Shaping a City’s Future Through Civic Infrastructure
How Macon is ensuring a plan for a more robust civic commons doesn’t just sit on a shelf
Macon is a city of over 150,000 residents that lies directly in the heart of Georgia, serving as the heart of commerce and culture in the central part of the state. Despite its small size, it is an example of how an innovative, strategic, and community-led approach to the public realm leads to a more engaged, resilient city. In particular, Macon’s integrated work to improve its downtown core provides insights into how democratized implementation can inform cities, large and small.
Macon’s public space approach has been and is guided by the implementation of the comprehensive Macon Action Plan (MAP), first approved in 2015 and updated in 2020. This community-driven plan is an ambitious reimagining of Macon’s urban core — the downtown and surrounding inner-ring neighborhoods — providing guidance on transforming it into a place that is welcoming to everyone, supports economic vitality and increases access to green space.
Over the span of a few years, by creating a focused set of goals and specific steps to accomplish those goals, Macon was able to see over 80 percent of the original MAP completed, including the creation of mixed-use developments in downtown, rehabilitated vacant housing in urban core neighborhoods like Beall’s Hill, Pleasant Hill, and Fort Hawkins/East Macon, the rollout of exciting programming in the city’s public spaces, more vibrant streets and an improved pedestrian and bicycle experience. MAP 2.0 continues this work, with a particular focus on ensuring the urban core is kid-friendly, inclusive, creative, and even more green.
A “democratized” implementation process that boosts innovation
From the beginning, the planning process and the actions guided by the plan ensured that MAP didn’t just sit on the shelf. Core to encouraging a diverse group of community organizations and individuals to adopt the Macon Action Plan, turning it from paper to reality, is the “Downtown Challenge Grant” program. This grant program invites anyone — residents and local organizations — to advance MAP 2.0 by proposing and receiving funding for transformational projects that continue to make the city’s urban core “inclusive, creative and greener.” The first round of grants from the Community Foundation of Central Georgia (with additional support from the Peyton Anderson Foundation and the John L. and James S. Knight Foundation) were given out in June of 2021 and ranged from $1,500 to $50,000, all supporting a creative variety of resident-driven ideas.
For instance, nonprofit Bike Walk Macon will install bike racks, bust stop benches and improved street lighting, encouraging the use of non-car transportation around the city. The Macon Museum of Arts and Sciences received funding to host pop-up wildlife encounters in Macon’s public spaces by bringing animals like lemurs, owls, and giant tortoises to people in the city. Other projects are using art to improve the facades of vacant storefronts, highlighting Black-owned businesses, hosting a community-run outdoor film festival, and creating more outdoor murals.
The Downtown Challenge exemplifies a key component of Macon’s approach: democratized implementation. Macon engages local organizations, agencies and residents to actualize the vision of MAP 2.0, supporting them with the funding to do it. This diffusion of responsibility for implementation allows the local community to take part in the work of revitalizing Macon’s urban core, and leverages a wide range of local creativity, skills and expertise. This leads to projects and innovations that a city or county government alone might not accomplish in-house — and builds a larger network of champions for public space across the city.
A trail along the river connects people and neighborhoods
A priority of MAP 2.0 is connecting Macon’s urban core to other neighborhoods and increasing the access of residents to green spaces. The Ocmulgee Heritage Trail — a project that reconnects the neighborhoods in Macon’s urban core and connects these neighborhoods to downtown destinations like public parks and the Ocmulgee Riverfront — delivers on both fronts. The trail runs along both sides of the Ocmulgee River, which flows through downtown Macon. Along the trail are dozens of species of trees and local plant and animal life.
The Heritage Trail was conceived during a time when Macon businesses and residents were leaving downtown, leading to an increase in empty storefronts and vacant homes. Downtown had been disconnected from the riverfront and many nearby neighborhoods physically by highways and high-speed roads, reducing residents’ access to green spaces and reducing the ability of people to connect to others in nearby neighborhoods. Research has shown that access to green space improves quality of life, increases a neighborhood’s economic value, improves mental and physical health and encourages sustainable transportation methods like walking and biking, so removing barriers that kept Macon residents from green spaces and each other was a priority.
Today the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail is 11 miles long and continues to grow. Along the trail are numerous public parks, art displays, and historic destinations including the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park, a monument to 17,000 years of continuous human habitation in Central Georgia. The Heritage Trail is connecting residents to important sites in the ongoing story of Macon, bringing together the city’s historic neighborhoods, and expanding to allow residents to engage with each other while making access to green space and economic resources is a top priority.
