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Placemaking is both a process and a philosophy

unite people around a larger vision for a particular place

Placemaking is a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces. Put simply, it involves looking at, listening to, and asking questions of the people who live, work and play in a particular space, to discover their needs and aspirations. This information is then used to create a common vision for that place. The vision can evolve quickly into an implementation strategy, beginning with small-scale, do-able improvements that can immediately bring benefits to public spaces and the people who use them.

Unfortunately the way our communities are built today has become so institutionalized that community stakeholders seldom have a chance to voice ideas and aspirations about the places they inhabit.

Experience has shown us that when developers and planners welcome as much grassroots involvement as possible, they spare themselves a lot of headaches.

underperforming development projects can be avoided by embracing the Placemaking perspective that views a place in its entirety, rather than zeroing in on isolated fragments of the whole.

guidelines that help communities integrate diverse opinions into a vision, then translate that vision into a plan and program of uses, and finally see that the plan is properly implemented.

designing cities that catered to people,

perpetuate the community-driven, bottom-up approach that Placemaking describes.

Placemaking Grows into an International Movement

Why we are failing to generate place capital

Along with the homogenizing forces of globalization, the increasingly placeless nature of our built environment tends toward homogeneity and is created with less participation and resources and less creative processes.

Placemaking for these purposes can be defined as the empowerment and engagement of the individuals in a community to participate in, understand and contribute to the evolution of the spaces that define that community. Placemaking however, is not a new profession, discipline or field of study, but a growing movement that is bringing out the best of professional knowledge and skills while supporting the communities in connecting to places and taking ownership over the planning process and the emerging results.

We are more discerningly and deliberately choosing to identify ourselves with places we feel express our identity, or to use places as a way to express our identity. Now, more than ever, we go were we like.

Seeing ourselves as co-creators of these places, through our relationships as participants, or as placemakers, elevates our role in society to builders of civilization.

The efforts people undertake to improve places that matter to them – Placemaking

We are left only to be passive consumers.

With the increasing importance of place comes the prioritization of happiness as a desired outcome and goal of human settlements. Experiencing a comfortable, engaging, sociable place is offering a compelling opportunity for happiness.

seeing a sense of place as an increasingly important -even vital- part of our lives.

But places are not just defining our communities; they are emerging as the leading factor in defining the global economy and human progress.

In light of this inevitable trend, communities need to define themselves as places to attract place building business and business models need be directly responsive to the places and communities they are meant to serve.

Place Capital, which posits that the economic value of a robust, dynamic place is much more than the sum of its parts.

Great places are created through many “investments” in Place Capital–everything from individual actions that together build a welcoming sense of place, all the way up to major physical changes that make a space usable and accessible.

Project-driven processes generally lead to places that follow a general protocol without any consideration for local needs or desires.

public space projects

tend to fall into one of four types of development

project-driven processes; top-down, bureaucratic leadership

At its core, Place Capital is about re-connecting economy and community.

design-led process.

eliance on the singular vision of professional designers and other siloed disciplines can often make for spaces that are lovely as objects, but not terribly functional as public gathering places.

place-sensitive. Here, designers and architects are still leading the process, but there is concerted effort to gather community input and ensure that the final design responds to the community that lives, works, and plays around the space.

Finally, there are spaces that are created through a place-led approach, which relies not on community input, but on a unified focus on place outcomes built on community engagement. The people who participate in a place-led development process feel invested in the resulting public space, and are more likely to serve as stewards.

They are involved meaningfully throughout the process

turn proximity into purpose

concept of Place Capital is ideally-suited to guide the cooperation of so many individual movements that are looking for ways to work together to change the world for the better. Place Capital employs the Placemaking process to help us outline clear economic goals that re-frame the way that people think not only about public space but, by extension, about the public good in general.

surge of interest in Placemaking in the United States over the past few decades.

But if we see bill reductions when we change our behaviors and make improvements, the more we believe we can act to reduce our bills, and the more likely we are to do more.

In order to combat learned helplessness and shift the perceived locus of control for energy, we believe that a systemic disruption is needed.

We’ve got to shift the perceived locus of control by creating bill reduction “wins” for consumers before we’ll see real, lasting, behavior change.

The results of this are people having the tendency to linger in a beautiful and comfortable environment, and businesses see the benefits of people staying longer which helps to sustain the local economy

Beautiful and meaningful places and spaces create an intransient value to the locality and a sense of pride to the community.

Place-making provides a way of seeing the world through a more sustainable filter, and provides a platform to make the necessary changes and move towards sustainable lifestyles and behaviours.

culture to one that nourishes life and nurtures communities

It is a return to the local and the re-localisation of our economies and communities. Our task is to build resilient places and communities that can easily adapt to the many challenges and imminent changes.

We all know and gravitate towards such places, and yet we keep building ‘empty’ places with little or no sense of ‘spirit of place’. Some would blame globalisation and consumerism on the demise of local communities

Enlightened developers and councils have utilised the new place-making tools to deliver such environments: Rouse Hill Town Centre in northwest Sydney, Flinders Lane (Degreaves/Centre Way) and Victoria Market in Melbourne epitomize the power of place-making.

Partners are critical to the future success and image of a public space improvement project.

They can be local institutions, museums, schools and others.

The vision needs to come out of each individual community.

The best spaces experiment with short term improvements that can be tested and refined over many years! Elements such as seating, outdoor cafes, public art, striping of crosswalks and pedestrian havens, community gardens

encountering obstacles, because no one in either the public or private sectors has the job or responsibility to “create places.”

Starting with small scale community-nurturing improvements can demonstrate the importance of “places” and help to overcome obstacles.