City Repair Project
The City Repair Project is group of citizen activists creating public gathering places and helping others to creatively transform the places where they live. With a mostly volunteer staff and the help of hundreds of volunteer citizen activists, our many projects: * educate people about why most American neighborhoods are socially isolating and culturally inactive, and how we can transform them from the grassroots, * inspire people to both understand themselves as part of a larger community and fulfill their own creative potential, and * activate people to be part of the communities around them, as well as part of the decision-making that shapes the future of their communities. A neighbor presents a proposal at the Division Street placemaking workshop, July 2001 at the Red and Black Cafe. City Repair was formed in Portland, Oregon in 1996 by citizen activists who wanted a more community-oriented and ecologically sustainable society. Born out of a successful grassroots neighborhood initiative that converted a residential street intersection into a neighborhood public square, City Repair began its work with the idea that localization (of culture, of economy, of decision-making) is a necessary foundation of sustainability. By reclaiming urban spaces to create community-oriented places, we plant the seeds for greater neighborhood communication, empower our communities and nurture our local culture.