What Is Placemaking?

As Placemaking continues to grow as a mainstream idea, PPS warns against its transformation into a fashionable “brand,” which would narrow and diminish its fundamental importance for communities everywhere.

roject for Public Spaces has been using the term Placemaking for years to describe our place-centered approach to helping citizens improve public spaces and make great communities. Recently we’ve noticed the phrase popping up more and more, everywhere from student blogs to real estate ads. So, we decided to conduct a survey on our web site asking people to give us their definitions of “Placemaking.” We hoped to better understand the scope and influence of the term and gain insight about our own practices as Placemakers. The wave of responses we received was uplifting, as hundreds of people eagerly offered their own vision of what the word means. In this representative list, see what visitors to PPS.org said "Placemaking" means to them. The common threads in these submissions were inspiring: over and over, people identified the elements of emotion, a sense of belonging, and a spiritual connection that are part of any successful Placemaking process.

“Placemaking is a dynamic human function: it is an act of liberation, of staking claim, and of beautification; it is true human empowerment.”

“Placemaking is the art of creating public ‘places of the soul,’ that uplift and help us connect to each other.”

Placemaking is “making a Public Space a Living Space.”

From the Heart of a Community

lacemaking is not just the act of building or fixing up a space, but a whole process that fosters the creation of vital public destinations: the kind of places where people feel a strong stake in their communities and a commitment to making things better. Simply put, Placemaking capitalizes on a local community's assets, inspiration, and potential, ultimately creating good public spaces that promote people's health, happiness, and well being. As our survey responses suggest, this process is essential--even sacred--to people who truly care about the places in their lives.

Unfortunately, the way cities, towns and suburbs are built today has become so institutionalized that community stakeholders seldom have the opportunity to voice their ideas and aspirations about the places they inhabit. In order for the process of Placemaking to be truly effective, we at PPS have learned that planners, designers, and engineers must move beyond their habit of looking at communities through the narrow lens of single-minded goals or rigid professional disciplines. Experience has shown us that when developers and planners take advantage of the inclusive, multi-dimensional nature of Placemaking--which welcomes as much grassroots involvement as possible--they spare themselves a lot of serious headaches. Common problems like traffic-dominated streets, little-used parks, and isolated, underperforming development projects can be avoided by this process of viewing a place in its entirety, rather than zeroing in on isolated fragments of the whole.

For more than 30 years, PPS has acted as an advocate and resource for Placemaking, continually making the case that a collaborative community process which pays attention to issues on the small scale is the best approach in creating and revitalizing public spaces. The abundance and passion of the responses to our “What is Placemaking?” question reminded us again just how crucial this process is for the hearts, minds, and spirits of a community. We are more convinced than ever that Placemaking is the fundamental building-block of successful communities.

Placemaking is “creating for everybody.”

Placemaking is not a new idea

he concepts behind Placemaking originated in the 1960s, when visionaries like Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte offered groundbreaking ideas about designing cities that catered to people, not just to cars and shopping centers. Their work centered around the idea that it was important to create and maintain lively neighborhoods and inviting public spaces. Jane Jacobs advocated citizen ownership of streets through the now-famous idea of “eyes on the street.” Holly Whyte emphasized the details of urban spaces (e.g. the importance of the movable chair, water, and food) as essential elements to creating social life in public spaces.

Using the wisdom of Jacobs, Whyte, and others, PPS began to develop a different approach for helping communities make better public spaces beginning in 1975. The term can now be heard in many settings--not only by citizens committed to grassroots community improvement but by planners and developers who use it as a fashionable “brand” that implies authenticity and quality even when their projects don’t always live up to that promise. Using “Placemaking” to label a process that really doesn’t focus on public participation or result in lively, genuine communities dilutes the true meaning and value of this powerful philosophy.

Placemaking is at the heart of PPS's work and mission, but we do not trademark it as our property. It belongs to anyone who is sincere about creating great places by drawing on the collective wisdom of those who live, work and play there. We do feel, however, it is our responsibility to continue to protect and perpetuate the community-driven, bottom-up approach that Placemaking describes. Over the last 30 years, we have taken satisfaction in watching the concept of Placemaking take on deeper meaning, new interpretations, and greater prominence through the hard work of many citizens and professionals who care about the future of their communities. To see this useful term hijacked and reduced to a mere brand in order to sell a watered-down or even cynically wrongheaded version of community is sorely disappointing.

“Placemaking makes places that have meaning to people, enduring patterns of community use, and memorable physical qualities.”

