Firstly, thank you to the City of Raleigh and its residents for hosting me this past week. It was a pleasure to present to the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, Raleigh Urban Design Center, your city planners, and Sarah Powers of Raleigh Arts. Secondly, congrats on this exciting time as you search for the perfect person to direct placemaking.

The day started with drip-coffee with built-environment specialist, fellow parking lot placemaker, and founder of Raleigh Urban Rangers Tina Govan. We discussed the importance of ’soft boundaries’ and ambiguity when approaching the design and use of shared public spaces and no trees in parks unless you want ‘frying pan places’.

We then went to lunch with digital placemaker Marie Schacht who talks on “social stitching”, “loves adventures that take time” and implements a people-centric hiring process insisting on no resumes. We talked about “helping locals strengthen their neighborhoods through small-scale real estate projects” via the work of Monte Anderson.

We were then joined by fellow New York Stater and Arts-Administrator Sarah Powers, Feng Shui focused neighbor Nicole, and Kathleen Louis to tour Greg Hatem’s Black Main Street and his unique approach to pandemic-downtowns.

If you’re interested in any of these topics:
https://www.incrementaldevelopment.org
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/business/omicron-retail-real-estate.html
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/events-and-placemaking-manager-at-downtown-raleigh-alliance-2851536822/