Is CPTED placemaking?

Placemaking with community gardens in Calgary's East Village - site location
of this year's walking tour at the 2026 CPTED Conference

by Larry Leach

Is CPTED placemaking? 

I had that question asked of me in a recent meeting when I was describing CPTED. At first, I was taken aback. It seemed surprising CPTED is still unknown these days. But it is a legitimate question. 

The question took me down a path looking at how CPTED is increasingly viewed through a placemaking lens in some quarters and as a technical security tool, in others. It is basically the difference between 1st Generation CPTED and 2nd Generation CPTED. 

In Calgary, since 2025, there has been several funding opportunities for placemaking, beautification, and space activation. Programs such as Good Places Project Grants ($500-$15,000), supports murals, seating, and small public space improvements. 

Others, such as those through the Federation of Calgary Communities ($2.8 million over three years), seeks neighbourhood events, and resident-led initiatives focused on social inclusion and connection. Some grants are modest, but collectively they create real opportunities for communities to shape their own spaces.

At the same time, some funding streams support traditional secrurity measures with few references to community-building. These include cameras, security infrastructure, and other hard-target improvements by the Civic Partner Community Safety Grant ($2 million), are traditional1st Gen CPTED tactics. 

Empty parking lot in Calgary - dark, risky, and in need of attention.
But what kind?

Some funding avenues seek youth programming to prevent gang involvement and support local organizations, such as the Alberta Crime Prevention Grant (up to $150,000 per year). Others such as the Neighbourhood Grants provide up to $1,000 for resident-led projects focusing on social inclusion, anti-racism, and community connectivity. 

Are these grants for CPTED? Perhaps not in the traditional sense, but in more advanced forms, they fit perfectly into the capacity-building program objectives of SafeGrowth.

FUNDS EXIST

Contrary to popular perceptions, it turns out there are many available resources if you look hard enough. Keep in mind, the opportunities here describe only the government-related grants in my city. They do not cover opportunities in the non-profit sector, philanthropic groups, and corporate good-neighbour funding. 

We have discussed many times in this blog how funding can emerge from unexpected sources when a community organizes itself properly and learns grant writing skills. These sources include small amounts with big impact, such as the growing phenomenon of micro-grants recently examined by the Council on Criminal Justice study “Small Grants, Big Impact: How Microgrants can Boost Community Safety and Justice.” 

They also include sources for multi-year funding from diverse sources. For example, one 2018 blog describes how a non-profit, community development corporation in Philadelphia has, through their 10-year neighbourhood plan, leveraged multiple funding sources for over $100 million to build over 200 units of affordable housing over the years.

Placemaking near Amsterdam's Historic Museum - sometimes popups can activate a place with eyes-on-the-street - photo Flickr, CC BY-SA 3.0 

HOW TO KNOW WHAT WORKS

There are plenty of great funding opportunities, even if many are small in scale. The challenge is deciding which approach is appropriate. A mural, a bench, or a neighbourhood event may strengthen connection and informal guardianship. In other situations, cameras or access control may be justified. In many cases, the real need may be something else entirely.

How do you know if a neighbourhood needs cameras and fences, or whether there is a risk for gang activity? How do you know if there is something else the community needs? How do you answer those questions? 

Some CPTED programming mentions risk assessment and some CPTED projects include research. But not all, and certainly not enough. That is what led to the growth of SafeGrowth and its action-research/local expert method of community research to answer those questions. 

 

Look at the stats and the maps - but ultimately the best way to learn
an area is to walk with those who know it day and night.

We use the resident experts who live in the community to tell us what the community needs are. The truth is, without collaborative community/expert risk assessments, we may be solving a problem that may not exist or - more importantly - we may miss the problem that needs fixing but has no funding.

Without a careful look at local assets, risks, and community priorities, it is difficult to know which direction makes sense. That is why the International CPTED Association produced a white paper on CPTED methodology in which they insist that CPTED must evolve beyond design checklists and check sheets. 

That process may lead to placemaking. It may lead to targeted security measures. Often it leads to a mix of both. The key is that the solution emerges from the community context rather than being assumed in advance.

So is CPTED placemaking?

It can be.

Penguin in a palm tree

Penguin, Australia

by Tarah Hodgkinson

“The town is called Penguin?", my friend said to me as we drove along the highway in Northern Tasmania. "We have to check that out!” And so, I took the exit.

