Enjoy trifecta of placemaking pieces, curated just for you!
Laser Focused — San Francisco is turning the city into a giant nightlight, shooting 49 beams of light into the sky above Civic Center Plaza through July 4th to welcome World Cup fans, Pride revelers, and anyone else who enjoys a good sky laser show. Pew, pew, pew!
Praxis What You Preach — a quick round of applause, please, for our partners at Praxis Placemaking Studio in celebrating their first anniversary with an enthralling array of placemaking projects in year one! Kudos, congrats and best wishes for what comes next!
Watery Wonders — Philly’s Schuylkill River just got a very bold new neighbor. Meet FloatLab — a bright yellow 75-foot-wide floating platform at Bartram’s Garden is America’s first tide-responsive public space, ready to bob along with the river while hosting kayakers, artists and anyone who’s ever wanted to hang out on a giant yellow floating donut. Yo, Adrian!
Photo credit: Praxis Placemaking Studio
Trekkies and Trumpers may have you believe that “resistance is futile”, however we’ve seen the pendulum swing time and again — and when societies feel overwhelming political pressure — activists and artists often unite in response to oppressive regimes. Look no further than the USA, today, fam — because the pushback and social narratives are flipping to fight the good fight. With multiple signs of resistance bubbling up, public art and placemaking tactics and strategies are surfacing in the pushback against our current administration’s actions, means and motives.
Cases in point, from coast-to-coast we’re seeing public art deployed to make subversive statements about the current administration, and very pointed accusations and overtures to the prez himself. As ART News reports, an L.A.-based arts collective is going viral for using the city’s infrastructure as a canvas for calls-to-action in very creative ways; projecting statement art on buildings all over the Los Angeles area. In our nation’s capitol, the anti-establishment artworks have adopted even more of an accusatory stance, with The New Republic reporting that D.C.’s sidewalks and buildings are lighting up in advance of the nation’s 250th anniversary … and gurl, the messages aren’t celebratory!
At the Kennedy Center, a two-minute video was projected showing a mugshot of Epstein with the words “No one bends the knee like the GOP,” and “dark humor” projections near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are calling out administration officials directly, using creatively morphing imagery, ahead of the biggest July 4th in our lifetime. Additionally, “somebody” supposedly went full-on scorched earth near the National Mall by etching the numbers “8647” in the grass. You can watch a time lapse video of the artistic expression here, which came with swift condemnation from the administration. The guerilla-marketing style statement in the grass isn’t the latest Gen Alpha “6-7” type wordspeak, rather an old school expression, with “86” meaning “get rid of” or “sold out” in service industry parlance, and 47 being the current president. If you’re headed to D.C. this summer, don’t forget to ask a local where to find the newest memorial reading room. Pro tip: it’s in D.C.’s Chinatown district.
While we don’t condone the destruction of private or public property, we do staunchly believe in the First Amendment, which since 1791 has enshrined the American ideals of freedom of speech, press, religion and other inalienable rights as core tenets of the American Experiment. And we find the connection between popular placemaking strategy and tactics being deployed as a form of social voice and resistance, a genuinely American incarnation — and part & parcel to our freedoms of expression as we turn 250 this July 4th. USA! USA!
Photo credit: by Samuel Girven on Unsplash
… that Downtown Phoenix, Inc. partnered up with local transit agency Valley Metro to develop one of the coolest, community-driven, multifaceted placemaking campaigns we’ve seen yet? We recently spoke with DTPHX staff about the new “Ride the Rail” campaign coming to the Valley of the Sun this summer — and summer fun, discovery and experiential placemaking are foundational underpinnings of this amazing undertaking. By blending transit with entertainment and local discovery, the campaign is reimagining the light rail as not only a way to get around — but also an opportunity to discover something new, support local businesses, and feel more connected to the city.
