The concept of placemaking is one that resonates with our conception of the Parkway as a center of the community where we are in the process of advocating for the leadership of the community to see their work vis-à-vis the Parkway as; “the art of creating public 'places of the soul,' that uplift and help us connect to each other."
Project for Public Spaces
Making Places Bulletin: July 31, 2007
What Is Placemaking?
As Placemaking continues to grow as a mainstream idea, PPS warns against its transformation into a fashionable “brand,” which would narrow and diminish its fundamental importance for communities everywhere.
Project for Public Spaces has been using the term Placemaking for years to describe our place-centered approach to helping citizens improve public spaces and make great communities. Recently we’ve noticed the phrase popping up more and more, everywhere from student blogs to real estate ads. So, we decided to conduct a survey on our web site asking people to give us their definitions of “Placemaking.” We hoped to better understand the scope and influence of the term and gain insight about our own practices as Placemakers. The wave of responses we received was uplifting, as hundreds of people eagerly offered their own vision of what the word means. In this representative list, see what visitors to PPS.org said "Placemaking" means to them. The common threads in these submissions were inspiring: over and over, people identified the elements of emotion, a sense of belonging, and a spiritual connection that are part of any successful Placemaking process.
“Placemaking is a dynamic human function: it is an act of liberation, of staking claim, and of beautification; it is true human empowerment.”
“Placemaking is the art of creating public ‘places of the soul,’ that uplift and help us connect to each other.”
Placemaking is “making a Public Space a Living Space.”