We came upon the town centre of this coastal community to find a large penguin statue. But not only the statue, everything was penguin-themed. Penguin play areas, penguin posts, even penguin trashcans. All of the stores along the main street were littered with penguin artwork. We had to know more.

It turns out that Penguin, Tasmania is aptly named. Penguins gather in the rookeries along their beachfront. While penguins are pretty interesting creatures, especially to those of us from the Northern Hemisphere, it wasn’t the local wildlife that caught my attention.

LOCAL CULTURE-BUILDING

What was interesting was the way in which penguins had become a part of their community’s culture. So much so that every placemaking attempt featured the cute little southern birds. There are several areas across the state where Penguins can be found, but this town had dedicated their entire community’s identity to these birds.

I worried that the focus on penguins might solely be an attempt to attract tourists. However, it was clear that the penguin theme was fairly organic and community-based. Each of the small seaside stores had committed to the theme in their own way. Some stores had fun penguin-themed names, others had large stuffed penguins in their windows and still, others had painted penguins on their walls. Even more exciting, the town holds a penguin-themed community market that has been running for twenty years.

COHESION AND CULTURE

If there was any doubt that the town was committed to their shared culture, their reaction to developers trying to capitalize on the town’s proximity to penguin rookeries proves otherwise. When I did some digging about the town’s history, I found that they had prevented some major development plans that would have dramatically changed the landscape of the downtown area and potentially affected their community’s cohesion and culture.

Not only had local residents fought hard against the development, but they also started heritage listing their storefronts. By the end, they had heritage listed 26 sites and prevented the development plans.

Tourism can dramatically impact neighbourhoods in desirable places (see the backlash in Barcelona to increasing tourism). Further, while developers often try to capitalize on these opportunities, it is clear that residents who work together to maintain control over their local history not only can protect their local culture but continue to grow and expand that culture for their entire community. In this way, community-based tourism is often an exercise in building local culture and cohesion.

CPTED on a pendulum

Relaxing in Central Park made easy with benches, clean walkways
and something interesting to watch

By Mateja Mihinjac

Embedded within SafeGrowth practice resides a number of tactics, one of which is CPTED - crime prevention through environmental design. CPTED is often criticized for being simplistic and reductionist in its solutions and for promoting fortressing while displacing undesirable activity.

In January, Greg reprinted an article he wrote a few years ago about the exclusionary nature of CPTED when it disregards some at the expense of others.

These side effects may seem unsurprising considering that the word “prevention” implies attention to undesirable behaviors. However, years of experience teach us that not every crime problem will benefit from simply restricting behaviors; we also need to provide alternatives and support desirable conduct.

Not all dogs agree, but even in rain, dogwalking is pro-social

This does not infer a binary approach to CPTED but rather attention to details because, when it comes to intended and desirable outcomes, context matters! It is therefore prudent to outline some of the 1st Generation CPTED principles using a pendulum between restrictive and desirable behavioral outcomes.

Talented street artists can beautify unpleasant areas

THE CONTEXT PENDULUM

A broader view of CPTED is nothing new; it can be observed in the early writing of CPTED by the original authors. For example, we know from Oscar Newman’s work on defensible space that territorial influence is most powerful when it combines “latent territoriality and sense of community” when residents care for shared spaces and each other.

Tactics to uncover latent territoriality include designing visual contact between residential areas and building semi-private areas where neighbors can congregate, factors that still emerge today in research.

Methods to enhance the social climate of an area include getting people to better know, and care for, each other with cultural and recreational activities.

Street markets provide a fun reason for going outside

Newman predicted this latent territoriality promotes ownership through supporting pro-social behaviors while concurrently deflecting unwanted use without the need for physical reinforcement.

Similarly, Jane Jacobs extended her discussion of “eyes upon the street” and argued that streets are safe when they provide opportunities for desirable activities by offering people a reason to occupy them, as we described in recent blogs on sidewalks and alternatives to bollards.

There is no shortage of other methods to create desirable locations, for example through tactical urbanism and placemaking that build pro-social activities and informal supervision.

Street busker activating a public plaza

FINDING BALANCE

Mainstream 1st Generation CPTED continues to undermine the need for investing in social capital as the underlying prerequisite for effective and sustainable crime prevention.

