Placemaking in Cities: Creating Inclusive and Vibrant Spaces for All

What is Placemaking?

Placemaking is a strategy that brings people, communities, cities, or regions together to improve the quality of life and environment. Through placemaking reinvention and reimagination of public spaces can be done. This will enable us to strengthen connections between communities. Placemaking is a collaborative process where people can come together to shape public spaces that can be shared by everybody. Existing urban designs can be made better using placemaking. Rather than laying out a new urban plan for the city, planning proper placemaking can shape the city better and also save resources. Placemaking enhances the city in terms of creating various patterns of use and defining particular spaces based on their physical, cultural, and social identities. This process will eventually lead to a gradual evolution that will support the environment and people’s lives positively (What is placemaking?). 

Placemaking involves community-based participation initially, which later on grows to become an asset to the entire city in terms of contributing to the newly designed public spaces and amenities. The quality of these spaces contributes to the well-being of the communities. We can say that this process of placemaking is a ‘give and take’ relationship where communities have to give their time and effort in return for which they get a better living environment (What is placemaking?). 

In interviewing people about their understanding of placemaking, it was found that they think placemaking plays an important role in connecting people. It is a deeply valued process that allows connections among people. Through placemaking, the importance of collective vision came into the spotlight. Reimagination of everyday places like parks, waterfronts, markets, shops, etc into potential meeting hubs can help to create a meaningful community (What is placemaking?). 

The Swedish government was one of the few ones to recognize the importance of place-making and decided to turn their cities into placemaking cities. In 2018 the government decided to rebuild areas around residential buildings, hospitals, schools, parks, etc. These are green spaces that contribute to public health and the environment. This will eventually lead to a sustainable environment. The government wants to use architecture and design as these two have a direct influence on the daily lives of people (Placemaking, 2019)

Main Objectives of Placemaking Cities

The cities of European countries like Sweden, Norway, Italy, and many others are working towards intercultural cities in placemaking. The cities are working with my objectives that will lead to creating a better present and future for its citizens and future generations. Therefore the Council of Europe is taking measures to educate the participants about placemaking. This will help in getting better feedback and also building comprehensive projects. The main objectives of these are: 

1. To develop an understanding of the principles of placemaking, its advantages and challenges, and how to tackle them. Implementation of placemaking can lead to successful and sustainable projects.  
2. To evaluate the influence of policies and arrangements that are organized in the process of placemaking, as well as to develop strategies that can overcome common problems and help to foster effective collaborations between various departments and to create innovative approaches.
3. To develop the necessary skills required to create the transition from a short-term project to long long-term using a systemic strategy that will involve broader governance and frameworks as well as engaging stakeholders that have visions for the city and its future. 
4. To create a network of leaders that can lead the long-term vision into reality by using comprehensive placemaking strategies that will help everyone to create vibrant and inclusive areas within the city. The implementation must be equipped with all the required knowledge and skills so that placemaking reaches a larger framework of the city and its governance and policies (Placemaking 2019). 

How to make an Idea come to Reality?

One of the main strategies of placemaking is to help stakeholders voice their opinions about their cities or communities. With the rapid modernization of spaces, people who have been concerned about their cities and their well-being were ignored. But through placemaking, everyone becomes a stakeholder in the projects. Thus allowing everyone to come up with their ideas and progressively design the cities. The ideas can be brought to life with the help of counseling from professionals such as architects, designers, planners, and engineers. There are many examples of projects where locals played an important role in building a project. Strategic involvement of people can help planners to design public projects or spaces fruitfully (What is placemaking?).

The term placemaking has become even more popular not just in the architecture field but in many other fields that require the participation of local people and stakeholders. Unfortunately, it has become a trend to use the owed ‘placemaking’ without actually using participation. This leads to failed projects and needs to be avoided. Moreover, projects that don’t involve placemaking will only harm the people around it and future generations. It is necessary to protect the essence of the word using honesty (What is placemaking?). 

Placemaking cities requires planners to use thorough strategies that will help them by involving every person in the community if possible. It is as if the people are building for themselves. It is a way to bring many communities together who work towards the betterment of society as well as the environment. The most important role of a placemaking city is to be inclusive of everyone. These cities must serve everyone in the community regardless of their abilities, social backgrounds, economic backgrounds, etc. Involvement of everyone will bring out the true essence of the city and the importance of placemaking will be highlighted (What is placemaking?). 

References:

1. Intercultural cities in placemaking – intercultural cities programme – www.coe.int (no date) Intercultural cities programme. Available at: https://www.coe.int/en/web/interculturalcities/placemaking#:~:text=Placemaking%20is%20an%20approach%20to,spaces%20lasting%20for%20the%20future. (Accessed: 06 October 2023). 
2. What is placemaking? (no date) RSS. Available at: https://www.pps.org/article/what-is-placemaking (Accessed: 06 October 2023). 
3. Placemaking (2019) Smart City Sweden. Available at: https://smartcitysweden.com/focus-areas/urban-planning/place-making/ (Accessed: 07 October 2023). 
4. (No date a) Five placemaking projects that inspire US – Innovation Quarter. Available at: https://www.innovationquarter.com/articles/five-inspiring-placemaking-projects/ (Accessed: 07 October 2023). 
5. Dhagey, J. (2022) Placemaking can reimagine public places, connect people with nature, and strengthen people’s movements, Question of Cities. Available at: https://questionofcities.org/placemaking-can-reimagine-public-places-connect-people-with-nature-and-strengthen-peoples-movements/ (Accessed: 07 October 2023).