Low barrier, high impact: The value of community placemaking

This article is part of a series exploring the connections between placemaking and community wellbeing, written by Canada’s Placemaking Community and Happy Cities. Building on the Power of Placemaking project and our Community Conversations, this article shares learnings about the impacts of placemaking at a local level on the economy, including the role of individuals, businesses, community groups, and organizations.

This is what we heard through conversations with practitioners shaping spaces across Canada.

Students and volunteers painting colourful street murals, with traffic cones for safety as cars pass by. — Middle school kids paint curb bump-outs on the street to slow down traffic and improve safety. (Jared Korb)

Through conversations with placemakers across Canada, we’ve heard many success stories and best practices that have gained momentum since the pandemic. Many cities have started to open up more space for people to socialize, such as by creating open streets or parking spot patio programs. Communities recognize that placemaking not only creates more vibrant, enjoyable places—but also supports broader community goals, like social connection, economic resilience, and climate action.

But many community groups and local residents want to know: How can we get involved in—and find funding for—placemaking, even if we’re not city planners? What are the small changes to shared spaces that can have a big impact? And how do we advocate for more? This article offers a starting point for anyone to get involved in placemaking, and shares strategies for measuring and communicating impact.

A man teaches ukelele to six kids who are sitting on wooden chairs on the Platform, and outdoor wooden deck in Silton — Residents in Silton, Saskatchewan worked together to install a new platform for community gatherings in the town centre. (Aileen Martin)

What are some low-barrier, cost-effective placemaking initiatives that can have a big impact?

Some of the most effective placemaking initiatives are small-scale changes, led directly by community members themselves. Often, placemaking starts with small amounts of funding and volunteers who get together to paint a mural, install moveable furniture, organize community events, or start a shared garden.

In one example in Calgary, a local community association got a grant from Activate YYC and support from Home Depot stores to buy 60 blue adirondack chairs.

“We were looking for a quick project that would have big impact, and we hit on a winner,” said Lynn Jobe, from the Shawnee-Evergreen Community Association (SECA).

Neighbours stand beside rows of blue adirondack chairs, to be placed around public spaces in the neighbourhood. — Volunteers prepare a set of chairs to place in public spaces around the neighbourhood. (Shawnee-Evergreen Community Association)

SECA placed the bright blue chairs around parks, pathways, and other public spaces in the community, with QR codes inviting people to visit the association’s website and learn more about their activities.

“People love them,” said Jobe. “When we took [the chairs] away in the fall, people were practically pulling them away from us to say, ‘No, no, we need these here!’ ‘I sit here every day and I have my coffee here,’ or ‘I read a book here’ [....] It wasn’t until we did that chair project that people really understood at a real gut level, ‘Oh, this is what placemaking is. This is how a placemaking project can change how people feel and behave.’”

The story highlights the importance of community-led approaches that invite the community to take ownership over shared spaces—through the simple acts like allowing them to move furniture around a park.

“One of the big learnings was, you don’t often see two people sitting on the same bench,” said Jobe. “But people that didn't know each other would sit side by side in these chairs and get to know each other [....] Seniors really enjoyed the chairs because they enabled them to walk farther on the pathways knowing that there was going to be a chair there for them to sit in [....] We put nine chairs in this one park, in groupings all throughout the park, and the very next day, not 24 hours later, [the chairs] were all brought together in a circle by the playground, under shade. We learned so much about what was important to our residents and they learned the power of placemaking. It was just so obvious to people.”

Two blue adirondack chairs placed on a patch of grass, next to a little free library. The chairs have #SECAchairs painted on the front — Moveable adirondack chairs in South Calgary, beside a little free library. (Shawnee-Evergreen Community Association)

In a larger-scale example, PlazaPOPs in Scarborough works with local businesses, BIAs, students, and residents to temporarily convert strip mall parking lots into pop-up parks. The project began during the pandemic, but has since continued as an annual summer initiative, adding garden boxes, flowers, seating, games, movie nights, and music performances to transform asphalt into free, publicly accessible spaces.

How do you measure and communicate the value of placemaking?

Many people at our Community Conversations shared the importance—and challenge—of measuring the impacts of placemaking. Community organizations often have limited funding and capacity to measure changes in social cohesion or use of a space. Yet, funders and cities want to see data before investing more into a program or initiative.

One participant shared how the Region of Peel Community Cycling Program has been measuring the success of its bike repair training—with over 6,000 participants from 2019 to 2021—and mentorship programs. The organization conducts surveys of participants before and after taking part in its programming, allowing staff to assess positive and lasting impacts on residents, and identify areas to improve on.

“We measure things like how many trips they would take, how their modal split changed [...] from the beginning to the end of the [mentorship] program,” said the participant. “And that’s less through our change of physical infrastructure in the city [....] It's more to change placemaking through social behaviour and tools that are provided.”

At the same time, because placemaking is focused on experiences, stories, and connections, it can be hard to measure success. In a recent Mobilizer Session, “Shifting the Relationship Between Funders and Grantees”, a panel of experts from the Network for the Advancement of Black Communities (NABC) and Community Foundations of Canada (CFC) discussed ways to evaluate impact with the nuance of each placemaking project in mind.

“[An evaluation mindset] is important for all organizations and stakeholders,” explained Yonatan Ghebray, Senior Director of Evaluation, Learning and Quality Improvement at NABC, in the session. “You don’t necessarily need to be a data scientist to ask an evaluation question. Is what we are doing making a difference? How does the work we are doing help the people that we are working with? How are we learning as an organization?”

Importantly, engaging with the local neighbourhood and collecting community stories are just as important as hard data—for example, counting the number of people who visit a place before and after a public space transformation. Together, these data points help make the case for further investments in placemaking and community-led programming—whether from local governments, community foundations, private sector, or others. The importance of measuring impact extends to all kinds of placemaking projects—from public art, to events programming, open streets, urban greening, and more.

“The biggest gap is we don't actually have a lot of tools that are measuring metrics consistently or before the intervention, they're often just during or after,” said one participant. “If those tools were more accessible, I think that could really help us to then pitch projects that would transform public spaces [....] We don't really have the business case for [these projects], even if it is, you know, in our heads, the right thing to do.”

Resources for measuring the value of placemaking

Through the Power of Placemaking project, Canada’s Placemaking Community and Happy Cities captured stories and evidence to help communicate the value of placemaking for community wellbeing—including climate resilience, social connection, vibrant economies, and more.

In addition to these resources, we have compiled several free tools that organizations can use to help measure the impact of their public space initiatives:

Public Life Study Tool — Happy Cities
Inspired Art Impact: Main Street Toolkit — STEPS Public Art
Building better public spaces: A toolkit to create a Public Space Inventory — Evergreen
Place Standard Tool — Our Place
Open Streets Toolkit — 880 Cities and Street Plans
A New Bottom Line: The Value & Impact of Placemaking — Toronto Metropolitan University

To learn more about creative placemaking, visit the Canada Placemaking Community’s new Toolkit for Placemakers, a collection of resources created by a diversity of practitioners with the purpose of unlocking knowledge and sharing best practices.