When you focus on place, you do things differently

e believe that a deeper public understanding of the essential qualities of Placemaking will ensure that the term does not lose its original meaning or promise. Making a place is not the same as constructing a building, designing a plaza, or developing a commercial zone. When people enjoy a place for its special social and physical attributes, and when they are allowed to influence decision-making about that space, then you see genuine Placemaking in action.

For us, placemaking is both a process and a philosophy. It takes root when a community expresses needs and desires about places in their lives, even if there is not yet a clearly defined plan of action. Downtown would be a better place if it felt safer and more pleasant for pedestrians... There should be a place close to home where my kids can play!... How can we bring people together in our neighborhood, our apartment building, or our town? The yearning to unite people around a larger vision for a particular place is often present long before the word “Placemaking” is ever mentioned. Once the term is introduced, however, it enables people to realize just how dynamic their collective vision can be, and allows them to look with fresh eyes at the potential of parks, downtowns, waterfronts, plazas, neighborhoods, streets, markets, campuses and public buildings. It's part of an exciting re-examination of everyday settings and experiences in our lives.

“Placemaking is a process that identifies publicly accessible spaces that have or potentially have unrealized meaning, value and utility. Placemaking works to help realize these potentials.”

The Bedrock Foundation of Placemaking:
A bottom-up, inclusionary and universally accessible process

t the outset, this approach provides communities with the springboard they need to discover their own methods of visioning and revitalization--a process centered around a keen understanding of what constitutes a successful place and how best to involve the community in creating one. We draw upon the 11 Principles of Placemaking, which have grown out of our experiences working with communities in 26 countries and nearly every state and province in the U.S. These are guidelines that help overcome the challenges inherent in integrating a community’s often diverse opinions into a vision, and then translating that vision into a plan and program of uses, and seeing that the plan is properly implemented. Community input is essential to this Placemaking process, but so is an understanding of a particular place and of the ways great places can grow into successful social networks and initiatives. Using these 11 Principles and other tools we’ve developed for improving places, like the concept of the "Power of Ten", can bring immense changes to a community--sometimes more than stakeholders ever dreamed possible.

This process of Placemaking isn't always easy: consensus can be hard to reach, and establishing a framework for change that involves as many stakeholders as possible takes time. We believe that places constantly evolve as a community changes, and that in order for a community member or other stakeholder to receive immediate benefits from Placemaking, small changes, even temporary or experimental ones, must be implemented as soon as possible. Improving public spaces and the lives of people who use them means finding the patience to take small steps, to truly listen to people, and to see what works best, eventually turning a group vision into the reality of a great public place.

Placemaking is Growing into a Broad, International Movement

s more communities engage in Placemaking and more professionals call their work "Placemaking," preserving the integrity of Placemaking and its power to change a place for the better is essential. A great public space cannot be measured simply by physical attributes—it must be a vital place where function is put ahead of form. The sacred nature of true Placemaking is apparent in the reactions it evokes from those involved. As one of the respondents to our survey said, “Placemaking is the process of incorporating humanity into space.”

We have noticed a significant increase, in recent years, in the formation of networks that focus on place and on the principles of Placemaking. These networks are present both at the macro and micro levels, but they all unite people around the common goals of Placemaking in uniquely effective ways. Through networks formed around the idea of place, friends can unite to improve a neighborhood, professionals can meet to better their work with the public spaces of a country, and governments can work together to envision change for an entire region. For information on emerging networks in Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Scotland and the Seattle region of the US, contact us. PPS would like to see these networks multiply and affect the global attitude toward Placemaking for the better. Like a spider sitting at the center of a complex web, we at PPS strive to develop our role as a constructive, accessible resource, overseeing and nurturing growing Placemaking networks while simultaneously connecting them to others, forming useful partnerships. Real Placemaking initiatives can also be found in the UK, Canada and Australia. We believe that acting as stewards of the Placemaking movement and initiatives like these will help to build an even bigger, more effective global Placemaking movement.

As Placemaking continues to grows as a mainstream idea, PPS wants to remind everyone--citizens and professionals alike--to keep their focus on places and the people who use them. Remember that Placemaking strikes a balance between the physical, the social and even the spiritual qualities of a place. Fortunately, we can all be inspired by the many examples of great Placemakers who have worked to promote this vision through the years. But the great age of Placemaking still lies ahead, and all of us can build upon their work.

Placemaking belongs to everyone: its message and mission is bigger than any one person or organization. PPS remains dedicated to spreading the message of Placemaking, offering our resources and experiences to all the other Placemakers out there. Teaching them to preserve and create successful places is the most important part of our mission.

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