What's New in City Design

Arts and Planning Toolkit



The Arts and Planning Toolkit include tools to support & innovate placemaking and community development work incorporating arts, culture, and the creative community. Aimed towards urban/community planners in Massachusetts, any town can adapt the featured strategies.


Benefits & Problems Addressed

Hardwiring arts & culture into community design: The toolkit, aimed at planners, focuses on weaving art and cultural considerations into the front end of project design and funding.

Support for artists: The toolkit include not only support for art, but also artists with ideas on housing, art production space and funding.

Comprehensive resource: The "Resources" section includes links to other arts+community design organizations & guides.


Tips & Techniques

Using the toolkit: The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MA) produced this expandable toolkit for Massachusetts planners and economic development professionals. Much of the funding and legal approaches are specific to Massachusetts, but any user can find examples to adopt.

Arts, culture, & planning tools:  These tools infuse creativity into planning and community development processes at the neighborhood, city/town, & regional scales, including placemaking, tactical urbanism, cultural planning, cultural asset mapping, & more.

Art & infrastructure tools: These tools facilitate the integration of arts, culture, and creativity in the public realm & infrastructure, including temporary and permanent public art for planning, design, development, and preservation of places.

Zoning & permitting tools: These tools address legal & regulatory considerations for temporary or permanent public art. The tools also include arts uses & facilities, including artist housing, artist live/work space, and artist manufacturing and production space.

Economic development tools:  These tools cover local, municipal, and regional approaches to promoting cultural economic development, for a range of stakeholders, including cultural enterprises, creative industries, and cultural tourism.

Funding:  These tools present state, federal, and philanthropic sources of funding for arts and culture.

Hot Buttons: Much of the legal and funding information is specific to Massachusetts.


Resources

Arts and Planning Toolkit: Metropolitan Area Planning Council

Image: Flickr/Paul Joseph