Building Placeness: Is placemaking over-promising and under-delivering?

When I was a member of my local community council – the lowest statutory tier of local government in Scotland – I was often surprised when developers presented projects to us by how they referred to the contribution their development would make to ‘placemaking’ in the local area. Often this was acknowledged as a required feature of their project, but one which, for them, was not viewed as a priority.  Often ‘placemaking’ was providing a modest green space within the development with a couple of benches and may be a footpath connecting the development with local streets to encourage accessibility.  When questioned further about efforts which might be made to locate the project in a wider context of adding place value to the local community they had little to offer.  I was often left with the impression that developers were strong on technical aspects of building regulations and functional design, but weak on the community dimensions of their proposals. Whilst this may be a something of a caricature, it does make one wonder if the term placemaking has become rather tokenistic and devalued in many urban planning situations. It is the challenges to successful placemaking that I wish to explore here.

Placemaking: concept and methodology

Placemaking as an approach to improving places and neighbourhoods in cities and towns is now well established. Gaining traction in the 1990s thanks to the efforts of important organisations such as PPS Placemaking and Strong Towns, placemaking has become a prominent feature in numerous schemes to re-configure streets, public spaces and other community assets such as parks and green spaces. Many placemaking projects can now point to significant change in urban environments and new social infrastructure in cities around the world..

The placemaking approach promoted by PPS and others rests on research in the 1970s by ‘Holly’ White, Jane Jacobs, Margaret Mead and others into the social life of public places. The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) was founded in 1975 as a project to apply the work of Holly White in real public spaces, and over time the concept has moved from a focus on public spaces to a broader concept of placemaking as a fundamental idea for creating stronger communities.

The idea presents a challenge to the conventional ways in which urban planning happens.  City professionals such as traffic engineers, transit operators, planners and architects typically have relatively narrow definitions of their jobs – to make traffic move faster, to make buses run on time, planning for longer term city development or to building striking functional buildings. As I observed above, their focus is not usually about making places. Decisions on planning permission  by local authorities are often taken on a development by development basis: only recently have some cities restructured their organisations to include designated ‘directors of place’ to bring a more holistic view to city planning and to recognize the implications of planning decisions for the quality of social life in city neighbourhoods  and the wider  community.

Proponents of placemaking adopt a variety of definitions of placemaking. Most stress that it is an approach to creating quality places that is essentially people-centered with significant community involvement in the planning, design and subsequent management of public spaces. PPS have set out their widely used 11 principles for creating great places supported by programmes of education and training for those wishing to adopt their approach.

Issues for placemaking

Many placemaking projects based on these principles are successful but not all work out as intended and not all agencies that claim to be using placemaking principles follow the PPS methodology. Critics of the concept and its implementation have identified a number of issues which confront placemaking initiatives and which can limit the effectiveness of what is delivered.  Together the issues strike at the very nature of community, place identity and place attachment, and raise fundamental question about the possibilities of creating enhanced ‘placeness’ in city neighbourhoods.

What is a great place?

It will be worth saying a little about the qualities of a place that placemaking is striving to achieve as a kind of yardstick against which to consider performance. I have written about place quality before here, and readers may be familiar with the representations of what constitutes a good place, for example, the Scottish Place Standard and the Place diagram from PPS. However, the concern here is with those properties of a public space which are likely to make it a successful place.

Writers in this field usually point to 4 factors making for a successful place. Broadly they can be characterized as

-           accessibility and connectedness;

-          comfort and safety;

-          attractiveness and interesting; and

-          sociability and inclusiveness.

A successful outcome from a placemaking project would depend on the extent to which these qualities are felt to have been achieved in the perceptions the community in which the place is located. Favorable perceptions are likely to strengthen place attraction and place identity for a range of stakeholders in the community. In short they can build ‘placeness’ of public spaces.

Placemaking practice

Commentaries about the implementation of what are often claimed to be placemaking projects point to challenges to the basic principles of placemaking as listed by PPS. The principles which seem most at risk are discussed below.

