Month: March 2021

Understatement of the year: we are living in unusual times. One of our favorite recent memes said “2020: Written by Stephen King. Directed by Quentin Tarantino.” Sounds about right.

Usually, we compensate for a sense of disorientation on this scale by bringing our focus closer to home. And while we’ve certainly all been at home, we haven’t been able to engage with our extended friends, family and neighbors the way we instinctively would have otherwise in, you know, a normal crisis.

Zoom calls, virtual concerts, online book clubs & happy hours have been a godsend for connection, but they’re still facsimiles of the real thing.

We’re starved for community, but we’re all wondering what communal life can look like at a safe distance.

For master-planned and mixed-use communities used to promoting events, amenities and restaurants, the fact that social interaction can’t be one of our key selling points for a while also presents a new marketing challenge.

Or does it?

Can we get creative and, in that, find a way to connect and inspire people?

Here are some thought-starters (and we’d love to hear your ideas!):

Demarcate gathering spaces

People will naturally be hesitant to attend an outdoor concert or performance, but perhaps not if they know no one will encroach on their space. Your landscape architect may have great ideas for how to make a pattern on your parks and squares that would give a family a certain amount of “me space” while outdoors.

Multiple Gazebos

A large park that can’t be used for group sports could offer multiple gazebos to reserve in advance. Even if they’re not all together, seeing neighbors out and about and entertaining their small groups can give a sense of life and activity back to a park.

Artistic Directionals

To share sidewalks and trails on foot, we may want to adopt the same norms we have for driving: walking on the right side. Painted metal arrows could be installed as an inexpensive option to encourage this in your communities.

Check out these artistic directionals and these.

A Plein Air

If we can’t go to museums, maybe we can bring them to us. Open-air art galleries, painting studios and other installations could be toured with safe spacing, and then perhaps a discussion could be started online.

Park Pods

We don’t know if these are called Park Pods, but they should be. Artistic spaces that are natural but also solitary could give people a sense of being able to be in public, in a private way.

The Third Place, from the Car

Drive-in movies are making a big comeback, and there’s no reason we can’t do that on the community level with large screens. Also, with sports teams looking at playing without fans in the stands, the tailgate might play a bigger role. A screen on the outside of the arena could let fans watch from the parking lot (with extra spaces between cars) and, who knows, maybe the crowd noise could get broadcast into the arena to give the players back some connection, too.

We think the most marketable communities in the near future will be those that figure out creative ways to help people share community experiences in a safe way. Does this spark any ideas for you? We’d love to hear from you!