In SafeGrowth, we employ 2nd Generation CPTED to promote social cohesion, local pride and social interaction. The goal is to swing the pendulum towards pro-social conduct and away from an anti-social, target-hardening mantra. Ultimately, the key for quality of life in neighborhoods is finding the right balance between the two.

Pop-up placemaking - activating spaces with locals

SafeGrowth's Brad Vassallo demonstrating how to create pop-up placemaking
near Penn Station, New York

by Greg Saville

We are frequently asked in our seminars how to activate unsafe places with fun, lively and safe activities. In CPTED the generic term used for this is called ‘activity generation’, but that term hardly describes it nor what works in one place over another. For years our SafeGrowth programs have turned to urban placemaking for answers.

Placemaking began, some claim, with the 1970s research of William H. Whyte, especially his book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.

It was Whyte who inspired the development of New York’s PPS - the Project for Public Spaces - still an active placemaking group today. A few years ago we worked alongside PPS in New Jersey and found placemaking directly relevant to CPTED, particularly 2nd Generation CPTED.

More recently our friends at Portland’s City Repair movement have been an inspiration. Members of City Repair attended our first SafeGrowth Summit two years ago and we often feature their guerrilla architecture on this blog.

NEW YORK POP-UP

This week we conducted training for community leaders in New York. SafeGrowth Advocate Brad Vassallo joined our training team and ran a terrific session during our training called POP-up placemaking, which is the process of directly engaging local residents and passers-by at a public spot where place activation may help.

Once one team started unpacking supplies, dozens of passers-by began joining with
their POP-up theme, What are you thankful for?

The public quickly contributed comments both candid and profound

POP-UP

POP-up placemaking has the advantage of requiring few funds and simple planning. Because it will not last long, it may have only short-term impact. However, a regular program of POP-ups may well provide a planner or community practitioner a great tactic to engage locals in a fun and easy way to start the long process of building relationships and reducing fear.

On the streets outside Penn Station in New York, our 4 teams spoke to dozens of New Yorkers, enticed them to use simple materials (blue interlocking rubber tiles, tape, chalk, colored string), and construct some simple and fun placemaking activities. Within minutes people stopped to participate, write, dance, talk, laugh, and co-create spaces around a bus stop, a subway stairway entrance, and along a public wall.

It took less than 30 minutes to complete the entire activity using about $100 of material. Obviously, space activation need not be complicated, expensive, or permanent. In a class exercise, this was simple enough. In a real-life community project, this can launch a transformation. 

One team discovered the simple act of taking out the material and starting to build
was enough to attract passers-by to stop and begin chatting

Cities provide something for everybody...when they are created by everybody

Toronto neighborhood corner store - re-imagined

Today is America's Independence Day - the time for celebrating a government by and for the people. Sadly, local governance seems a long way off in the rhetoric that comprises this election season. So for solace, I turn to local governance on the street in the form of placemaking.

There are plenty of amazing street designs, laneway experiments, and examples of tactical urbanism that enliven and activate the street. The more people who walk and enjoy what Jane Jacobs called the street ballet the easier it is to humanize our neighborhoods and reduce fear and crime. This is the magic that is placemaking.

But did you ever notice how some versions of placemaking seem too expensive for the average person? Who has the time or money to redesign a laneway or install fancy lights, landscaping and pavement treatments?

LOOK TO THE LOCALS

An answer surfaced on recent trips to Toronto and Colorado Springs. The former took form in a small corner convenience store in a Toronto residential neighborhood.

Sitting areas, barbeques, relaxing space for socializing - A corner store with a purpose 

After suffering a burglary last fall and installing window bars, the owner decided to explore some inventive placemaking of her own. She transformed the front and side of her shop into a mini-market and outdoor gathering place and then invited locals to enjoy.

Inside the store she brings in local artists and artisans with samples of their work. With a vested interest in seeing their own work, and the chance to visit with others, locals and families frequent the corner store and create their own neighborhood nexus with very little cost to the storeowner.

Walls for local artists to show their stuff - free of charge!

LANEWAY LIFE

Another answer appeared along a downtown laneway in Colorado Springs. In this case locals used color and paint to enliven an otherwise dead space.

Colorado Springs laneway made fun with paint highlights

Rather than an alley with dead spaces, poor lighting and droll walls, these shopowners painted walls, installed local art, and used overhead colored LED lights to bring some energy to the space. When a few people located their shops along the alley, the space turned into a social gathering place.

