Abstract
Historically, planners, community development groups, and other place-engaged organizations and practitioners have worked to elevate the importance of place and placemaking in economically, socially, and environmentally responsible development. However, recent studies have presented the concept of placemaking from professionally different perspectives using a variety of definitions to both rationalize and operationalize this still somewhat nebulous concept. This ambiguity surrounding the term placemaking is further compounded by the use of three different types of spellings for the term in the research literature, with none of the spellings having a clear, consistent, or universally accepted definition aligned to it. Without a common understanding of placemaking as a concept, or how placemaking works theoretically, measuring the value or impact placemaking has as a process on community development is conjectural. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the academic research literature related to placemaking over the past 5 years, describe the current state of placemaking as a concept based on the issues raised in past literature, identify key theoretical principles that consistently support placemaking as it is being used in the research literature, and then use these principles to propose a theoretical model describing how placemaking works as a process. The theoretical model proposed in this work is offered for further examination, description, and testing and as a foundation for future research on the role placemaking plays in community development professional practice.
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Notes
For the purposes of this article, the single word spelling of placemaking has been chosen from the three different spelling types used in the research literature and noted in this article. The authors believe this spelling best represents placemaking as a unique concept and process, and not just a label to describe an ideal or outcome of public space design and development.
The total of 65 in this analysis is due to the review including an edited book on place attachment that contained all three versions of the spelling for placemaking, and two other articles containing two of the three types of spelling formats being investigated.
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Funding for completion of this study was provided by Project for Public Spaces, New York.
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Ellery, P.J., Ellery, J. & Borkowsky, M. Toward a Theoretical Understanding of Placemaking. Int. Journal of Com. WB 4, 55–76 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42413-020-00078-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42413-020-00078-3