Placemaking Revisited

UN Habitat recently adopted its first public space resolution, which incentivizes international communities to employ placemaking strategies and encourage inclusive and sustainable community change through physical urban design. Scholars argue that healthy, creative, and walkable places, parks, and streets stimulate people's interpersonal interactions and, supposedly, renovate abandoned, disenfranchised communities (Florida 2002; Glaeser 2011; Duany and Plater - Zyberk 1994). However, one needs to recognize the limits of this philosophy.