Making Up Creative Placemaking

Abstract

Creative placemaking is an increasingly prevalent form of planning practice that invokes arts and culture as tools for revitalization. Planners, policymakers, funders, and practitioners are engaged in a discursive struggle to define what is meant by creative placemaking and what value it holds for cities. Using frameworks developed by Foucault and Hacking, I analyze the emergence and ongoing contestation of this term, contrasting the way creative placemaking is understood and enacted by actors in Philadelphia with definitions employed by national funders. I argue that practitioner and community voices deserve amplification in the unfinished work of creative placemaking as urban practice.

Cultural and Creative Industries and Urban (Re)Development in China

“…How then to tackle issues such as displacement, social isolation, socialspatial polarization, and localized conflicts? The notions of creative placemaking, livability, and creative art spaces have created useful frameworks for engaging diverse community development sectors in new kinds of partnerships with the arts and generated many new opportunities for artists to connect with other fields (Grodach, O'Connor, and Gibson 2017;Lin 2018;Zitcer 2018). Future research should consider issues of community relationships, shared experiences, identity, and sense of place.…”

“…Various studies have highlighted new trends of creative placemaking in urban planning that focus on arts-led, place-based development through multisector relationships (Lin 2019;Markusen and Gadwa 2010;Redaelli 2016). These practices (1) promote moving the arts out of the studio and into neighborhoods (Chu and Shupbach 2014); (2) emphasize the importance of local, organically formed cultural clusters and a robust arts ecosystem, rather than advancing the arts as an outside economic driver (Lin 2018;Lin and Hsing 2009;Stern and Seifert 2013); and (3) encourage formal practices of urban planning and redevelopment, informal practices such as the "makers movement," and everyday urbanism (Sweeney et al 2018;Zitcer 2018). Borén and Young (2013) argue that academic research on creative city strategies has been "focusing too much on critiquing ideas such as those of Florida, and do not engage with how creativity might be used in productive ways in urban policy" (p. 1802).…”

Adaptation of Social Attributes of Place in Creative Placemaking towards Social Sustainability

“…(Source: Adapted from Salzman & Yerace, 2018;Arroyo, 2017;Vazquez, 2014;Bennett, 2014;Radaelli, 2018;Morley & Winkler, 2014;Zitcer, 2018;Markusen & Gadwa Nicodemus, 2014, Pak, 2018Nicodemus, 2013;Rembeza,2016;Forsyth, 2014;Newton, 2017) Placemaking is the process of transforming spaces into places by integrating the social dimension of planning and linking meaning and function to the spaces. While there is no agreed definition of placemaking, it is typically understood as a process that is part of urban design that makes places livable and purposeful (Flemming, 2007;PPS, 2008).…”

“… Examine the connections of urban cultural policy with the art world and its theories created an understanding of how the two sectors already cooperate, highlighting their common grounds. (Zitcer, 2018) Analyzing the emergence and ongoing contestation of this term, contrasting the way creative placemaking is understood and enacted by actors in Philadelphia with definitions employed by national funders  Argues that practitioners and community voices deserve amplification in the unfinished work of 4 creative placemaking as urban practice.…”

Does Placemaking Lead to a Resident’s Greater Place Dependence and Place Identity in Rural Communities? Empirical Evidence in Indiana

“…Although placemaking is a relatively recently coined term, its principles have long been established. In the 1950s and 1960s, urbanists such as Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, and William Whyte first advocated for making places of, for, and by the people as a counter to the post-War planning and design that treated humans as another variable in the built environment (Zitcer 2018). This nascent principle was also in response to a loss of sense of place and place attachment.…”