What is placemaking?

Placemaking definition

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 connection and belonging. A place that feels like home.

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. Let's make it happen!

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

Places should influence projects

Placemaking is about moving from project-led or discipline-led approaches to people-and-place influencing what kind of projects should be done, how and why. Places should influence projects.

Want more information?

Our courses go into much more detail, or you can contact us for further information.