Dull wall space transformed with paint

It really is not difficult to trust locals and work with them in coming up with ways to turn spaces into places. Jacobs said it 50 years ago: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and when, they are created by everybody.”

Adjacent restaurant getting in on some laneway action with colorful ad-art

"What attracts people most is other people"

Just as I was writing about homelessness and walkable public spaces I received a Vimeo from SafeGrowth friend Sue Ramsay in New Zealand. It is a 4 minute video uncovering simple urban design and social programming features that make a public space fantastic.

It is all based on William H. Whyte’s 1980 book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, and to a lesser extent his follow-up book, City: Rediscovering The Center.

Whyte was born 100 years ago and he became mentor to Jane Jacobs and inspiration for the New York place-making group Project for Public Spaces.

Screenshot from William Whyte: In His Own Words by Clarence Eckerson Jr., Streetfilms 

For CPTED practitioners, William H. Whyte is among the bright lights in the history of urban design. He invented the idea of urban carrying capacity - later called tipping points - used throughout 2nd Generation CPTED. Like any student of urban affairs and planning he loved cities. He envisioned  the return of the Agora to the modern city and, best of all, showed us how to get there.

His ideas for reclaiming civilized, walkable, and fun urban places are simple, obvious and oddly ignored in too many cities. Here are a few that show up in the video:

• the wonderful invention that is the movable chair
• musicians and street arts make a place fun
• fountains cannot induce sitting unless there are decent places to sit
• protect access to the sun
• water should be accessible, touchable, and slapable
• street personalities make a public place more amicable.

Thanks to Sue for reminding us about one of our pioneers.

Water in public spaces should be touchable and slapable - Screenshot from William Whyte: In His Own Words

Placemaking - Kiwi-style

The placemaking tactic called Intersection Repair made a recent appearance in the southern hemisphere.

A few years ago SafeGrowth Advocate Sue Ramsay ran some SafeGrowth training in her New Zealand city of Christchurch in two different neighborhoods. Thanks to the Riccarton West neighborhood SafeGrowth team, they have created a first for New Zealand.

Christchurch is the city rebuilding itself after suffering such a devastating earthquake a few years ago. Sue and other former leaders in that city saw neighborhood revitalization as a great way to move forward as the bulldozers and builders reconstructed.

The West Riccarton team has been working on activating their neighborhood and they recently completed their first intersection repair project. The time lapse video tells the story.

Congratulations to all involved! Another step forward.

Propaganda gardening - the unifying language of food

Sprouting cemeteries - placemaking with food - screenshot from TED Talk

GUEST BLOG - Mateja Mihinjac is a criminologist at Griffith University, Australia currently completing doctoral research into the implementation of CPTED. She has co-taught SafeGrowth in Australia and New Zealand. Mateja worked in the Constitutional Court in Slovenia and is an active member of the International CPTED Association.

***

Food is a great conversation starter and starting place for building community. At least a portion of everyone’s daily life revolves around food. The community of Todmorden, West Yorkshire in England took this a step further and created a vision of community building around the local food production cycle.

The Incredible Edible project’s modest beginnings reach back to 2008 when the volunteers of Todmorden first started planting fruit trees, vegetables and herbs, and activating unused land by planting communal gardens all over the town. The project has since become an all-community, sustainable local initiative, explained in this TED talk by Pam Warhurst.



Edible reflects many of the same principles in successful SafeGrowth projects:

• the recognition that everyone is part of the solution
• the importance of education and involving the youngest in building resilient and sustainable communities and  
• bringing on-board local businesses for connectivity and support without needing to rely on government agencies.

The Incredible Edible project skilfully employs placemaking through the language of food. This revolution, as the residents of Todmorden like to call it, has now spurred worldwide attention with the Incredible Edible initiatives emerging on all continents. Edible shows the power of small actions when it comes to building communities.

Yarn bombing as placemaking - Adventure in Adelaide

Mall's Balls - popular meeting place in Adelaide's Rundle Mall

GUEST BLOG – Mateja Mihinjac is a criminologist at Griffith University, Australia completing her doctoral research on CPTED implementation. She is a member of the International CPTED Association. She recently attended the Asia-Pacific ICA CPTED Forum and kindly submitted this blog.

In mid-October, the ICA hosted a 2014 regional Asia-Pacific CPTED forum themed Better CPTED - Multidisciplinary Design for Safer Places.