Central gathering spaces that welcome all
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the country have sought out parks and green spaces as options for safer gathering spaces, increasing the need for a vibrant public realm. In Macon’s historic downtown, median parks — the spaces that separate opposing lanes of traffic — had been underutilized and under-programmed for many years, but during the pandemic, they became active meeting places and community gathering spots. A recent pilot farmers market in Poplar Street’s renovated median park was a resounding success, sparking more ambitious ideas for their use that include a vertical playground, a permanent open-air market and reimagining the roads that surround the median to be more kid- and pedestrian-friendly.
MAP 2.0 identifies these downtown spaces as both places for people to gather as well as ideal locations to connect to the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail. By connecting a system of urban core parks linked to the Trial, Macon is creating recreation spaces that are also the backbone of a sustainable and equitable transportation network.
Rosa Parks Square sits just across the street from Macon’s City Hall, ideally situated to serve as a central node for gathering, free speech and major community events — and yet it is rarely used and uninviting to people passing by. Thanks in part to a new fund approved by the Bibb County Commission, The Friends of Rosa Parks Square are actively making the square more welcoming with improvements like new shading, benches and free public Wi-Fi. Creating an inclusive place that is welcome to all is top of mind for The Friends of Rosa Parks Square, whose goal is a vibrant gathering place that honors Black and African American members of the Macon community. Construction will begin in the first quarter of 2022.
Leveraging community assets for neighborhood stabilization
As downtown undergoes a process of revitalization, attention to and stabilization of the surrounding neighborhoods in the urban core that are a key part of Macon’s culture remains important. The historic Black community in the Pleasant Hill neighborhood thrived from the late 1870’s into the early 20th century, but in story familiar to many cities in the United States, a highway was built that cut through the neighborhood in the 1960s. Over time, this led to the displacement of many in the community, depreciated home values and cut neighbors off from one another. Over the years, people as people left the community, homes, storefronts and other structures were left vacant, a damaging legacy that still persists today — it has been estimated that 11 football fields worth of land is currently vacant in Pleasant Hill. The good news: in collaboration with neighbors, changes are on the way.
MAP 2.0 outlines a three-step approach to activating investment in this neighborhood. Step one is stabilization of vacant properties, beautifying the public realm and prioritizing the pedestrian and bicycle experience to improve the connection between Pleasant Hill and downtown. Step two focuses on rehabbing existing structures, one block at a time. Step three uses the newly reopened Booker T. Washington Community Center as an anchor for the community, creating programming and recreation opportunities for residents, including a job training center and summer pop-up pool. Other plans for Pleasant Hill include the creation of a pedestrian path to reconnect the two sides of the neighborhood cut off from each other by a highway.
Mill Hill is another urban neighborhood that has suffered from vacant properties and decreasing property values. A revitalization effort is underway in the creation of the East Macon Arts Village, which is repurposing abandoned houses and into renovated and affordable homes for local artists. A partnership between neighborhood residents, community groups, Macon Arts Alliance and, the Macon-Bibb County Urban Development the project will create economic opportunities for people in the arts, who otherwise might not be able to own a home, which in turn attracts and retains talented and creative people in Macon’s urban core, where they contribute to the vibrancy of downtown. To date, seven homes have been renovated and sold in the neighborhood with more construction underway.
The village is just across the way from the newly renovated Mill Hill Community Arts Center where artists can showcase their work, lead arts programming for the community, and connect with other artists and explore new projects. East Macon Arts Village demonstrates how supporting a particular community’s need for housing can fulfill multiple strategic priorities, such as creating a more inclusive and creative community, all while leveraging community assets like the Arts Center and trailheads as anchors.
Building momentum for a shared vision
Macon’s ambitious plans and community-driven approach have led to out-sized outcomes and steady progress. And momentum continues to build on MAP 2.0, as a recent investment shows: NewTown Macon and the Historic Macon Foundation are using funds from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to increase affordable housing in the neighborhoods that make up Macon’s urban core. The Knight Foundation is doubling this impact by matching the funds from ARPA for this MAP 2.0 priority.
The model of recognizing community priorities through democratized implementation — a strategy that captures the creative energy of residents and organizations — shows how a collaborative approach can improve a community for the benefit of everyone. Macon’s work demonstrates that the power of a shared vision of the future combined with on-the-ground investments in civic infrastructure can truly shape a city, today and in the years to come.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