Throughout the month of July, Valley Metro light rail riders can expect a rotating lineup of on-board entertainment, themed activations, and exclusive specials available at participating Downtown businesses. We asked Jessika Baker, Downtown Phoenix’s Director of Community Engagement, about the initiatives. She explained to us that the campaign, which was specifically developed utilizing direct feedback from local communities, meets three core objectives:
- Transit-oriented placemaking — leveraging existing public infrastructure to create memorable, low-barrier community experiences
- Small business activation — driving intentional foot traffic to Downtown retailers and restaurants during the Valley’s slowest season
- Public-private partnership — a replicable model for BIDs and urban place management organizations looking to collaborate with transit agencies
Of course, we love all of this! If you’ve ever been to Phoenix in July, it’s conversely comparable to Québec in wintertime, and the extreme temps — perhaps counterintuitively — offer a reason to get out, enjoy the season and support the local community. We also love that this ground-up activation stemmed directly from community feedback. As we noted on our call, placemaking is more than putting “lipstick on a javalina”, and that couldn’t be more true. with this ingeniously integrated placemaking campaign.
Jessika told us that, “DTPHX Ride the Rail is a great example of what’s possible when a public transit partner and a private downtown organization work toward the same goal. Valley Metro brings the rail and the riders; we bring the businesses and the energy. Together, we’re giving people a reason to explore Downtown and have fun while doing it,” and we couldn’t agree more. As climate change accelerates, we may all find ourselves needing to activate our districts during extreme weather conditions, and Phoenix is leaning into its reputation for dry heat, by celebrating their own, in a way this is absolute 🔥 in our estimation!
Photo credit: Downtown Phoenix, Inc.
Across many corners of our nation lie histories too long left unaddressed — painful, abhorrent chapters that demand acknowledgment rather than avoidance. A story out of Houston, TX brought a genuine tear to our eye, not simply for the weight of what it confronts, but for the courage and clarity with which it moves forward.
Harris County has unveiled designs for Remembrance Park, a new multi-sensory destination along the Buffalo Bayou dedicated to illuminating the legacy of enslavement and the freedom movements that rose against it. Inspired by the Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Remembrance Project, the park will include historical markers memorializing four men who were lynched in Harris County — a horrific reality being honored not in celebration, but in honest, unflinching reckoning.
The park’s design centers around a series of “Hush Harbors” — protected spaces that weave together shade, planted mounds, seating, sculpture and water. The name draws from the secret gathering places where enslaved African Americans sought fellowship and worship during Antebellum America, reclaiming community under extraordinary oppression.
What moves us here is the wholeness of the gesture. The subject matter is disgraceful — but the act of acknowledging it, owning it, and building something meaningful in its wake is not. Remembrance Park stands to become a place where locals and visitors alike can reflect, meditate, and begin to form new memories on honest ground. That kind of placemaking — rooted in truth and oriented toward collective healing — is something worth celebrating.
Photo by Roberta Guillen on Unsplash
Street artist JR — the “French Banksy” — has done the unthinkable: making Parisians stop walking and look up. Overnight, he inflated a 120-meter-long, 18-meter-tall artificial cave over the Pont Neuf, Paris’s oldest bridge, turning a 400-year-old crossing into what looks like a n Alpine landscape dropped into the middle of the city. It’s made almost entirely of air, weighs five tons, and was hand-stitched by 25 artisans in Brittany. Thank goodness for social healthcare, because we worry about carpal tunnel syndrome with all that sewing.
The genius is in the stopping. — creating an immediate “pause & reflect” moment. “Usually everyone crosses here without looking,” observed one passerby. “This morning everyone was standing still. That’s already the artwork.” That’s placemaking in a single sentence: a street, a bridge, a corner of the city you’ve sleepwalked past a thousand times — suddenly transformed into somewhere you have to be. JR even threw in a Plato reference and a Daft Punk soundtrack, because if you’re going to make Paris feel ancient and alive again, you might as well go all the way when you exclaim Sacré Banksy!
Photo credit: by Jean-Baptiste D.onUnsplash
“DTPHX Ride the Rail is a great example of what’s possible when a public transit partner and a private downtown organization work toward the same goal. Valley Metro brings the rail and the riders; we bring the businesses and the energy. Together, we’re giving people a reason to explore Downtown and have fun while doing it,” — Jessika Baker, Community Engagement Director, Downtown Phoenix, Inc.
