Placemaking: Building Communities Around Spaces

Placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community. 

  • strengthens the connection between people and the places they share
  • goal: maximize shared value 
  • facilitating creative patterns of use
  • paying particular attention to the physical, cultural, and social identities that define a place and support its ongoing evolution
  • centered around community-based participation
    • accesses and capitalizes on local community assists, inspiration, and potential
    • results in the creation of quality public spaces that contribute to people's health, happiness and well being
  • increases communities connection to the places that they live
  • Encourages ordinary citizens to take ownership of the streets
How much voice do community stakeholders usually have?
  • institutionalization of planning processes have rarely allowed stakeholders a chance to voice their ideas.
  • common problems
    • traffic dominated streets
    • little-used parks
    • isolated or underperforming development projects
Key principles in Placemaking
  • integrate diverse opinions into a cohesive vision
  • translate that vision into a plan
  • ensure a sustainable implementation of that plan
  • eleven principles:
    • The community is the expert
    • create a place, not a design
    • look for partners
    • Understanding through observation
    • establish a vision
    • lighter, quicker, cheaper
    • triangualte
    • ignore: "It can't be done"
    • form supports function
    • money is NOT the issue
    • you are never finished
What makes a successful Place?
  • they are "the front porches" of our public institutions
  • Qualities
    • accessibility
    • activities 
    • comfortable
    • sociable

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