1 The community is the expert – but are they allowed to be?

Projects undertaken with the aim of improving public spaces can be placed on a continuum ranging from top-down’ driven schemes with minimal community input often leading to standardized spaces insensitive to local needs or wishes, through to truly place-led schemes which focus on outcomes emerging from community engagement and shared processes which create group activity and social capital. In between are other models which are discipline-led, often resulting in limited notions of place, or what have been called place-sensitive approaches based on some degree of community consultation. It is only in those models with significant community consultation or deeper community involvement and partnership that the expertise of the community is recognized, and in the latter can claim to be community-driven.

2 Creating a place, not a design?

Discipline-led projects may be of higher value and more photogenic but their reliance on the particular vision of design professionals and other disciplinary silos often makes for spaces that do not function well as public gathering places, or enhancing sociability and inclusiveness. A necessary understanding of the relationships between design, form and function may not extend easily to embracing the social functions which are vital to the sociability of public places.

3 Planning without funding?

Placemaking projects, even with community engagement, can create unrealistic expectations in the community about what can be achieved, given the complexity of resourcing and delivering ambitious plans to re-shape public spaces to facilitate and to change opportunities for social and cultural activities.  Plans can be prepared without committed funding until it is clear what planning proposals will come forward. The time taken to secure funding and obtain the necessary permissions for developments can lead to frustration in communities which erodes trust and confidence.

4 Too slow?

Procedural issues can often mean delivery timetables can be out of step with community expectations.  Tactical decisions about short-term ‘quick wins’ may help secure community commitment to placemaking projects but may also limit the scope of planned change.

5 Who benefits?

The criteria of accessibility and inclusion are important if the benefits of better places are to be realized for the wider community. There is often the perception that economic benefits of placemaking projects often accrue to developers, or through resulting gentrification, to particular sections of the community. Social and cultural benefits may also be distributed unequally if accessibility issues and the connectedness of projects to other parts of the community are neglected, fueling perceptions of social exclusion and undermining social cohesion.

6 Impact and evaluation?

These factors and some others I have not listed, serve to potentially limit the achievement through placemaking approaches of the qualities associated with good places. However it is the case that attempts to rigorously research the impact and processes of placemaking still remain rather sparce. Before and after comparisons of ratings on place standard tools could give a relatively crude assessment of change whilst studies of the processes involved could give insights into how placemaking projects can work.

Building ‘placeness’

Recent years have seen efforts being made by local authorities, planners, place-engaged organisations and practitioners to elevate the importance of place and community-led placemaking as a vital component of responsible urban development. It is also clear that the practice of placemaking activity varies widely from project to project. It should go without saying that those who claim to practice placemaking would be expected to have a clear understanding of the concept of place and of what they are trying to ‘make’.

As Eche has pointed out, almost everywhere is already a place for somebody. A place does not need to be vibrant or exciting to still be a place. The creation of a place rests on layers of history and heritage and the cultural inheritance and way of life of people over a long time. ‘Place-keeping’ to maintain the essence of an existing place without seeking to change it can be a legitimate goal for place planning, However, placemaking is usually seen as a process for stimulating change in communities to strengthen a sense of place and place identity, and to enhance the quality of life for those using it. It is important that such placemaking takes due account of existing community assets and culture and does not lose the sense of place which already exists. Placemaking should be about building ‘placeness’ and building from where the people currently are.

Placemaking can claim many benefits for places economically, socially and environmentally. These gains need to be seen against a wider narrative of change for cities arising from changes in the nature and location of employment as companies re-locate to accessible amenity-rich neighbourhoods in search of a well-educated workforce. Developers are responding to demands for high density, mixed use, walkable and transit-rich city neighbourhoods. These trends raise dilemmas for city planners about the drivers of these trends and their durability. At a time of rising social inequality there are questions about how far the benefits of these trends can and should be extended to more people and other places.

A placemaking programme predicated on imposing these kinds of externally-driven trends on neighbourhoods might not be in the best interests of those living there even if they bring a good return for the developers. They are not always the features which foster ‘placeness’ of a neighbourhood. Placemaking would do well not to lose sight of  Jane Jacobs’ observation that  ‘there is no logic that can be imposed on the city: people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans’.