2021: Creating a Lexicon of Future

P is for Placemaking

Placemaking is a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces. Placemaking capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential, with the intention of creating public spaces that promote people’s health, happiness, and well-being. It is political due to the nature of place identity. Placemaking is both a process and a philosophy that makes use of urban design principles. It can be either official and government led, or community driven grass roots tactical urbanism, such as extending sidewalks with chalk, paint, and planters, or open streets events such as Bogotá, Colombia’s Ciclovía. Good placemaking makes use of underutilized space to enhance the urban experience at the pedestrian scale to build habits of locals. ~ Wikipedia, Placemaking

An illustration taken from Spotify illustrating the community approach to placemaking as employed by Project for Public Spaces

Five Different Early Approaches to Placemaking

Implicit Placemaking in The Timeless Way of Building: Christopher Alexander’s 1979 book The Timeless Way of Building is about qualities inherent in vernacular architecture, and how the ability to create these qualities might be recovered. His book is, however, implicitly about placemaking. “It is not essential that each person design or shape the place where he is going to live or work,” he wrote. “Obviously people move, are happy in old…