The participants came from many different backgrounds thus bringing to the table a rainbow of strategies. Despite the differences we all agreed better and safer places emerge from the special features that make places more attractive and the people who use those places. I found great examples on the streets of Adelaide.

The nicely maintained Victoria Square offers numerous opportunities for social activities, meeting spots and sheltered seating areas. Walking down the pedestrian Rundle Mall I found The Mall’s Balls   - a common meeting point for people in the mall.

Dame Roma Mitchell statue

Looking for examples of people being users and co-creators of such special places I discovered some yarn bombing - dressed-up Rundle Mall Pigs and a statue of Dame Roma Mitchell on the North Terrace. They instantly attracted my attention and reminded me of the yarn bombed road barrier from Melbourne in a blog from a few months ago.

Turns out that the pigs and the statue were not isolated cases and that yarn bombing is popular throughout Adelaide, especially since 2012 when even the statue of Queen Victoria received a makeover. Yarn bombing is now part of Adelaide’s community events and it all started from local people aiming to create better places for and by themselves.

Rundle Mall yarn bombed pigs

Yarn bombing and its “softer” version known as yarn storming (in the UK) manifests community pride and provides a personal touch in public places. It is  widely considered a feminine form of graffiti or artistic vandalism.

Creative approaches such as knitting are one channel for the public to express and partake in public life. What I find neat about this approach is that it empowers those who traditionally wouldn’t participate in public activism and allows them to have a say in their own communities.

Placemaking surely comes in many forms.

Sheltered seating in Victoria Square

Placemaking and civic safety

Winnipeg building mural and frontage - missed opportunity

I get great ideas from friends. Here is one.

Walking around Winnipeg Manitoba this past weekend a friend pointed out the irony of this building mural. The beauty of the former building front on the mural; the sad reality of failed expectations on the actual building front.

The idea of placemaking has made regular appearances on this blog. Placemaking is about creating positive social life in public places. How does one do that?

The fellow who pointed out the irony of the Winnipeg mural was Gerry Cleveland, my colleague and co-creator of 2nd Generation CPTED. Second Generation CPTED promotes placemaking by activating residents, getting them involved, helping them learn how to take action and teaching basic organizing skills. That's the future.

Overcoming complexity - A Philadelphia story

Simple solutions to complex problems

CPTED prevents crime by designing defensible space into places - what 1st Generation CPTED calls territoriality. It is a strategy that doesn't always happen with design. It needs help.

Walkability was my theme this past week. A walkable street helps encourage neighborhood vitality, which in turn helps folks take ownership of their public domain. Walkability is the first step towards territoriality and defensible space.

This week I was reminded of another by one of my Philadelphia students in a SafeGrowth course run by the Community Safety Initiatives folks at LISC; The revitalization of public space by citizens.

Betsy Casanas sent me the following story regarding how to do what 2nd Generation CPTED calls culture-making:

Our project is called "Reclaiming Vital Spaces" We have done so much already in the past couple of weeks. We've built 8 new beds with a few guys in an adjudicated program, We've done a workshop with one of the neighboring schools and created permanent art work for the fence with a 3rd grade class. We've just received 2 benches from a neighboring center who is interested in having their kids participate in the garden.

We have organized a group of neighbors to take over several of the boxes and grow there own food. In the coming weeks we will build a steel sculptural fence because we can't afford to buy a real fence. I think this one will be much more amazing anyways. We did get a small grant that will help us buy a tool shed, tools, benches and picnic tables. 


Semilla Arts organizers for social change

How, one wonders, does such a SafeGrowth-like approach ever start in the first place? Betsy filled me in:

As a reaction to the social conditions in North Philadelphia in 2007 artists Betsy Casanas and Pedro Ospina co-founded “Semilla (seed) Arts Initiative” a grassroots initiative that uses art as a catalyst for social change and artistic collaborations as a means of empowering individuals and communities. Semilla’s goal is to unite the community by actively involving them in the process of physically transforming their own neighborhood, exposing them to solutions and possibilities. 

I'm very impressed by some of the things I've seen in Philly during this SafeGrowth project. I can hardly wait to see what they come up with next month when we return.

Most encouraging of all is Betsy's conclusion:

The vitality of any community can be found in the strengths and stability of its members and their ability to overcome the complexity of today.

