An author friend of mine, Deborah Tall, wrote a very interesting book entitled From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place. Deborah, who died in 2006, was not a planner or a city manager or in any way connected with local governments.  She was a poet and professor who landed in Upstate New York with an academic job at a small private university.  In her book, she weaves Iroquois history, front porch conversations with Amish farmers, cultural research, poetry and more to illustrate her sense of place in the Finger Lakes Region.  Hers was the first book I read before I moved to Ithaca, New York in 1995.  And it was the first time I began to think about a sense of place as being something other than where I happened to be at the moment.

Now it seems many people are thinking about a sense of place, including researchers, philanthropists, federal agencies, and local government leaders.  In 2010, the Knight Foundation published Soul of the Community:  Why People Love Where They Live and Why It Matters.  Through thousands of interviews, this project sought to uncover what attaches people to their community.  In their words: "what makes them want to put down roots and build a life there."  

At nearly the same time the report Creative Placemaking was being published.  This very comprehensive report illustrates the importance of art and cultural activities for revitalization, economic activity, and livability.  It also provides case study examples of successful placemaking projects; and provides some tips on how other local communities can invest in their own creative placemaking activities.

In recent years, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has been investing in creative placemaking through the Our Town program, which is designed to  

fund partnerships led by arts and design organizations and local governments to implement projects that contribute toward the livability of communities and help transform them into lively, beautiful, and sustainable places with the arts at their centers . . .  (the program) support(s) planning, design, and arts engagement projects that: encourage creative activity, create community identity and a sense of place, improve quality of life, and revitalize local economies.

Over the last two years, the Our Town program has funded dozens of local projects all with an artistic or cultural focus.  Some examples of the more than 80 grants are listed below.

• Denver, Colorado.  The arts collective RedLine, the City of Denver and seven additional organizations are collaborating on a project within an urban gardening and aquaponics park where public art that produces renewable energy will be commissioned via a competitive selection process.
• Overland Park, Kansas.  The City and a local arts organization the InterUrban ArtHouse are restoring blighted vacant commercial property into art studios, office space for nonprofits, storefront for creative entrepreneurs and space for community art programs.
• Chattanooga, Tennessee.  This project will reclaim a vacant lot to create the Main Terrain, a new urban park adjacent to Main Street in Chattanooga's Southside neighborhood. The park will feature as many as five iconic interactive sculptures that invite users to engage in physical play and fitness, building upon local efforts to redevelop and revitalize the once desolate Southside neighborhood as a dynamic and creative district.
• Charleston, South Carolina.  Funding will support the transformation of a neglected open space to create the Galliard Center Arts Precinct. The design and planning for the precinct will complement the city's $142 million renovation of the Galliard Center and create a civic destination for artistic activity, including outdoor public performance spaces.
• Dearborn, Michigan.  A partnership between the City and the Dearborn Community Fund are using their Our Town grant to support pre-development activities for the creation of live-work space for artists in the city.  
• Dubuque, Iowa.  The city plans to capitalize on its architectural assets with the Dubuque Historic Millwork District, which contains more than one million square feet of historic warehouse space ideal for urban mixed-use development, and will accommodate and showcase Dubuque's active arts and cultural communities. Project activities supported by the Arts Endowment will include development of designs for the renovation, restoration, and adaptive re-use of historic structures as cultural facilities and artist live/work spaces, as well as engagement of artists and arts organizations in place-based planning and programming for the Historic Millwork District.

In their recent PM Magazine article, "A Day in the Life of a Local Government Sustainability Director," Andrea Fox (Napa, CA), Sean McClendon (Alachua County, FL), and Tyler Poulson (Park City, UT) suggest that 

Truly sustainable communities will probably never be flashy places.  If anything they may remind you of how your grandmother ran her home . . . these homes were built to last and what was in them was treasured by more than one generation (June 2012, page 36).

The placemaking projects, programs and big ideas happening around the country, are adding important features to sustainable and livable ommunities that are both built to last and treasured by young and old alike.   I think Deborah would be pleased to see so many communities taking the intiative from where they stand to support their own vision of a sense of place.