The emergence of creative and digital place-making: A scoping review across disciplines

Abstract

The concept of ‘place-making’ emerged in media studies in 2015, but to date, there has been little theoretical engagement with the term. The primary research question this scoping review answers is how is ‘place-making’ defined across disciplines and which methodologies have been applied to creative and digital projects? A bibliometric analysis of 1974 publications from Web of Science (published in the last 30 years) were analysed to (1) define ‘place-making’ across disciplines, (2) model common themes in scholarship, (3) identify the methodologies used and (4) understand the impacts on citizens. The results show that ‘place-making’ first appeared in geography/urban studies in 1960s, was then adopted as ‘creative placemaking’ in the creative industries, and in the past 5 years (since 2015), it has appeared as ‘digital placemaking’ in media studies. It also highlighted areas (i.e. gaps) for future research into ‘creative placemaking’ and ‘digital place-making’ practices for cultural heritage sites.

Digital placemaking, health & wellbeing and nature-based solutions: A systematic review and practice model

“…However, the most cited classification is described by Wyckoff (2014) standard placemaking as the universal term whose types are strategic, tactical, and creative placemaking. Some authors present digital placemaking as a subcategory of creative placemaking (Basaraba, 2021;Paquin, 2019;Stokes et al, 2018), understanding it is the application of media to creative placemakingdefined by Markusen and Gadwa (2014) as the use of arts, creative and cultural thinking to improve the interest of a place. However, most authors identify digital placemaking as an independent category that could be defined as the implementation of technology in these practices that enables communities to interact with hybrid digital-physical places (Foth, 2017b;Fredericks et al, 2018;Halegoua and Polson, 2021;Labayen and Gutierrez, 2021;Pavlovskaya, 2016;Toland et al, 2020;Wang, 2019).…”

Rural arts entrepreneurs’ placemaking – how ‘entrepreneurial placemaking’ explains rural creative hub evolution during COVID-19 lockdown

“…Underlying the discussion of ‘place’ is the shared assumption that ‘space’ is indeed a social product (following Lefebvre’s conceptualisation, 1991, Pancholi et al, 2015; Basaraba, 2021). Within these discussions, in applied research and planning practice ‘place’ is associated specifically with local contexts, where people interact (Basaraba, 2021; Pierce and Martin, 2015). Placemaking is revisited by a number of disciplines including environmental psychology and sociology.…”

“…Participants gained a window into many houses and dance movements, simultaneously being inspired to move by other participants. Participants had equal service access and paid the same fee, indicating the radical placemaking impact (Courage, 2021b) achieved via digital placemaking (Basaraba, 2021). Marketing and communications channels (social media and email) remained the same, however, he altered the content of the messages indicating the online place of meetings and to extend the invite for open dance practice to his international contacts and their networks.…”

“…Without being fully aware of the complexity of the processes and their impact, John has managed a complex ecosystem of the material (building and people), the relational (the interaction between people and the building) and the symbolic (the imagined relations to the hub (Centre) as presented via the laptop lens, and the interpretation of the relational experience of dance participation) (after Courage, 2021b). Combining these elements John has created an example of a digital place to do business with and for the public (Basaraba, 2021). John stopped the online dance service, as the time spent on administration was not covered by the money made.…”

“…A term used originally to describe ways of enhancing existing physical urban public spaces (Basaraba, 2021), ‘digital placemaking’ has become increasingly prominent during COVID-19 lockdowns, as many processes and services have moved online (Kraus et al, 2020; Wilken and Humphreys, 2021). The concept links to ways to enhance visitor experiences of physical spaces, such as town squares or heritage buildings.…”