Neighborhood Renewal

Book Review: "You are Here"
by Jonah Lehrer (New York Times)

A review of Colin Ellard's study of how Americans have lost their sense of place.

Re-inventing the Well: Considering Design for Healthy Neighborhoods
by Kristin Vander Giessen-Reitsma (Catapult, November 2004)

Leading from the Ground Up: How Civic Institutions Can Play a Pivotal Role in Improving Communities
From Making Places, November 2007.
(Interview with Robert McNulty, President of Partners for Liveble Communities, and Fred Kent, President of Project for Public Spaces.)

McNulty addresses how "the power of place" and "the power of culture" can be harnessed to spark a community renaissance: "Traditional institutions such as libraries, churches, universities, community colleges, museums, zoos, aquariums, botanic gardens and arts and humanities agencies ... can become 'Fulcrums of Change' in providing leadership to address the next generation of civic problems."

"No community institution can be the same anymore," says Kent. "They have to become conveners, providing a place to bring people together. The library, the museum, any public institution should become the central square of that community. And not just with the building itself but with all that's around it. The inside must be woven into the outside. (Click here to read the full article.)