CCB helps communities to identify cultural and creative assets - and to leverage them for community revitalization and change. Working in urban districts, neighborhoods, towns, and small cities, our process draws from methods from strategic planning, community organizing and capacity building.

CCB is often drawn to projects that actively integrate culture, design, civic engagement, and local economies.

CCB teams draw from a network of accomplished planners, designers, placemakers and artists who are passionate about helping communities get into gear! We compose teams carefully to fit the scope of work and budget, then work closely with community leaders to assess, set a place-based vision, formulate a plan, put strategic actions into motion, and devise evaluative measures.

New from Tom Borrup: The Power of Culture in City Planning

The Power of Culture in City Planning focuses on human diversity, strengths, needs, and ways of living together in geographic communities. The book turns attention to the anthropological definition of culture, encouraging planners in both urban and cultural planning to focus on characteristics of humanity in all their variety. It calls for a paradigm shift, re-positioning city planners’ “base maps” to start with a richer understanding of human cultures. Borrup argues for cultural master plans in parallel to transportation, housing, parks, and other specialized plans, while also changing the approach of city comprehensive planning to put people or “users” first rather than land “uses” as does the dominant practice. Available for Pre-order...

“Tom has written one of the most thoughtful books on how to think, plan and act culturally. This helps us reimagine how to create great cities that go with the grain of who they are and their local distinctiveness. And that in the end gives them strength and personality” -Charles Landry (inventor of the creative city concept, one of leading thinkers on cultural planning, and author of The Creative City and The Art of City Making)

The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking

Edited By Cara Courage, Tom Borrup, Maria Rosario Jackson, Kylie Legge, Anita Mckeown, Louise Platt, and Jason Schupbach

This Handbook is the first to explore the emergent field of ‘placemaking’ in terms of the recent research, teaching and learning, and practice agenda for the next few years. Offering valuable theoretical and practical insights from the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, it provides cutting-edge interdisciplinary research on the placemaking sector. It consists of 45 chapters by contributors from across the world. This seminal Handbook offers a timely contribution and international perspectives for the growing field of placemaking. It will be of interest to academics and students of placemaking, urban design, urban planning and policy, architecture, geography, cultural studies, and the arts. Available for Pre-order...