Placemaking Revisited

Abstract

UN Habitat recently adopted its first public space resolution, which incentivizes international communities to employ placemaking strategies and encourage inclusive and sustainable community change through physical urban design. Scholars argue that healthy, creative, and walkable places, parks, and streets stimulate people's interpersonal interactions and, supposedly, renovate abandoned, disenfranchised communities (Florida 2002; Glaeser 2011; Duany and Plater-Zyberk 1994). However, one needs to recognize the limits of this philosophy. With this explorative piece we aim to start a productive debate over questions related to whether genuine community change is possible through placemaking today. Can walkable, comfortable, interactive, and creative public space nurture equality, inclusion, and social justice? Does placemaking offer communities necessary safety nets to protect them from the negative effects of economic growth and market competition in cities? Or, is placemaking today merely one of the many marketing strategies helping cities compete for external investments in the era of neoliberal capitalism, especially when public services are undermined or completely diminished? In this piece, we briefly explore various effects of capital circulating through urban spaces and the complex interactions of actors involved in placemaking. We hope others will expand and build upon this introductory endeavor. Comfortable and interactive public spaces are, ideally, accessible not only to the affluent. But, without commitment to social welfare programs such as rent controls, zoning regulations, provision of affordable housing, or access to public transportation, any revitalized neighborhood would inevitably face land value increases followed by escalating real estate prices and, most likely, evictions of local communities (Slater 2011). Several cities around the world are currently expanding and testing placemaking initiatives, also known as restructuring, revitalization or regeneration of urban spaces.