![]() ![]() Several neighbors went door to door and took 60 to 70 orders for fruit trees, huckleberry bushes, and other edible plants that will make the neighborhood a “fruitopia,” perfect for “grazing” as people walk through it.” – Mark LakemanĬreation of the Square led to city adoption of the ordinance that allowed similar projects to be created. It gets fired up for neighborhood pizza parties. ![]() One neighbor built an earthen oven in the shape of her Australian tree frog, Oblio. “New projects emerged over the years, as the intersection got repainted for about $500, which was raised by residents. There is more shared childcare and more adults interacting with kids on the street. Families are clustering around it, having kids or bringing their kids, increasing the number of children in the neighborhood. Americans move every four to seven years, and that period of time is visibly lengthening right around that intersection because people want to live there. Since then people have built saunas, put in gardens and helped each other paint their houses. There isn't a social commons that you can attain and occupy.”ĭuring the first project, the neighbors who lived around the intersection came out on the weekend, painted a design in the street, built all the structures around the corners–a bench, a lending library, a 24-hour tea stand, a children’s playhouse, a kiosk for sharing neighborhood information–and turned the intersection into an interactive social space. It’s a movement corridor, and you have to yell across the street because there isn’t a place in the middle. “In America, our great archetype is the main street, which is not really a center. The neighbors chose to transform an intersection, because a crossroads is a gathering place where people come together. None of them are really whole.” – Mark Lakeman. We're housed here, and then this is where we work in order to pay for the housing we barely get to live in. Our lives are zoned like we’re a resource to be managed. We’re not building our own places we’re not designing them to fit our own needs. “Our cities and places are no longer ours. Local residents, including Mark Lakeman, who went on to start City Repair, a local nonprofit that helps citizens design and build social gathering spaces in their neighborhoods, were primarily responsible for the design and implementation of this project. ![]() When a group of Sellwood neighbors began building an unauthorized gathering space, a Portland city official’s response was, “That”s public space. Share-It Square was the first community-initiated and community-built project in Portland. It was first constructed in 1996 for $65. Share-it-Square is at Sherret Street and 9th Avenue in the Sellwood Neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. ![]()
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