Place, Taste and Neighborhood Change: Frameworks for Integrating Aesthetics, Equity and…

Catalog description

Places provide a sense of identity and orientation to the world for its users in ways that go beyond the traditional practice areas that urbanists are trained to understand (i.e. housing, economic development, transportation). The popularization of artistic, cultural, and "creative interventions" in redevelopment has added to that complexity in hybrid ways require new tools, languages, and frameworks to meaningfully participate in the development process. By taking a humanistic and scientific views of the longstanding arts-based community development field now known as "creative placemaking", the class will help learners formulate critical, evaluative answers pressing, emergent questions for urban practitioners. In particular, learners will explore the various state-sponsored meanings of creative placemaking, artistic excellence, and artistic merit. During the course we will interrogate, compare, and articulate the power dynamics embedded in those definitions with new, alternate, and stakeholder-centric definitions. The course aims to invite conversation, reflection, and sharing of best practices alongside community-based leaders with the promise that learners will be able to apply equity-based frameworks to these debates. Learners will emerge from this guided journey with a sharpened ability to identify, generate, and extend authentic, inclusive arts-based neighborhood change.