Thrilled to share that I’ve been accepted into the Spring 2025 cohort of the Lincoln Vibrant Communities Fellows Program, a collaborative initiative by Claremont Lincoln University (CLU) and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (LILP). As one of sixty civic leaders selected, I’ll have the opportunity to enhance my leadership skills and tackle pressing challenges facing cities to sustain vibrant communities.
My thesis? How to go from Pop-Up to Policy.
Placemaking today is complex and demands a think-tank setting to address challenges like trust and transparency, nonprofit accountability, and capacity-building in neighborhoods often constrained by scarcity or disrupted by rapid development. I aim to elevate ethnographic fieldwork into a structured, professionally informed process. My focus is on creating Community Guidelines and Standards for Shared Space and Social Life—a principles-based framework for conflict resolution and social etiquette tailored to specific communities. This model will be piloted in Jacksonville, Florida, with Kollect.
As placemaking emerges as a formal academic discipline and professional field in municipal government, nonprofits, and business districts, it calls for ethical training, a scholarly foundation, and clear best practices for engagement. Through this fellowship, I hope to explore protocols to measure and enhance trust and strategies to transition pop-up initiatives into sustainable policies.
Three Critical Issues I’m Addressing:
“Over-surveyed, under-served”
Exploring less intrusive, community-focused data collection methods.
“Max attendance is not max success”
Redefining success metrics informed by research from Reimagining the Civic Commons, Foundation for Social Connection, Belongingness Barometer, Neighborliness, and Brookings Institute for Transformative Placemaking.
“Pop-Up to Policy”
Embedding placemaking practices into governmental processes to ensure long-term impact.
This fellowship provides a rare chance for in-depth study and collaborative problem-solving. Despite nearly 15 years in this field, many challenges remain that hands-on work alone cannot solve.
Outside of my professional role, I’ve contributed to placemaking projects worldwide and recently acquired my first vacant lot in Jacksonville, Florida. My goal is to pilot a new model of community ownership that challenges the inequitable practices of some nonprofits and fosters creativity and innovation without the pressures of external funders or the risks of rapid development and gentrification.
I’ve applied to the Vacant Lot Fellowship at the Center for Community Progress and joined the Lincoln Fellows Program to be part of a global community discussing incremental, small-scale, pocket neighborhood development as a path to citizen-led civic infrastructure. This project will focus on empowering local stakeholders to co-create solutions internally.
Lastly, I believe it’s time to shake up the current models of community engagement. My work aims to enrich the toolbox this affinity group is creating at The Lincoln Institute, driving transformative change in civic infrastructure.
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