In 2016 Transportation for America released The Scenic Route: Getting Started with Creative Placemaking and Transportation, an interactive guide for transportation planners, public works agencies, and local elected officials who are on the front lines of advancing transportation projects. I came on board at Smart Growth America in 2016, and soon after we launched a webinar series covering the role artists and designers can play in improving the visioning process, along with the ways city agencies are benefiting artist-in-residence programs. More recently, we welcomed our new arts & culture associate, Mallory Nezam, who brings her background in cultural organizing, digital marketing, and theater to our creative placemaking initiative.
We’re doing a lot more than producing valuable resources at this point, though, and we’re expanding our work to helping diverse communities across the country learn how this approach can reap tangible benefits.
In December 2016, a team of us from Smart Growth America traveled to Zanesville, OH to deliver a technical assistance workshop. I was there to explain how creative placemaking and leveraging the town’s burgeoning artist community could help attract new businesses and residents to the disinvested downtown, boosting the economy in a way that would also honor and elevate the city’s history and culture.
Zanesville was once a thriving economic center for manufacturing and logistics, but has undergone the loss of nearly half of its residents since the 1950’s. The community has been working to bring investment back to its downtown by transforming its burgeoning arts scene into an established community and tourist attraction. I shared with Zanesville’s leaders an array of creative placemaking strategies to build on the town’s artistic energy, including artist attraction programs, renovation loans, façade grants, layered tax incentives, small business and artist support programs, and festivals and events to employ artists and build social cohesion. Workshop attendees came away with lessons from successful case studies of similarly sized communities such as Paducah, KY and Cumberland, MD.