225R_Positioning place-making as a social process: A systematic literature review (research summary)

What is The Future for Cities?

Are you interested in place-making processes?

Our summary today works with the article titled Positioning place-making as a social process: A systematic literature review from 2021 by Poeti Nazura Gulfira Akbar and Jurian Edelenbos, published in the Cogent Social Sciences journal.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Bruce Marshall in episode 226 talking about place-making as the process of bringing out the magic of the place.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how place-making can be viewed as a social process instead of product oriented. This article investigates the variety of approaches, influential factors and outcomes of place-making.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Place-making has shifted from a product-oriented focus by urban designers to a process-oriented, multi-stakeholder approach involving local communities.
2. Place-making can be influenced by four main factors: resident-related, local organization-related, government-related, and physical-spatial factors.
3. Place-making can lead to positive social outcomes such as local empowerment, stronger social ties, enhanced place identity, and improved quality of life when local needs are considered.

You can find the article through this link.

Abstract: This systematic review discusses the shifted paradigm in the place-making concept, from being focused on physical changes in the environment (product-oriented) created by urban planners, towards place-making as an iterative process that involves various actors other than the planning professionals. Despite this conceptual re-orientation that was emerged in the 1960s, important discussions, such as factors that support or obstruct the process of place-making are often mentioned incidentally in publications without being systematically analysed across cases. Therefore, this paper aims to bring a better overview of the concept of place-making as a process by combining theoretical and empirical research in the planning context. To achieve this aim, a systematic literature review of 61 articles published between 1960 and 2016 has been used. This research demonstrates a variety of approaches, influential factors, and outcomes of place-making. It points out the importance to take into considerations the interplays among the roles of actors, along with physical-spatial elements of places. These factors should be acknowledged in combination with the others, rather than being treated as unidimensional. Such circumstances not only lead to viable place-making but also bring positive social impacts to local communities, especially on gaining local empowerment, enhancing social ties, reinforcing place identity, and increasing quality of life.

Connecting episodes you might be interested in:

• No.078 - Interview with Ammon Beyerle about placemaking in architectural practice;
• No.159 - Interview with Michael Browne about Indigenous culture and place-making;
• No.228 - Interview with Dominique Hes about spatial empowerment

You can find the transcript through ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠this link⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@WTF4Cities⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or on the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wtf4cities.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ website where the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠shownotes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠are also available.

I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.

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