The Belmont Avenue Taskforce engaged our team of multi-disciplinary designers to support their work to revive a once-thriving business district in Brownsville, Brooklyn through placemaking. We designed an identity and communications materials to engage residents and businesses in ongoing placemaking projects, and developed a guidebook and process map to improve collaboration between the five community organizations on the taskforce.

Read more about our process in the DSI blog, "Be On Belmont" Amplifies Placemaking in Brownsville.

NEEDS ASSESSMENT

To scope our support, we assessed the needs of the five organizations in the taskforce, as well as those of residents and business owners on Belmont, by conducting a series of ethnographic interviews. We identified two problems we could address:

1. The decentralized and novice placemaking efforts of each organization on the taskforce; and

2. The lack of visibility for their projects within the community.

STAKEHOLDER MAPPING

To unify the taskforce's efforts, we mapped each member's roles, objectives, and knowledge in a Collaboration Dashboard, which revealed potential points for more effective collaboration. We also collected case studies and resources on best practices for placemaking in a Placemaking Guide.

COMMUNICATIONS DESIGN

To make the taskforce's work visible externally, we created a suite of materials that the taskforce could use to promote and gain collaborators for its work:

• An inclusive identity for the taskforce’s placemaking work, entitled "Be On Belmont".

• Tailored stakeholder engagement cards to inform and invite residents and businesses on Belmont to participate in the initiative, based on their different needs and interests.

• A placemaking map visualizing all planned activities under Be On Belmont in order to share the taskforce's future vision for Belmont with the community. The map, created in both poster and pocket versions, includes renderings of planned activities, timelines for their implementation, and responsible actors.

Since completion of this project, the Belmont Taskforce has taken ownership over and grown "Be On Belmont", hosting street festivals under the campaign and creating a Be On Belmont Instagram to promote their events.