from YES! Magazine:
Building the World We Want: Interview with Mark Lakeman
Interview with the co-founder of the City Repair Project, a Portland group that helps neighbors turn public spaces into gathering places.by Brooke Jarvis
posted May 12, 2010
“That’s public space. Nobody can use it.”
That was one Portland city official’s response when Mark Lakeman and his neighbors first began building unauthorized gathering places in their neighborhood in 1996.
To Lakeman, an urban designer, this seemed like a fundamental misunderstanding of public space. Together with his neighbors, he formed the City Repair Project, a volunteer-run nonprofit that set out to change the way Portlanders think about the places where people come together.
They started by reclaiming their own intersection, and were eventually organizing neighbors, building benches, and painting streets throughout the city. The goal, as City Repair’s motto puts it, was no longer just to preserve public space, but, by recognizing its character and identity, to transform it into Place: “inhabited, known, and loved by its residents.”
At the end of this month, City Repair will host its eighth annual building convergence, a ten-day festival hosting workshops and neighborhood improvement projects around the city. City Repair’s projects now include Depave Portland, which removes unnecessary asphalt to make way for urban gardens, and Upcycle Market, a monthly event where people get together to swap skills and supplies. Groups around the country are trying out City Repair's methods in their own neighborhoods. ........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/building-the-world-we-want-interview-with-mark-lakeman
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