New Housing Update! | Take The Survey

Have you heard our news? We recently announced a new housing venture that has us extremely excited!

More high quality affordable housing, which means community members less burdened by the housing crisis, which means more opportunities to keep City Heights richly diverse, alive, and thriving. This is how we combat gentrification. This is how we make it possible for people to stay.

As that process moves forward, though, we have time before we can begin construction. So what do we do with that land in the meantime? How do we make sure it isn’t just sitting, going to waste?

An essential part of our work is something called ‘placemaking.’ If you aren’t familiar with the term, here’s how we think about it:

“Placemaking”, when applied with and for a community, is the community-driven process of planning, design, and transformation of public spaces such that local culture and heritage are highlighted and celebrated through arts and creativity. 

Placemaking has always been employed intuitively by local communities worldwide. The recently-coined urban planning practice of placemaking, at its best, emulates the process of local self-determination in how to employ arts and culture to solve social problems. (At its worst, placemaking is a design strategy used by outside interests to make physical enhancements/modifications to a neighborhood primarily for economic gain without concern for, or the participation of, pre-existing communities).

Did you catch that? Placemaking only works when YOU take part. We need your voice. We’re inviting the community of City Heights to speak up and share their ideas about how this space should be used. Eventually, it will be mixed-use affordable housing. What should it be in the meantime?

Share your thoughts with us below!