Organic Placemaking
Sorting through facts and feelings about the practice of placemaking. Reflections on the Creative Placemaking Summit in Atlanta, GA. 2024.
Placemaking is the responsibility of artists who tell the stories of a place, chefs who guard generational recipes, medicine makers with land literacy, musicians, orators, writers, educators and laborers.
These are the people who organically make a place what it is. These are the keepers of a place whose practices and perspectives are often audaciously bypassed when large scale placemaking initiatives come knocking.
About a year ago, I received a scholarship to attend the Creative Placemaking Summit in Atlanta, GA. A gathering of designers, architects, artists, city planners and developers, the four day conference ignited a fire in me that quietly crackles, still. Every time I sat down to work on this essay, I got frustrated, angry even. I left the essay and came back and left and came back for nearly a year, finally realizing I couldn’t finish because the term creative placemaking gives me the heebie jeebies. It makes me uncomfortable. It’s a gentrified way to describe what indigenous and diasporic peoples have been doing for generations. We do it because our life depends on it. Placemaking, for us, is an instinctual urge to transform our surroundings so they reflect cultural identity and accommodate familial needs. I’ll call it organic placemaking, for the sake of this writing, and to distinguish between what we do as culture keepers and what is formally referred to as placemaking.
The organic approach to placemaking is led by the people who occupy a place, powered by resources available within a community. Conversely, the institutional approach is a collaboration between government entities, real estate developers, urban planners and property owners. It typically involves bulldozing and new construction in an effort to make a space more desirable and accommodating. Those funding these initiatives may not live in the spaces they transform and may not feel the direct effects of the change they institute, and yet, they hold decision making power.
Anybody who lives in or has visited Atlanta knows of the Beltline. Less people know it started out as Ryan Gravel’s master’s thesis statement, in which he proposed repurposing the city’s ancient railway into a futuristic transit system that makes the city more accessible. What started as a grassroots movement centered around equity and public transit has become “most comprehensive revitalization effort ever undertaken” in Atlanta.” Ryan was the keynote speaker at the creative placemaking conference. Instead of using his speech to big up his life’s work, he critiqued it, very plainly pointing out its flaws.
Public transit was the central component of the original plan for the Atlanta Beltline. The light rail system was to be accented by green spaces, affordable housing and a miles long walking trail that connects neighborhoods throughout the city. The walking trail was implemented first since it was cheaper to produce. Property value subsequently shot up and wealthy people began feeling entitled to the space. Some are even protesting Beltline transit. Ironically, Ryan’s dream was partly fueled by the mid-century interstate implementation and subsequent economic growth that Ryan’s father directly benefited from, while working-class and nonwhite families were physically and fiscally shut out. In an attempt to bring balance to the space, more division was created.
I fell into several rabbit holes following the conference and learned Ryan eventually stepped down from the board, officially handing his creation off to the organizations that were put in place to manage it. What I walked away with is that, despite the Beltline’s fiscal and social value, it’s a failure in the sense that it did the exact opposite of what it set out to do - create equity for all people in Atlanta. Ryan says it’s not broken, it’s just not finished, but in the same blog post admits to wondering if after 20 years of trying to, at the very least, break ground on the transit plan, “we’ve squandered our window of opportunity.”
Boy in Buttermilk Bottom, 1964. Photo via crmvet.org
Meanwhile, on the same land where the historically black Buttermilk Bottoms once existed, The Stitch is quietly becoming the next Atlanta Beltline.
It’s a massive development project that caps a portion of the interstate so a park can be built on top of it. The main selling point is reconnecting downtown Atlanta with historically black residential spaces that were severed from the city center in the 60s when the Downtown Connector was constructed. In theory it’s an altruistic act that attempts to “correct a historic wrong,” as Senator Warnock says.. Many are enthused by it, hopeful even. I toured the site during the placemaking conference and left feeling unsettled.
Affordable housing is at the top of the Stitch’s list of benefits, yet none of the funds are earmarked for it. The half billion they’ve already secured has been committed to the construction of the park. The Stitch’s entire affordable housing initiative is dependent on funding that does not yet exist. All while the proposed solution for righting “historic wrongs” is to build a billion dollar park.
Leaders of placemaking initiatives should live in and use the amenities of the place in question. The Walker & Peters Project is an independent, artist-led development plan consisting of art galleries, studio spaces and retail shops. Led by Miya Bailey, an artist who lives and works in the neighborhood, the project uses art sales to fund the rehabilitation of abandoned buildings in the historic arts district of Castleberry Hill. Collectors who buy art from these spaces know they invest in not just the artist they buy from, but in a movement that propels the path to prosperity for countless creatives and business owners. In the same amount of time that the Beltline has been alive, the Walker & Peters Project has grown from one tattoo gallery to five multi-use art spaces that are activated weekly with artist development programs, education initiatives and fellowship. I have personally built up my art resume in the rehabbed spaces of the Walker & Peters Project.
Granted, anything artist-led is likely off-kilter and perhaps at times, unhinged. We are the governors of our own spaces, which means we need systems in place that uphold standard, enforce code of conduct and resolve conflict. That’s a rocky endeavor that’s plagued with setbacks, but the movement is too important to let up.
The Flourish Alabama is an art centered non profit that, similar to the Beltline, started as a college thesis. Co-founder Jahman Hill presented at the conference and was easily the most passionate speaker I heard. Their mission to “create a cultural shift that gives way to infrastructural change,” tied a bow on everything I learned during the placemaking summit. That statement plainly lays out why projects like the Beltline and the Stitch are flawed. Institutional placemaking prioritizes infrastructure. Organic placemaking prioritizes people. How can you build what people need if you spent no time pouring into them?
An effective blend of both organic and institutional approaches comes together with Heart of the Arts, a program within the Midtown Alliance. Instead of new construction, they look to elevate what already exists in a place.
They partner with institutions and property owners to re-purpose underutilized space, creating artist studios in midtown Atlanta. I toured 4 of their studios during the placemaking summit, each with a different style, different amenities, some more polished, some more rugged. Kelly Taylor Mitchell’s practice involves labor intensive making, which complemented the industrialized studio she was assigned. Principle art advisor Neda Abghari emphasizes the program’s desire to thoroughly understand what their artists need and pair them with spaces that enhance their practices. An Arts & Culture architect, Neda has spent time in education, non-profit and real estate, and is herself an artist. She’s a bridge between the creative mind and the money-minded (not that the two are mutually exclusive).
The word place describes a singular thing made of many parts. All must be considered when “placemaking.” What we do, I prefer to call placekeeping. We give thanks to the Creator for making this place and trusting us with it. We are the keepers of this place. We must take care of our space. We must take pride in it. We must clean up our land. We must tend to her needs. Learn her language and rhythms. Touch her dirt. Pour life into her soil with seed, song, libation, admiration. Love her people.
Retell the stories of those who walked the land before us. Be the witness of trees slain in the name of driveways and parking lots and dollar bills. Remember the trees as they remember their home. Remember their scent.