11 PRINCIPLES OF PLACEMAKING

LOCAL GOVERNANCE

FOREWORD ... Local governance everywhere in all its forms, in every cultural setting, in every geographical environment that is inhabited by humans. Humanity, has by necessity found a way of creating places in accord with the various geographies occupied by a group of humans and its needs. Indeed, in each and every place the making of and the shaping places is governed in ways that meets a community's collective needs and aspirations.

Accordingly, there will always be a culturally determined way for the groups in places to work collaboratively and collectively to shape and make their places. It turns out that humans inhabit almost as many geographies as exist. Quite simply, it turns out that place and geographies shape and make cultures. In turn cultures make and shape places they exist within.

What has changed, and is changing still, is the fact that geographically 'spaces' are now inhabited by multiple and culturally distinct groupings of people. These groupings of people have different and well-defined cultural realities. Therefore, it can no longer be assumed that a place – a town, city, urban space, landscape – is inhabited by people with a single overarching cultural reality with uniform sensitivities and sensibilities. It is just not so!

It follows that local governance's purposefulness, its primary purpose, everywhere, and at all times, is all about the shaping of, and the making of, places. Moreover, and increasingly, spaces become multifaceted places that require a system of local governance that acknowledges and celebrates diversity rather than uniformity.

1. The community is the expert. ... The people who use public spaces regularly provide the most valuable perspective and insights into how an area, a precinct, a location, a district, actually works and the benefits it has to offer them. Collaboratively and cooperatively they can identify the issues that are important to consider when improving, making, or shaping a space into a place invested with values. Local governance is about turning spaces into places. That is incorporating the ideas, needs and wants of 'the people' who use and occupy as space when creating a successful and vital community place. Out of community advice is only of value in the context of exploring options and opportunities that might be considered inside a community network. Indeed, communities have all the relevant 'expertise'!

2. People create places, not designs. ... Design is an important component of creating a place, but not the only factor. Providing access and creating active uses, economic opportunities, and developing community programming are important and  effective design processes are mindful of this. 

3. Placemaking cannot be done alone or in isolation. ... Functional public spaces require partners and collaborators who contribute innovative concepts, the financial support and/or the legislative support, to plan a way forward. Partners and collaborators also broaden the impact of a space by strategically coordinating schedules, working cooperatively in regard to planning processes in order to make places that meet identified needs and wants. 

4. Too often it said, "It can't be done." ... Every community has its naysayers – many in abundance. When an idea stretches beyond the reach of an operation or a jurisdiction, or  'management' and an official says, "It can't be done," it usually means: "We've never done things that way before." Then the way ahead is to identify the thinkers and the doers in the community, precinct, district who share a vision, who have like needs, who see value in a space and who hold a wish for it to be a 'purposeful place'. Therefore, talk to representative members of a local government, the people who are there and tasked to represent individuals and a community, precinct, district, whatever.

5. You can see a lot just by observing. ... People will go to extraordinary lengths, given the opportunity, to adapt a space to suit their needs and make it into 'their place' relevant to their needs. A raised curb can be used as a place to sit, to sit things on, do things with, ride a skateboard on and even grow things near. Observing a space allows people to learn how a space is used, why it us used that way and who uses a space that in fact means that it is actually a 'purposeful place'. It is the networks of people who have various layers of interest in a space, that is in fact the thing that turns a useless, unoccupied dead space into a 'purposeful place'. 

6. Develop a vision. ...  A vision for a public space addresses its character, the activities it facilitates, it usefulness (current and potential), and its meaningfulness in a community setting. This vision must be defined by the people who live  in, or work in, or use a space that in turn makes it a 'purposeful place' – a place with networks of people who individually and collectively have an interest in it and who share a sense of ownership for it. 

