Revealing Story and Healing Rifts: The Potential of Post-Colonial Placemaking

Abstract

Placemaking has become a popular means of imbuing the public realm with vibrancy. Despite placemaking gaining prominence in settler-colonial nations, settler-colonial planning’s approach to place largely remains extractive and exclusionary, while little consideration has been given to the potential of placemaking as a post-colonial endeavour. This article explores the potential for a post-colonial conception of placemaking, developed through investigating three interventions on unceded Kulin Nations land in the south-east of so-called Australia. The findings illustrate how practice grounded in reciprocity, revealing story and, fostering connectedness open portals to placemaking as a post-colonial practice of care and emergent possibility.