Oh, the Places You’ll Make: Putting the Unity in Community

Save the date for September 20^th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at UTA’s Bluebonnet Ballroom for the 2023 Downtown Arlington Annual Meeting, Presented by Texas Trust. Downtown Arlington hosts hundreds of Arlington's key stakeholders and game-changers for an annual event highlighting the great achievements taking place in Downtown as well as celebrating future developments. The theme for this year’s event, “Oh the Places You’ll Make,” ties together two things we hold very dear to our hearts, placemaking and Dr. Seuss.

Dr. Seuss’ style of tangible imagination and impractical reality fosters an atmosphere of creativity and pushes the boundaries between dreams and real life. When it came down to choosing a theme for this year’s meeting, Downtown believed the best way to celebrate the creativity of Arlington’s community leaders is through an event based on the King of Imagination himself.

“Seuss was known for his unique capacity to take the imagined worlds held captive in our minds and illustrate them on the pages of his books for children all over the world,” said Maggie Campbell, President and CEO of Downtown Arlington. “His skills are reflective of what it takes to transform an underutilized space into a prosperous, developing city such as Arlington.”

When building and maintaining a city, it takes more than just practical knowledge and rationality. One must also be able to think outside the box and use the parameters of one’s imagination as a basis for real world implications. This is the true essence of placemaking.

Placemaking is the practice of finding unused or non-traditional public spaces and working together to transform them into gathering spaces of shared value for the whole community.

“At its root, placemaking is about the connection between imagination and your environment,” said Campbell. “No idea is too big and no space is too small because you’re pooling together the collective imagination of everyone around you to craft an identity for the community.”

A Special Presentation

The 2023 Downtown Arlington Annual Meeting, presented by Texas Trust, is a great opportunity for various organizations around Arlington to come together and network with other developing businesses and city stakeholders. The event will highlight the importance of placemaking in the development of a community with a feature keynote presentation from Nate Storring, Co-CEO of Project for Public Spaces.

The event concludes as Downtown honors select hardworking community members with the presentation of the Legendary Lionheart Award, Golden Lantern Award, and the pinnacle Dream Builder Award, presented by Texas Trust.

Thank you to our sponsors, University of Texas at Arlington, the City of Arlington, Frost Bank, and Arlington Today, for helping bring this “Seussical” event to life.