Community-Built ─ Art, Construction, Preservation, and Place

Throughout history and around the world, community members have come together to build places, be it settlers constructing log cabins in nineteenth-century Canada, an artist group creating a waterfront gathering place along the Danube in Budapest, or residents helping revive small town Main Streets in the United States. What all these projects have in common is that they involve local volunteers in the construction of public and community places; they are community-built.

Although much attention has been given to specific community-built movements such as public murals and community gardens, little has been given to defining community-built as a whole. This volume provides a preliminary description of community-built practices with examples from the disciplines of urban design, historic preservation, and community art.

Taken as a whole, these community-built projects illustrate how the process of local involvement in adapting, building, and preserving a built environment can strengthen communities and create places that are intimately tied to local needs, culture, and community. The lessons learned from this volume can provide community planners, grassroots facilitators, and participants with an understanding of what can lead to successful community-built art, construction, preservation, and place making.

Kristin Faurest is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Landscape Architecture at Corvinus University of Budapest. Dr. Faurest, who arrived in Europe as a Peace Corps volunteer, has authored several books and articles on community-based planning, social justice in spatial planning and on the role of small public spaces in urban life. Aside from teaching, she designs gardens and manages community planning processes for clients including neighborhood groups, schools, and institutions.

Katherine Melcher is an Associate Professor of landscape architecture at the University of Georgia’s College of Environment and Design. Her research focuses on the interaction between design and community development, in particular, participatory processes in the design of community spaces. Her design work has been featured in Landscape Architecture, Designer/Builder, 1000x Landscape Architecture, and Architecture for Change.

Barry L. Stiefel is an Associate Professor in the Historic Preservation & Communty Planning program at the College of Charleston. He is interested in how the sum of how local preservation efforts affects regional, national, and multi-national policies within the field of cultural resource management and heritage conservation. Dr. Stiefel has published numerous books and articles.