Our BUILD for BELONGING initiative is rooted in the principles of transformative placemaking, equitable development, community wealth building, and designing for justice. Together, these resources can help us imagine and create equitable, inclusive, and thriving spaces for all East King County communities.
A key resource informing our work is the Project for Public Spaces. They ask:
What if we built our communities around places?
“As both an overarching idea and a hands-on approach for improving a neighborhood, city, or region, placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community. Strengthening the connection between people and the places they share, placemaking refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value. More than just promoting better urban design, placemaking facilitates creative patterns of use, paying particular attention to the physical, cultural, and social identities that define a place and support its ongoing evolution.”
Justice by Design
What is Transformative Placemaking?
In Search of Human Scale
Palaces for the People
Building a Stronger Community Through Placemaking
Designing For a More Equitable World
Local Resources
Puget Sound Sage
Advancing community controlled, community inspired development. Our equitable development program advances policies that support compact, high-density development and affordable housing along transit corridors to prevent displacement, which is core to healthy, climate-resilient communities.
Seattle Equitable Development Initiative
Equitable development means public and private investments, programs, and policies in neighborhoods that take into account past history and current conditions to meet the needs of marginalized populations and to reduce disparities so that quality of life outcomes such as access to quality education, living wage employment, healthy environment, affordable housing and transportation, are equitably distributed for the people currently living and working here, as well as for new people moving in. The City’s Equitable Development Framework involves integrating people and place to create strong communities and people as well as great places with equitable access.
