What is placemaking?
A definition of placemaking
Placemaking is a philosophy and an iterative, collaborative process for creating public spaces that people love and feel connected to.
Imagine a street, neighbourhood or urban centre where you feel safe, welcome in, connected to and proud of. A place where you feel a real sense of belonging.
Placemaking is about bringing different people and disciplines together to create positive changes in a place or area. This also includes improving existing spaces to make them more comfortable, accessible, active and attractive.
It is a growing global movement that aims to improve not only the physical elements of a space, but also the way people think and feel about the world around them.
It promotes agency and active citizenship through the collaborative, iterative art and process of creating better places.
For many, it is a time of fear, uncertainty and apprehension. The challenges of our time — climate change and resilience, physical and mental health, equity and inclusion — are global in scale and can often feel overwhelming. The most effective and catalytic solutions can often be found on the local level – our public spaces, streets and neighbourhoods.
Important ingredients of great places
- People who care for and look after the space
- Climate appropriate shade and sun
- Trees and/or greenery. Humans respond to green
- Safe and welcoming
- People and activity. People attract people
- Places to sit and relax. Encourage people to stay awhile
- Easily accessible for people of all ages and abilities
- Things to see and do - reasons to be there
Project for Public Spaces popularised the term in the mid-1990s. It defines placemaking as:
"As both an overarching idea and a hands-on approach for improving a neighborhood, city, or region, placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community. Strengthening the connection between people and the places they share, placemaking refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value.
More than just promoting better urban design ... (and) with community-based participation at its center, an effective placemaking process capitalizes on a local community's assets, inspiration, and potential, and it results in the creation of quality public spaces that contribute to people's health, happiness, and well being."
Placemaking is a collaborative innovation process
Placemaking is a collaborative innovation process that works horizontally across different disciplines, interests and perspectives. It builds from expertise in urban design, economic development, events, activation, asset-based community development, urban planning, arts, engineering, infrastructure, sustainability and more.
For many decades, the city-building professions have generally overlooked the role of public space as the fulcrum of great cities. Instead, they’ve trained their focus narrowly on buildings, businesses, roadways, infrastructure, and regulatory frameworks. From traffic engineers to economic development specialists, these professions have retreated into ‘silos’ that separate them from each other and can blind them to the overall needs of cities, their citizens and the natural world.
Each profession pursues narrow, disconnected goals that add up to far less than the sum of their parts. They also ignore the complexity of places, which are intricate and interconnected systems, just like diverse rainforests.
The place-based approach can help to align different people around a shared agenda of creating a better place.
What placemaking is and is not
Turning principles and ideas into action
Placemaking is all about action, but also who is involved and how it is done.
Each place and group of people are different. What works in one place may not be appropriate nor work in another place.
Our courses are packed full of inspiring and practical tactics, tips and lessons learned from a range of placemakers
with decades of experience. Investing time upfront in learning more will save a lot of time, stress and money
in the delivery of a future program or project.
These are some of the courses we offer, with all our courses and resources available via this webpage.
Want more information?
Our courses go into much more detail, or you can contact us for further information.