Toward a Theoretical Understanding of Placemaking
- PDF / 1,435,409 Bytes
- 22 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 65 Downloads / 185 Views
Toward a Theoretical Understanding of Placemaking P. J. Ellery 1
& J.
Ellery 2 & M. Borkowsky 3
Received: 10 June 2020 / Accepted: 25 September 2020/ # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Historically, planners, community development groups, and other place-engaged organizations and practitioners have worked to elevate the importance of place and placemaking in economically, socially, and environmentally responsible development. However, recent studies have presented the concept of placemaking from professionally different perspectives using a variety of definitions to both rationalize and operationalize this still somewhat nebulous concept. This ambiguity surrounding the term placemaking is further compounded by the use of three different types of spellings for the term in the research literature, with none of the spellings having a clear, consistent, or universally accepted definition aligned to it. Without a common understanding of placemaking as a concept, or how placemaking works theoretically, measuring the value or impact placemaking has as a process on community development is conjectural. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the academic research literature related to placemaking over the past 5 years, describe the current state of placemaking as a concept based on the issues raised in past literature, identify key theoretical principles that consistently support placemaking as it is being used in the research literature, and then use these principles to propose a theoretical model describing how placemaking works as a process. The theoretical model proposed in this work is offered for further examination, description, and testing and as a foundation for future research on the role placemaking plays in community development professional practice. Keywords Placemaking . Community development . Community engagement . Sense of
place . Placemaking theory
* P. J. Ellery [email protected]
1
E2praxis, 2504 West Sun Valley Parkway, Muncie, IN 47303, USA
2
Ball State University & Senior Fellow, Project for Public Spaces, Muncie, IN, USA
3
Project for Public Spaces, New York, NY, USA
International Journal of Community Well-Being
Introduction In the past, planners, community development groups, and other place-engaged organizations and practitioners have worked to elevate the importance of place and placemaking1 in economically, socially, and environmentally responsible development. Indeed, over the past several decades, organizations like Main Street, Project for Public Spaces (PPS), the Urban Land Institute, and Smart Growth America, to name a few, have helped community leaders to recognize that reinvesting in existing communities is both fiscally and ecologically more sustainable than promoting an ever-increasing urban sprawl. As a result, community development professionals now emphasize placemaking strategies and processes for the revitalization of distressed urban neighborhoods and as an approach for improving the lives of its residents. Further, the work of organizatio
Data Loading...
