social Life Project seek to leverage their global and local networks to advance a new generation of research, knowledge management and knowledge sharing in the service of advancing urban place management and community-based placemaking.  By leveraging our respective resources, we seek to advance professional practices in the national capital region, across communities in the United States and in rapidly urbanizing cities around the world.  While the ideas and theory of urban placemaking are now 50-years old; the levels of unprecedented global urbanization make this a critical time to advance the profession of urban place management as a primary component of the global sustainability movement. 

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