We’re dedicating this page to our collective response to Covid’s impact on the public realm and public life, including writings and our new “podcast” - #CovidCityStories - a curated collection of audio stories from citymakers all over the world. Find out more about our initiative and record your audio stories of life in the trenches of this pandemic from the lens of a citymaker.
Four global citymakers’ experiences, insights, and placemaking initiatives around our new Covid normal showcase just how much place matters, pre-Covid, during Covid, and post-Covid. In particular, their stories highlight how our new hyper-local reality has serious equity implications, which in turn make us all more vulnerable.
Read MoreThis week, I share my own story about what it's been like to be in pandemic exile in the burbs for 99 days (and counting); how Covid has shaped the "cultural" value of place; and why it feels like I kinda got broken up with via post-it by my dear city, Shanghai, because Covid!
Read MoreThis week, hear from own State of Place team, who are distributed throughout the world. As a remote, distributed team, while WFH is our normal, day to day life under siege by this virus is decidedly not. So I asked our CTO, Andy, Head of Business Development, Kelliann, and Machine Learning Scientist, Kaustubh, and Marketing Intern, Minah, to share a little about what it's been like for them respectively in Oslo, Vegas, San Jose, and the Maryland DC suburbs in the age of social distancing, and what they think this means for cities, livability, and innovation moving forward. I hope you are inspired and uplifted by their heartfelt stories or that they bring you some solace.
Read MoreThe second episode of Covid City Stories features five citymakers from Miami, Minneapolis, Bengaluru, the Emirates, and Bethesda, Maryland. Their collective voices convey a sense of hope in the face of fear, offer light in the midst of darkness, and call on us to take action as we reach the end of the beginning of this global story…Again, we hope these stories inspire you to get into some “good trouble” and compel you to record your own. Please stay safe, well, and in touch.
Read MoreListen to the first compilation of stories from citymakers in the trenches of Covid19. They share how they’re feeling, coping, doing, strategizing, raging…. We hope that sharing their stories with you all, our community, our people, will help you commiserate, inspire you, lift you up, spark you to get in some “good trouble” starting now, spread some empathy, spark joy in your hearts and souls. Please stay safe, well, and in touch.
Read MoreLast weekend, the New Cities Foundation - where I’m a Placemaking Fellow - asked me to contribute my thoughts regarding the role of placemaking and the public realm in light of Covid19 and the calls for social distancing. I was honored and also relieved to have such a wonderful outlet to finally put pen to paper and make concrete the many thoughts I’ve had about this very topic since leaving Shanghai (my adopted home) two months ago…So I present to you the intro to the piece I wrote for them, and a link to the full article below! Would love your thoughts - please feel free to comment here, or tweet me at @cityfoodlover or @stateofplace! In the meantime, please stay safe, healthy - and sane!
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