Yes! In a nutshell, that's it!

If walkability is the first step to safety, overcoming complexity is the second.

Community vitality is found in the ability of it's members to overcome the complexity of today!

Thank you to Betsy, Pedro, and their dedicated kin for reminding us where to find yet another key to open safe places.

Tucson's urban fabric

Declining neighborhoods can be transformed

The urban fabric of a place is what we see in our daily lives. The details of the physical environment matter. Details make the difference.

I recently visited Tucson, a city in the desert of Arizona with a half million residents. It was a place of residential fences. I've never seen so many. Everyone, it seems, gates their property.














The old pithy saying proclaims; Good fences make good neighbors. I've always thought good neighbors make good neighbors. Too many fences actually make streets ugly. Here, too many streets were corridors of fences.

Yet even in this fence infested city there are ways to beautify. Tucson has some great examples of community branding and neighborhood art, what SafeGrowth calls community culture. Planners know this as placemaking.

Signage branding in the university district

One lower income neighborhood marked their entranceway with a decorative entranceway, lined nearby freeway walls with murals, and organized to get funding to build a beautiful park.

Murals to beautify

In the university area a lively bohemian street was branded with signs and street art. Even at night-time the eye was treated to a warm orange pallate on parking lot walls with what would normally be insufficient low pressure sodium lighting.

Low lighting can work if done properly

The devil is clearly in the details of our urban fabric. Now if only we could get placemaking details into commercial suburban strips!

Safety with a Potluck - Transforming Space into Place

Portland's Intersection Repair program

Imagine: When the fog of traffic congestion clogs our streets (and our minds), imagine a safe place near your home with quiet beauty and solace. Imagine neighbors putting out daily coffee and tea for passers-by in mini-street cafes. Imagine bulletin-boards, cobblestones and artistic murals, flowers and gardens on your street. Imagine it can all start with a potluck.

I recently spent time exploring Portland, Oregon. Some equate Portland with rain and overcast winters. But other records matter more - Portland's outdoor street life for example. Portland is one of the world's greenest cities, the fittest and most eco-friendly city in the US, the best US city for biking to work, renown for land use planning and light rail, and a top ten city for architecture and design.

Portland's not perfect. While it has about the same ethnic and income mix as cities of similar size, it does have the country's second highest unemployment rate. It has problems with car thefts and burglary. Yet of the 75 largest cities, Portland's murder rate is consistently in the bottom 10 and robbery in the bottom 20. It has one of the lowest violent crime rates of any city in the country.

One wonders about the obvious; Do the things that make it vibrant account for the things that make it safe? Residents describe it as one of the safest places in the country with the highest high quality of life.

Why?

Portland's neighborhoods are alive. Interest in civic affairs is alive. In the neighborhoods (away from the clogged Interstate) cars seem secondary, people and bikes first.
Nowhere is this exemplified better than with Portland's City Repair movement, now in dozens of cities across the country.

Pioneered a decade ago, innovator and architect Mark Lakeman is a leading proponent. He told me local residents decide for themselves what they want their streets to look like and how their intersections should function. Some want community interaction or seasonal celebrations. Others want slower traffic or beautiful public art.

City Repair creates artistic and ecologically-oriented placemaking through neighborhood projects. They began by tackling the urban grid. They convert residential street intersections into public squares. They use paint, plants, and permaculture. They construct non-toxic solutions from the local environment. They combine public art with benches, lampposts, play areas for kids, and gardens alongside public streets. It is remarkable to see this in person.

If you can, go there and see for yourself. Nowhere have I seen intersections transformed so creatively by local action.

This is citizen government and a positive example of direct action.When we talk of placemaking in SafeGrowth, City Repair is exemplary. It yields great promise and optimism.

People are drawn to see beautiful art or sculptures in formerly boring grid intersections throughout the city. I watched cars slow to safer speeds where there were no stop signs. Well designed street art is a natural traffic calmer.

Resident-designed intersections in Portland - eventually the city came on board

I heard of doomsday pundits who said it was impossible (until it was done by others). I heard of traffic engineers predicting chicken-little (then shown how to build creative and functional intersections).

Mark says, we are engaging people where they live and they are building new relationships. They are creating physical artifacts that encourage them to gather after the fact. They see these artifacts and they interrelate with them and the stories broaden and deepen.

That is placemaking at it's best.

Check it out.