Creative Placemaking
Sparking Development with Arts and Culture
Creative placemaking, or leveraging art and culture in tandem with great design, is a proven accelerator for real estate development projects. It creates a distinctive sense of place—culturally rich, engaging, and economically thriving—and attracts people. Creative placemaking can have a meaningful positive impact in low-income neighborhoods, along distressed commercial corridors, in struggling rural areas, and in other disinvested communities. As importantly, creative placemaking has been demonstrated to be a successful development strategy for many solutions in the built environment, including health, housing, transportation, and resilience, among others.
ULI research shows that creative placemaking provides triple-bottom-line benefits—financial, social, and environmental—for all stakeholders. Developers and their partners report higher market values, lower turnover rates, faster approval cycles, and lease-ups, greater community buy-in, and better branding and market recognition. Local governments see gains in job growth, improved public safety, and increased tax revenues that pay for more resident services. And communities benefit from enhanced social cohesion, improved health and economic outcomes, and the creative energy and aesthetics of vibrant new places that are enhanced with arts and culture.
This publication, “Creative Placemaking: Sparking Development with Arts and Culture” presents the business case and process for successful creative placemaking as a potent strategy for building healthy, equitable, attractive, and thriving communities. It offers insights about how creative placemaking—leveraging arts and culture—can spark a creative culture in real estate projects, revitalize communities, and boost financial and other return on investment (ROI) measures for developers. It also provides best practices—information gleaned from research gathered from ULI leaders and others—about how to plan, finance, implement, and manage projects. And it offers examples and case studies illustrating successful creative placemaking across diverse project types and in U.S. cities of various sizes, economic conditions, and geographic locations.
This report addresses questions such as these:
- How do developers plan for and implement creative placemaking?
- How do they determine the arts and culture focus?
- Do such projects require more time and money?
- How is creative placemaking funded?
- What are the returns?
- Does it require an ongoing commitment to programming?
- And if a project will be sold, why take on a creative placemaking approach?
Report Summary: Creative placemaking, or leveraging art and culture in tandem with great design, is a proven accelerator for real estate development projects. It creates a distinctive sense of place—culturally rich, engaging, and economically thriving—and attracts people. Creative placemaking can have a meaningful positive impact in low-income neighborhoods, along distressed commercial corridors, in struggling rural areas, and in other disinvested communities. As importantly, creative placemaking has been demonstrated to be a successful development strategy for many solutions in the built environment, including health, housing, transportation, and resilience, among others.
ULI research shows that creative placemaking provides triple-bottom-line benefits—financial, social, and environmental—for all stakeholders. Developers and their partners report higher market values, lower turnover rates, faster approval cycles, and lease-ups, greater community buy-in, and better branding and market recognition. Local governments see gains in job growth, improved public safety, and increased tax revenues that pay for more resident services. And communities benefit from enhanced social cohesion, improved health and economic outcomes, and the creative energy and aesthetics of vibrant new places that are enhanced with arts and culture.
This publication, “Creative Placemaking: Sparking Development with Arts and Culture” presents the business case and process for successful creative placemaking as a potent strategy for building healthy, equitable, attractive, and thriving communities. It offers insights about how creative placemaking—leveraging arts and culture—can spark a creative culture in real estate projects, revitalize communities, and boost financial and other return on investment (ROI) measures for developers. It also provides best practices—information gleaned from research gathered from ULI leaders and others—about how to plan, finance, implement, and manage projects. And it offers examples and case studies illustrating successful creative placemaking across diverse project types and in U.S. cities of various sizes, economic conditions, and geographic locations.
This report addresses questions such as these:
- How do developers plan for and implement creative placemaking?
- How do they determine the arts and culture focus?
- Do such projects require more time and money?
- How is creative placemaking funded?
- What are the returns?
- Does it require an ongoing commitment to programming?
- And if a project will be sold, why take on a creative placemaking approach?