Tag Archives : placemaking


Creative Time 2013: Margaret Crawford

Two words that I hate: placemaking and vibrant. Yet I constantly hear these buzzwords in urban planning and design, public art and arts funding, often paired, implying that the first invariably leads to the second. Although I would be happy to blame Richard Florida’s “Creative Class” thesis (see my previous ARC keyword) for popularizing them, this definition of “successful” urban spaces has a much longer history. Both words can be traced back to the 1960s, a key moment in American urbanism, when a new set of values appeared that inverted the dominant view of cities.

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Creative Time 2013: Megan Hoetger

In his 2012 article, “Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging,” Robert Bedoya writes: “What I’ve witness [sic] in the discussion s and practices associated with Creative Placemaking is that they are tethered to a meaning of ‘place’ manifest in the built environment….” Further, Bedoya asserts, “its insufficiency lies in a lack of understanding that before you have places of belonging, you must feel you belong. Before there is the vibrant street one need an understanding of the social dynamics of the street – the politics of belonging and dis-belonging at work in placemaking in civil society.”

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Reimagining the Urban: Judy Nemzoff

I’m participating in an Americans for the Arts Creative Placemaking webinar series that defines creative placemaking as, “the intersection of when place making by design has art and creativity at the forefront.” This definition presumes that—by building partnerships and crafting policy that addresses defining places with outcomes that include creative, financial, and social success—you must also place creativity and art making in the hands of artists.

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