Inclusive Placemaking: Empowering Grassroot Visions Through Community-led Design

Course Details

The course offers planners a comprehensive look into methods employed on two distinct scales: the overarching city-level strategy with the Neighborhoods Now Initiative and the specific, granular approach for the Chinatown Night Market. At the city level, the collective expertise harnessed offers insights into effective organizing across neighborhoods impacted the most by the pandemic. Zooming into Chinatown, the session sheds light on the intricacies of localized community planning and its profound impacts.

The course will spotlight different strategies used during the design process for the Chinatown Night Market, including digital collaboration tools like Miro Board. With a focus on capacity building, these tools empowered community partners with skills to independently shape their urban spaces, from public programming to acquiring necessary permits. The Chinatown Night Market shows that temporary activations can lead to permanent change. The data collected during the event provides a comprehensive ethnographic analysis of the relationship between human behavior and activation strategies throughout the event. With 9000 people in attendance, a majority have reported having visited local businesses.

Through this presentation, attendees will gain practical methods and tools, providing insight from organizing Neighborhoods Now's city-wide pandemic recovery strategy paired with responding to the unique needs of individual communities.

Learning Outcomes

• Establish interdisciplinary partnerships to amplify community-led recovery and public space revitalization.
• Apply capacity-building and co-design methodologies to empower voices in the community to shape their urban spaces.
• Identify place-based strategies to activate underutilized public spaces that respond to the needs of the community.