CREATIVE CITY NEWSLETTER: NOVEMBER 2003

ISSUE 9: DESIGN AND PLANNING

CREATIVE CITY COMMUNITIES: What HAVE they been up to?

ROCHESTER

Your Recommendation Can Revive Communities!

Partners for Livable Communities is currently working with Trustee Bill Johnson, Mayor of Rochester, New York in the creation of a toolkit focusing on arts and cultural strategies to effect neighborhood transformation. We are seeking your help through submissions of examples from your community for this guide. Through Culture Builds Communities, we are now in our tenth year of using arts, culture, amenities, and cultural institutions as key resources in the social and economic lives of our neighborhoods. This undertaking will focus on building types that no longer serve their primary purpose, but have been reused by the community for the betterment of the neighborhood as a whole.

Partners has found that traditional assets as described by John McKnight in his asset-based community development philosophy are "left behind" in many of our inner city neighborhoods. Examples of these assets include abandoned public schools that have been left unused since integration; old movie theatres that now stand derelict; churches where the congregation has moved to the suburbs; branch libraries and neighborhood parks that have fallen prey to budget cutbacks and are poorly programmed or maintained. All of these "forgotten institutions" once offered key civic services as community gathering places, points of pride, and possessors of memories. It is Partners’ goal to take these old neighborhood centerpieces that reflect the heritage of a place and explore how they could be revitalized as catalysts for change.

The guide will include a special focus on Rochester, New York, Mayor Johnson’s hometown, and will include ideas for buildings and models of programs from all across the country to inspire individuals working in urban neighborhoods to explore and put in place heritage buildings as a development strategy built on strong citizen association. We are asking for submissions of buildings in your community that you feel best exemplify this spirit of preservation and community development. Please pass on this message to people you believe may have an interest in this field and would be able to recommend a site.

Please contact Partners for an outline and submission form.

Partners thanks you for your time and nomination. With your contribution, we have the chance to illustrate to community development leaders how some of our communities’ most important assets can blend the past and future in exciting new ways.

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