Blighted Spaces to Vibrant Communities
According to the Kresge Foundation, the Brookland-Edgewood case has succeeded in protecting cultural identity, bridging social differences, and elevating the voices residents. Dance Place, one of the main cultural leaders in the neighborhood, was able to create cross sector partnerships with local businesses, local government agencies, and developers to engage in deliberate Creative Placemaking processes. Today, Dance Place draws over 50,000 annual visitors to the area through their dance and performance programs (Arts.gov).
Even today, residents take advantage of their neighborhood’s creative processes, such as the performances and classes given at Dance Place. Creative Placemaking allowed residents to directly engage with their communities and change the environments that shape not only their everyday interactions but also their futures. When applied to Mill’s sociological imagination, Creative Placemaking provides an actionable framework in which people can influence their environments and take control of their own outcomes to some extent. Because environment and physical place are crucial indicators in individuals’ levels of fulfillment, well-being, and futures, the element of control is a powerful tool in shaping communities.
In the TEDxCoeurdAlene talk “Creative Placemaking,” Blair Williams argues that this type of Placemaking is typically applied to blighted spaces in which people do not want to visit, go to, or use. Carla Perlo, Founder and Artistic Director at Dance Place, describes that there were no notable public spaces in the Brookland-Edgewood neighborhood prior to the establishment of Dance Place on 8th Street. Brookland-Edgewood fits Williams’s definition of blighted spaces. Through Creative Placemaking, Dance Place and other cross-sector actors were able to take non-distinctive elements of the neighborhood and turn it into landmarks which represented the creative community of the Brookland-Edgewood residents. In fact, Dance Place’s permanent home on Brookland-Edgewood’s 8th Street was transformed from an abandoned warehouse in 1986 to the community center that it is today. Jacobs wrote, “Centers of use grow up in lively, diverse districts, just as centers of use occur on a smaller scale in parks, and such centers count especially in district identification if they contain also a landmark that comes to stand for the place symbolically and, in a way, for the district” (130). Dance Place is a symbol for the vibrant, creative community within the Brookland-Edgewood neighborhood. It became a place with mixed uses, a characteristic Jacobs argued great cities must have, by falling back on the creativity of the community.
The Community Benefits, for Now
Placemaking allows the members of the community re-imagine places they live and work in, analyzing the “physical, cultural, and social identities” that define them and can thus change them for the better. Creative Placemaking sits near, but not at, the top of Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation. The members of the Brookland-Edgewood had access to cultural and social identities through the spaces that were made available to them. The citizens themselves are one of the four main players in the cross-sector partnership. They interacted directly with Dance Place, local government agencies, and developers to advance creative processes that they could access and interact with without being displaced. The DCOP and Bozzuto Development had control over the funds used for Creative Placemaking projects, with community members being able to collaborate and give input. The community members’ participation does not fit into the top rung of Arnstein’s ladder, citizen control, because they did not have direct control over the funds used for such projects. They were still in a place of citizen power through partnership. Dance Place served as a mediator which eased vertical tensions between the real-life concerns of community members and the visions of the planning and development sectors. Brookland-Edgewood had action plans constrained by a budget given to them, similar to the neighborhoods part of the program. In their case, the DCOP were willing to allocate funds to be used specifically for the benefit of the current residents of the neighborhood. The funds provided to Dance Place allowed them to create inclusive dance classes and public events, even for those who could not afford them.
Creative Placemaking was used to combat gentrification by considering the needs of both the people in the community and developers. Samuel Stein wrote that private investors used public improvements to draw wealthier people into the neighborhood, ultimately leading to the displacement of the very residents who were to benefit from said improvements. Through Creative Placemaking as a community advocacy framework, public improvements within Brookland-Edgewood were used to keep residents in rather than drive them out. The Kresge Foundation cautions, however, that while the stakeholders in the Creative Placemaking process have and still are engaging in respectful dialogue, the horizontal tensions between culture-based and economic-based values cannot be completely eradicated (The Kresge Foundation, “Creative Placemaking Case Study: Brookland-Edgewood” 13). Especially with the increase in visitors in response to creative changes in the community, there may be unintended socioeconomic impacts in the neighborhood, as Creative Placemaking is still a relatively new, deliberative process.
Outcomes of Participation
The Brookland-Edgewood case also embodies Saxena’s idea of people’s participation, as citizens directly tailored developments for their community’s own needs. This mobilization in turn led to the strengthening of local organizations and the development of the local economy. Two central questions Saxena poses in “What is Meant by People’s Participation” are “Why participate?” and “Who participates?” (32). He argues that there is limited knowledge about the costs and benefits of participation, yet people are more likely to participate when benefits outweigh their costs (Saxena 32). Cornwall and Coelho echo Saxena, writing that the community members must first recognize themselves as citizens capable of change before meaningful participation.
There is a clear juxtaposition between the need for individuals to understand the costs and benefits of participation and the resources they have to make informed decisions on changes that directly affect them. In the Brookland-Edgewood case, there was no indication that the community was informed of the changes that would be made to their community before the three other stakeholders—Dance Place, DCOP, and Bozzuto Development, Inc.—proceeded with new cultural additions. Although these cultural additions, which included a community dance center and low-income housing for artists, were beneficial and made available to the existing neighborhood residents, it is unclear that they had any say in whether the additions should be made; rather, they participated by recommending what activities they would like to see within the already established public spaces. For instance, Dance Place founder Carla Perlo attended many community meetings and asked local residents and businesses what they would like to see in their programming. There was never any guarantee that the residents’ concerns would be reflected in these public spaces and programs. This concern coincides with Saxena’s second question: “Who participates?” He argued that all people should participate, but only those who attended the meetings or were asked for their opinions participated in the Dance Place projects.
Effective Citizen Participation Through Institutions and People
The relationship between institutions and people is a central deciding factor for the success of participatory local governance. Brookland-Edgewood is a neighborhood with a high rate of poverty. Gaventa argues that poor people distrust the government due to unresponsiveness and lack of connection between the state and its citizens (254). The government is unresponsive to the needs of poor people. In the Brookland-Edgewood case, the DCOP set aside funds for creative placemaking processes and held community meetings for residents to voice their concerns and how they would like the money to be used. The community members were given a seat at the table through a partnership three other main stakeholders: the local government, nonprofit organization, and a private developer.
Gaventa’s second proposition concerns methods deepening democratic governance. Effective citizen participation must include strengthening poor people’s voices in addition to strengthening the accountability and responsiveness of institutions to these voices. A two-way commitment is required between the state and the citizens, and DCOP took the first step towards deepening democratic governance by facilitating input-gathering sessions which first started in 2008 for the Brookland/CUA Metro Station Small Area Plan and later to include an arts and culture element, specifically Creative Placemaking, into the DC Comprehensive Plan in 2011 (The Kresge Foundation 4, “Creative Placemaking in Brookland-Edgewood).