We won’t build livable, connected neighborhoods using extractive, colonizing means. Architect and activist Mark Lakeman, in this podcast, offers some deep thinking on decolonizing our cities, and moving from extractive economies to ones that serve people, land, and animals through building connections and trusting the wisdom of people to take power in their places.
Upstream and Mark Lakeman on Grassroots Urban Placemaking
What if you got your neighbors together and occupied the public spaces on your block, transforming them into whatever you would all want it to be? What would you include? …A solar-paneled tea station? A little free library? A mural? This is the type of urban placemaking that the City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon inspires and facilitates.
In this Upstream Conversation, we spoke with Mark Lakeman — an urban place-maker, permaculture designer, and community facilitator who co-founder of The City Repair Project. In the last decade, he has directed, facilitated, or inspired designs for more than three hundred new community-generated public places in Portland, Oregon alone.
We spoke with him while he was visiting Santa Cruz about the capitalist history of the Urban Grid and how to reclaim our streets, revive community, and belong once more to place.