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parks, downtowns, waterfronts, plazas, neighborhoods, streets, markets, campuses and public buildings

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

Like other transactional aspects of sustainability, most notably supply chain issues, getting the incentives right allows for greater transparency, better decision-making, and more “sustainable” sustainability solutions.

NGOs and civil society organizations can develop credible standards, decipher local issues, and create the environment that supports sustainable urban growth.

Business can deploy systems that address real social and environmental challenges — along with the partnership of government and civil society

Government policies can create income distribution, economic and social mobility, the right incentives for the private sector to invest, space for truly engaged discussion, and a commitment to longer-term sustainability strategies.

City-focused initiatives, lead by NGOs and the private sector, are drawing more attention to the clear opportunities, but the results are still lagging behind the pace of the growing challenges. While innovation is important for developing sustainability solutions, technologies and infrastructure systems that will help achieve sustainable growth already exist. Companies that provide infrastructure systems and components for energy, buildings, and transportation, must push fast-forward to deploy these technologies faster. They can start by collectively understanding the challenges and the role that each stakeholder sector can play in support of sustainable growth:

At BSR, we know that when business engages stakeholders proactively, the insights gained will lead to more informed decision-making, more valuable collaboration, and more inspired business models. The challenges are large, but the quiet and unstoppable megatrends are larger. The sooner meaningful engagement is at the forefront of the sustainable urban infrastructure agenda, the sooner we can hit fast-forward and have a chance at truly sustainable growth.

Per capita economic activity increases 10 percent with every 5-percentage-point increase in urban population.

Just like in corporations, setting goals and having a vision proves to be an essential start for cities that want to engage business. The WBCSD Urban Infrastructure Initiative (UII)

“Cities are looking at sustainability as their strategy,”

The global infrastructure and technology firm Siemens also entered the fray with its Green City Index, which ranks more than 120 global cities on a variety of environmental dimensions. Cities at the bottom have the greatest opportunities, and the ones at the top have the most lessons to offer

“I talk to cities about their strategy and goals just like I would with a company. City CSOs are making the same decisions as companies and have very similar challenges with internal engagement.

Matthew Lynch, the project lead, said one of the main success factors is the opportunity for direct and open dialogue. “The companies in the UII are engaging collaboratively with cities upstream in the planning process, demonstrating the value of the early involvement of business and showing how a multisector group of leading companies can help cities find integrated solutions to interconnected challenges,”

encourage the idea that it was business, not just individual companies working with cities.

The WBCSD expects that companies will use the landscape reports to refine their own approaches to working with these cities, targeting specific challenges and opportunities.

Kate Brass, GE Energy’s ecomagination program manager, said there’s a “need for better coordination and understanding among governments, industries, and NGOs so that cities holistically plan for and build the infrastructure of tomorrow rather than create an infrastructure of mismatched components and potentially stranded assets."

The companies in the UII are engaging collaboratively with cities upstream in the planning process, demonstrating the value of the early involvement of business and showing how a multisector group of leading companies can help cities find integrated solutions to interconnected challenges,” he said.

The “solution landscape” presents a menu of potential options for cities to address their key sustainability challenges. Lynch said one of the main success factors is the opportunity for direct and open dialogue. “Business adds value by being involved in the beginning, looking at the big plan, and looking at the issues landscape and challenges,” he said. WBCSD decided to work with multiple companies as opposed to a more ad hoc engagement to encourage the idea that it was business, not just individual companies working with cities.

The WBCSD expects that companies will use the landscape reports to refine their own approaches to working with these cities, targeting specific challenges and opportunities.

One significant challenge with deploying sustainable infrastructure solutions in cities is the vastly different time cycles used by business and government.

“Our experience is that building trust is critical.

there’s a “need for better coordination and understanding among governments, industries, and NGOs so that cities holistically plan for and build the infrastructure of tomorrow rather than create an infrastructure of mismatched components and potentially stranded assets.

“The aging population is the fastest-growing cohort, yet most of our cities are designed by men for young men in commerce,” he noted. How will women, children, and the elderly thrive in those cities?

At BSR, we know that when business engages stakeholders proactively, the insights gained will lead to more informed decision-making, more valuable collaboration, and more inspired business models.

The sooner meaningful engagement is at the forefront of the sustainable urban infrastructure agenda, the sooner we can hit fast-forward and have a chance at truly sustainable growth.

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.

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.