Public spaces planner Andrew Howard explains what makes a “successful place” and how communities can (and sometimes should) implement placemaking projects despite the COVID-19 pandemic

PHOTO COURTESY TEAM BETTER BLOCK
Andrew Howard spray-painting a crosswalk for a demonstration placemaking project.
What makes a community distinctive? What makes a location a destination? How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed public places?
AARP AND TEAM BETTER BLOCK
This tool kit is also a recipe book with step-by-step instructions and supply lists for several placemaking projects.
Order or download The Pop-Up Placemaking Tool Kit, a free information- and photo-filled publication by AARP Livable Communities and Team Better Block.
“Placemaking” — sometimes referred to as “Placekeeping”— refers to the planning and implementation work that makes a location a place where people want to be and spend time in.
Placemaking results in places that distinguish a community or destination as being unique or attractive. Placemaking also involves making a location safe, walkable and, often, thriving and economically successful.
Andrew Howard, founder of Team Better Block (a design firm) and director of placemaking at WGI (a public infrastructure and real estate development firm) answers questions and explains the in’s and out’s of placemaking — both during the pandemic and in “normal” times.
Howard is a pioneer of “pop-up demonstrations,” a process of temporarily re-engineering auto-dominated, blighted or underused urban areas to show how they can become vibrant destinations. Working in more than 150 communities around the world, the “pop-up” methodology (also called “tactical urbanism”) is transforming urban planning, community outreach and public space design.

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