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  1. Chattanooga STAND: Placemaking in Our Community Tuesday, October 04, 2011

    Last year, the National Endowment for the Arts published a paper on creative placemaking, saying, “Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired.” The paper presents several creative placemaking examples in different types of American cities, providing their methods toward success and the challenges each encountered in creating an artistic place. But placemaking can take many different forms. For instance, this past week, Chattanooga STAND served as a platform for two placemaking events.

    First, on Wednesday September 28, Stand and CreateHere hosted Jennifer Pahlka at City Share: Code for America. And then on Saturday, Chattanooga STAND brought together Chattanoogans to rebuild the Roy Nelms Park in St. Elmo after its gazebo was destroyed in the spring storms. These events were inspiring in their messages and in that they provided opportunities for different parts of our community to come together and work toward challenges in our community.

    Jennifer Pahlka is the cofounder of Code for America, which joins young programmers with governments to develop projects that make government more efficient and engaging. As she spoke via skype to a room-capacity crowd, she presented several innovative apps developed by programmers for Code for America, such as an app that allows community members to Adopt a Hydrant in order to assist fire departments by digging out fire hydrants after snow storms and an app called Reroute.it that offers transportation choices to commuters, hoping that they’ll choose a more eco-friendly route or method of transportation once they can see the efficient route for several different modes of transportation. If you missed City Share: Code for America, you can watch it here.

    Chattanooga-architect David Barlew recently blogged about the lecture:

    Listening to Pahlka describe the different apps, it becomes clear that Code for America has been very successful in developing innovative ways to solve a wide variety of problems ranging from the serious (life-safety concerns) to the cultural (public art). “Experimentation is critical to success,” she explains. She goes on to note that one must not only encourage experimentation but also have a tolerance of failure if one hopes to be successful in innovation. She explained how a strictly linear design process fails to produce the kind of creative solutions necessary to tackle most problems. This notion is familiar to architects, who frequently employ a circular design process in developing design solutions. Design rarely goes from start to finish along an unobstructed, smooth continuum. Instead, various approaches are applied to the problem until an effective solution is reached. On a building project, this process takes place regardless of the size or scope of the assignment as issues of life-safety, cost, materials and assemblies must always be addressed. Pahlka later continued this line of thinking, saying that citizens have a role in allowing government to experiment.

    Pahlka has created an innovative model for community members to participate with their government in bettering their communities and making them smarter. When people gathered at CreateHere for City Share, they too became a part of placemaking, listening and sharing ideas that are specific to Chattanooga, and with trial and development will eventually make our city greater.

    And when several hundred people gathered throughout the day Saturday to take part in rebuilding the Roy Nelms park, they participated in a different form of placemaking, but were equally as effective, transforming the space, making it more inviting and more useful. As Chattanooga’s Director of Parks Bob Sayles told Nooga.com, “The park will be much better than it was. That can be the beauty of a tragedy that sometimes brings people together and this is one example of how that works. These are very special citizens working to put all this back together.”


    For more photographs from the day, click here.

    Frankie Pope, daughter-in-law, of Roy Nelms wrote, “Roy would be so proud of what all joined together to rebuild the park. I think he would have been so pleased to see, not only young workers, but all of the children that are growing in St. Elmo.”


    The all-day event began with a story in the Times Free Press reported. Then as community members joined with Partners of the Project: Osteen Construction, City of Chattanooga Parks and Rec, St. Elmo Neighborhood Association, Chattanooga STAND, and The Grounds Guys, and Sponsors of the Project: Nooga.com, Strauss Company, Ivy Academy, Bi- Lo, Pasha, Blaire Foster,  Niedlovs, New Binkley Brothers, TN Hustlers, Gerle Haggard, The Barn Nursey, Deep Roots Landscaping, The Tool Barn, Suntrust, Coke, Brooks, Moore, & Associates, the day quickly progressed to raising a new gazebo, landscaping the park, and installing new park benches, a picnic table, a bird bath, and a bike rack. The event also featured local musicians, food, yoga, and activities for children.

    What began as a challenge identified by Andrew Kean at an emerging leaders group roundtable hosted by Chattanooga STAND, led to conversations with the city parks and rec and with the St. Elmo’s Neighborhood Association and with local businesses and residents. STAND was active in linking thoughtful leaders together to make this project a success, but it can easily be replicated for another project with a different need.

    In both instances of placemaking this past week, Chattanoogans reached out to learn from each other and take small steps to improve our community, and this provides great hope.

    Opportunities for Placemaking Next Week

    Next Wednesday, October 12th, Chattanooga STAND plans to kickoff Open Chattanooga (#openCHA) between 5:30-7:30 with pizza and beer at CreateHere. Please share your ideas, resources, and thoughts here prior to the event, so Chattanooga STAND can identify overlapping ideas and government needs in order to build teams ready to create new solutions at the event.

    Chattanooga STAND hopes to see these teams segue into the ‘social innovation’ track of 48hour Launch and share their ideas at the pre-event pitch night on Novemeber 3rd from 6pm-9pm. As mentioned at City Share, Chattanooga STAND is sponsoring the social innovation track this year and excited to put forth $2,500 to the winner, and encourages those interested to utilize the STAND data/results for idea generation.

    For more information, please visit the Chattanooga STAND website.

    Posted by Dave Walker