Placemaking
Encyclopedia : P : PL : PLA : Placemaking
Placemaking is the process of creating great places that attract people because they are pleasurable, interesting and offer the chance to see other people. As simple as this sounds, many public spaces around the world fail at this fundamental mission. Placemaking is characterized by a focus on activities, management, community, and sociability, as opposed to architectural or landscape design. The end result of placemaking is the development of great public places, such as squares, plazas, parks, streets, and waterfronts.
[Bernard Hunt, of HTA Architects in London notes that]:
"We have theories, specialisms, regulations, exhortations, demonstration projects. We have planners. We have highway engineers. We have mixed use, mixed tenure, architecture, community architecture, urban design, neighbourhood strategy.
But what seems to have happened is that we have simply lost the art of placemaking; or, put another way, we have lost the simple art of placemaking. We are good at putting up buildings but we are bad at making places."
Placemaking is often associated with Visioning and Community-based Planning. The New York-based group Project for Public Spaces has helped popularize the term.
See also
- William H. Whyte
- Jane Jacobs
- Fred Kent
- Jan Gehl
- Christopher Alexander
- Donald Appleyard
- James Howard Kunstler
- Allan Jacobs
- Enrique Penalosa
- Community of place
External links
Books
- [Placemaking: The Art and Practice of Building Communities], by Lynda H. Schneekloth & Robert G. Shibley (1995)
- [How to Turn a Place Around], by Project for Public Spaces (2000)
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.