7. Form supports function. ... Often, people think about how they will use a space only after it might become a purposeful place. Bearing in mind the active uses when creating and designing and/or rehabilitating a space it can actually lower costs by discouraging unnecessary, inappropriate  and expensive landscaping, the erection of edifices and monuments, and other essentially purposeless installations. Also, such considerations may well eliminate the need to retrofit a poorly used public space simply by better appreciating a place's current purposefulness and what that actually is.

8. Triangulate. ... The concept of triangulation relates to locating placemaking cum placeshaping elements near to each other and in ways that fosters a diversity of activities in a 'purposeful place'. For example locating, seating, receptacles for discarded materials, and coffee kiosk placed near a bus stop creates a more 'purposeful place'. The convenience relative to waiting bus passengers and pedestrians turns an otherwise empty space into a purposeful place. It shapes a space into a 'place' thus lending it 'placedness'.  In turn that will have a community of people with shared but different, sometimes diverging, senses of ownership and interest in a 'place'. 

9. Start by planting flowers and the trees. ... Simple, immediate, short-term actions such as planting flowers and trees can be a way of testing ideas, encouraging people to express their ideas and to demonstrate that the networking of people's ideas matters. This is the beginning of of placemaking with networked communities rather than doing it to them. What flowers? What trees? These actions signal flexibility to expand a space's potential and create a place with layers of purposefulness. Experimenting, evaluating and collaboration results into the next steps, the steps after that and then in turn to the determining long range 'purposefulness of a place'. 

10. Money is not the issue. ... A lack of money is often used as an excuse for doing nothing. The funds available purely for public space improvements is typically scarce. Therefore, it is important to consider the values invested in public spaces that turn them into 'purposeful places'. The potential partners and the search for creative solutions is part and parcel of effective placemaking. The location of, the level of activity, the visibility of public places, along with the willingness to work closely with local partners, collaborators and especially the layers of communities who share interests and a sense of ownership has an inbuilt success factor. The ability elicit resources from those involved can, and often has, activated the enhancement of spaces and transformed them into valuable and valued 'purposeful places'. 

11. Placemaking is never finished. ... A high percent of the successes claimed for public space can be attributed to management processes that reflect inclusive  policy making and purposeful strategic direction determination. The good uses for places changes over time sometimes daily, or seasonally, which in turns means that effective accountable, transparent strategic management is critically important. 

The certainty of change and the fluid nature of the ways places are imagined at different times, means that the big challenge is to develop the ability to effectively and appropriately manage places in accord with changed and changing social and cultural realities.

The effective engagement with the diverse range of people who share and care for the places, albeit quite differently, what they make together cooperatively and collaboratively is increasingly important. 

Great places reflect all the things that those who participated in the making of them and the people who have invested all manner of things in their 'purposeful places' – money being the least important ultimately. Great places have many layers of various communities who have a sense of ownership for them and an undeniable interest in them and the 'purposefulness' they hold within.

ENDNOTE ... It is somewhat concerning that two decades plus into the 21st C that there is any kind of need to articulate the 'idea set' that is presented here. Given that there is, that suggests that somewhat sadly the need is there. It follows that the cultural perceptions relative to 'purposeful placemaking' have become warped and distorted in the service of maintaining the unsustainable status quo that is no longer relevant or that much to do with purposeful placemaking' in reality. 

Arguably, self-sustaining bureaucratic imperatives that all too often come into play are by-and-large dedicated to the status quo given that bureaucracies grow and flourish within it. Thus governance's role and function and management's role and function become unproductively blurred.

In the imagined First World the status quo has been continually invested in despite all that known about its lack of sustainability in the wake population growth, the enforced migration of populations, the increasingly obvious impacts of climate change and all the consequent political realignments. 

Currently, places are increasingly under pressure and they are being contested given that the space available for expansion seemingly shrinks, and exponentially. Likewise, as the demand for 'more space' expands and as the ownerships of spaces and places are contested, social and cultural positioning shifts. This happens locally, regionally, nationally and in an international context as well.

Local governance is where the rubber hits the road first. In terms of placemaking and placedness, local governance is where the prevailing status quo becomes less and less relevant almost by the minute.