Placemaking Week 2024

This panel addresses the unique challenge of reimagining trauma-infused spaces and how community engagement can help ensure inclusive placemaking. This will be explored through the case study of the “Framing the Future of the Roundhouse” project, a placemaking project centered on informing the future of the former Philadelphia Police Headquarters building, commonly called the Roundhouse. Through an unprecedented engagement process, the City of Philadelphia sought to enable community voices to guide the redevelopment of the now vacant building, which had served as police headquarters from 1963 until 2022. In the wake of the George Floyd protests and rising awareness of inequity and past harms, reckoning with the history of contentious buildings undergoing redevelopment, like this one, is vital. This community engagement process gathered insights from diverse voices to inform the future of the Roundhouse, encouraging people to tell stories and reimagine the future of this architecturally significant, mid-century expressionist building located near Philadelphia’s Chinatown in Center City. For some, the building is an architectural marvel, while for others it is a symbol of urban renewal and police brutality. The placemaking process centered on gathering and understanding the stories and memories associated with the Roundhouse, unpuzzling the complex relationship Philadelphians have with this site, and ideating on its future. In this panel conversation, we’ll share strategies used to create accessible, safe placemaking opportunities for community members, emphasizing successful approaches and lessons learned throughout the process. We’ll describe the youth-led, art-based engagement efforts, in-person tactics (like Chinese lantern creation, a collaborative mural, and establishing a podium to amplify oral histories) and virtual engagement tactics (like a multimedia memory wall) that were used in this project. These real-world examples and tools will help panel attendees conduct sensitive conversations in communities and inform placemaking in similar spaces.