HEART OF THE COMMUNITY
Right at Home
By supporting Project for Public Spaces, Southwest serves Customers and Employees in their own communities. ACROSS THE MAP
Southwest Airlines has supported placemaking in 13 communities.
“Everyone has the right to live in a great place. More importantly, everyone has the right to contribute to making the place where they already live great.” —Fred Kent, Founder, Project for Public Spaces Four years ago, Southwest set out on a quest. With help from our Employees, we wanted to find a meaningful way to help make the communities we serve not just great places to visit but also great places to live. In this search, we discovered the nonprofit Project for Public Spaces and learned about placemaking—a pioneering approach that helps citizens transform public spaces into vital places that highlight local assets, spur rejuvenation, and serve common needs. Placemaking spoke to the heart of who we are at Southwest, so we teamed up with Project for Public Spaces in 2013 for three pilot projects and then created
the Heart of the Community Program in April 2014, committing ourselves to three more years of support. Since then, Southwest has awarded grants to 13 communities. From building a “beach” in downtown Detroit to kick-starting programming and activities in an underutilized plaza in Albuquerque, New Mexico, these projects engage residents and honor their vision. The program’s primary goals are to help communities across the country bring new life to their public spaces; raise mainstream awareness of placemaking as a catalyst for building sustainable, healthy, inclusive, and economically viable communities; and encourage community participation that benefits public spaces.
Our efforts are paying off: Heart of the Community was recently highlighted in the 2015 United States Conference of Mayors Business Council Best Practice Report: Mayors and Businesses Driving Economic Growth. And by investing in placemaking and engaging our Employees in related volunteer efforts, Southwest is making a bold statement about the vital role people and public spaces play in our communities. We will soon be announcing a new roster of grant recipients, which were selected from hundreds of applications submitted by dedicated community advocates. The resulting projects will help us continue to demonstrate the power of placemaking and the importance of connecting People to what’s important in their lives. Follow us throughout 2016 to see more great stories from the Heart of the Community program. Maybe you’ll discover some new places to explore and love. To learn more about placemaking and the Heart of the Community program, visit pps.org. —Megan Lee, Senior Manager, Community Programs & Engagement
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