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As you saw from our last segment, there are many things that make a place special and
make you want to be there. This is called placemaking. What is placemaking, you ask?
Lets talk to Dan Gilmartin from the Michigan Municipal League and find out.
Welcome to the 411. I'm Tiffany Lemieux-McKissic and we're here today with Dan Gilmartin from
the Michigan Municipal League.
Thanks for being on the show Dan.
Great to be here.
Great! So we've heard a lot about this term placemaking lately. Can you kind of define
for our viewers what exactly that means?
Sure. I mean, placemaking is really the art of taking the assets in a community and really
building a community around it. We spent, in Michigan especially, we spent the last
forty or fifty years building our communities around cars and big huge roads and getting
people in and out of towns as fast as we can, and we're really missing the opportunities
of what makes a place special. What makes it authentic. How can we sort of bring out
those attributes in the community.
And the concept of placemaking is really getting community leaders together with people in
the community -- business leaders, citizens, whoever it might be -- and pushing an agenda
for what it really means to live in a small town, a big city, whatever it might be. So
that concept leads to really building communities around people instead of around cars, and
we think that that's a real economic boom for us here in Michigan.
So really a sense of place is about taking what's unique about a community, embracing
it, and celebrating it?
Sure, because again, think about it in economic terms. And in this state we sort of have the
disease that whenever we talk about creating jobs in Michigan we talk about tax rates,
and we talk about a regulatory environment. And we don't lose on those things anymore
when you're talking about comparing us to places that are doing really well.
We undertook a study several years ago and I've been working with a whole bunch of different
groups to look at the research. Why do we get beat by this town, or why are all the
young people that are graduating from Michigan or Michigan State or Central or Eastern or
Western or somewhere else, why are they moving to certain places and not others? Why aren't
they staying here? And it's place. It's really what they're looking for, and that's again,
you know, you're talking about an entrepreneurial generation.
And we've heard that you guys have, at the Municipal League, have put out a book called
The Economics of Place. And when did you guys, when did you put this out?
Basically the book has been out for about a month. It's available at our blog at economicsofplace.com
or on Amazon, and there are nine essays in there that really get to a whole bunch of
different areas about place, whether that be entrepreneurs who want to live in authentic
places, whether that be walkability issues. We see people now, both retiring baby boomers
and millenials, looking for places to live.
People want to walk. They don't want to drive. The importance of things like cultural amenities
and really having these types of places where you want to be.
I mean, that's what it really comes down to. In this age where you're sort of not stuck
with the next door floor plan. People are mobile and the most mobile generation that
we've ever been in. They move around quite a bit.
We're finding out that people and jobs and entrepreneurs are choosing where they want
to live first, then looking for or creating their own jobs. That's why we're getting beat
by the Chicagos and the Portlands and the Seattles in the world. So pushing this agenda
and finding out about what that means and how we can affect that kind of change in Michigan
is really what's behind the book.
And not only is it a quality of life issue, which is extremely important., we think it's
an economic one too because that's where the numbers bear out. We don't lose to Chicago
on taxes or regulations or Seattle or Austin or Boston or wherever you want to hold up
there as sort of the best place, the best region, the best state in the country to do
work.
We lose to them on this stuff.
So we've really got to focus on that and get our communities, get our state around a placemaking
agenda.
So I heard when you visited the White House that one of the staffers there had actually
read the book.
Yeah that was awesome. I was honored to be part of a group through the National League
of Cities where I sit on the Board of Directors that went to meet with President Obama a couple
weeks back. And I walked in and the Director of Intergovernmental Relations was there and
said, "Hey, I read your book." So that made us feel real good that the message is getting
out there.
It's a really powerful message I think and it's something people can relate to, whether
they're from a small town or a big city. So obviously at that level we were really pleased
to see that the book had made it through.
So if people want more information about placemaking or what you're doing at Michigan Municipal
League, where can they go?
They can follow economicsofplace.com, which is our blog. They can check out, they can
get the book there. They can also buy the book on Amazon. They can follow me on Twitter.
I'm @DPGilmartin. They want to check that out. And they can find us at mml.org. We're
doing some really cool stuff and we're really proud to be part of this movement that's out
there of reenergizing our communities.
I can't wait to read the book.
Great! Let me know what you think.
I will. I definitely will.
Well thanks so much for joining us on the 411. I'm Tiffany Lemieux-McKissic and we'll
see you on The Bright Side.