A growing number of urban practitioners and scholars are interested in using digital storytelling to strengthen neighborhood connections to shared culture and build a coherent sense of place. This article contributes to this discussion by investigating how ‘urban furniture’ can sustain social capacity for digital placemaking. While traditional ‘urban furniture’ in public space is purely physical, digital-physical hybrids are emerging, from benches that tell stories to bus stops that play videos. This extended case follows the travels of an Afrofuturist piece of urban furniture: a community-hacked payphone called Sankofa Red. Our analysis triangulates findings across three installations to show how placemaking can be sustained as a social process: as part of a successful makeover of a community plaza, featured in a neighborhood history game, and in an art exhibition on race and ethnicity. We identify promising practices to adapt urban furniture and retain design collectives beyond a single placemaking installation. As a way for cities to build capacity, we propose that rotating one kind urban furniture (e.g., payphones) across neighborhoods can build the social capacity for placemaking around a shared technical foundation, while still prioritizing local needs and culture.

越来越多的城市从业者和学者对使用数字叙事来增强社区与共享文化的联系并建立连贯的场所感感兴趣。本文通过研究“城市家具”如何维持数字场所的社交能力，为这一讨论做出了贡献。尽管传统的公共场所“城市家具”纯粹是物理的，但数字物理混合技术正在兴起，从讲故事的长凳到播放视频的公交车站。这种扩展的案例遵循了一名非洲裔主义者的城市家具旅行：一个名为Sankofa Red的社区入侵公用电话。我们的分析对三个装置的调查结果进行了三角剖分，以显示场所制作如何作为一种社会过程得以维持：作为成功改造社区广场的一部分，该广场在社区历史游戏中得到了体现，在关于种族和民族的艺术展览中。我们确定了一些有前途的做法，以适应城市家具的需求，并保留设计场所，而不仅仅是单个场所安装装置。作为城市建设能力的一种方式，我们建议在社区中轮流使用一种城市家具（例如公用电话），可以围绕共享的技术基础来建立场所的社交能力，同时仍然优先考虑本地需求和文化。