Throughout 2017, the League’s Review magazine featured updates on the successes, failures and lessons learned from the 20+ local community engagement and redevelopment initiatives facilitated by League staff, Michigan State University faculty and expert consultants as part of the PlacePlans pilot program. PlacePlans was sponsored by MSHDA, MSU and the MML Foundation. It helped catalyze dramatic downtown transformations in cities like Jackson and Cadillac, creative redevelopments like Kalamazoo’s Fare Games competition and innovative approaches to civic engagement in Traverse City.

Now, we’ve collected all of these “Where Are They Now?” articles and posted them on the PlacePlans program page (as well as the links in the previous paragraph). In addition, you can review a summary of a study Wayne State University performed measuring the effectiveness of the program and its most important components.

Thanks go to our guest authors and contributors who helped with this article series throughout 2017: John Wallace and Marcus Peccia with the City of Cadillac, Patrick Burtch with the City of Jackson, Kathy Jennings from Second Wave, Kelly Clarke with the Kalamazoo County Land Bank and Nathan Elkins from Influence Design Forum.