Placemaking Week

The terms place-making, place making and placemaking are regularly used with infrequent qualification as to meaning and application (and sometimes intentionally so). City officials tend to insert place making as a planning objective guiding design-led new development and regeneration. While Project for Public Spaces, the major player in giving structure and process to the art of Placemaking would say, all place making practice should be participatory, this has not always been the way Placemaking has been practiced. This is changing. Recent initiatives of a global movement of community organisations, NGOs, professionals and academics increasingly advocate community-led processes and outcomes that lead to better public spaces. The collective impact of a number of local projects instigated and/or implemented by local groups can change the way people in a city think about their public spaces, but is there a diminishing return once the “freshness” of a placemaking policy or a placemaking action has worn off? 

This panel will examine the initiatives taken in a few cities to create such mechanisms that include both a perspective on place making (planning policy) and placemaking (participatory action). The moderators will consistently engage speakers and the audience to examine the potential impact and costs of each mechanism.