Thanks Ian. Aberdeen too! There is certainly a case for the argument that real lively places mostly happen organically and take time. However, even these include aspects of architecture and planning along the way that either help or hinder that process. In some ways the places of the poor in Global South urban peripheries are genuine, bottom-up, places but they are also places with almost no investments from professionals - and many would not want to live in them. A difficult balance.
Thanks Jacob. Yes. Ideas about place that flow globally can then contribute to a strange similarly between places emerging all over the world. The ingredients seem good from a particular perspective, but they tend to be the same ingredients and not always specific to the place in question.
Good writing as always, Prof. Tim!. I recently wrote in a paper: “ these places (streets) are designed elsewhere, flow through power/knowledge regimes (Peck & Theodore, 2010) and are then foisted onto a place, ignoring its historicities and meanings.”
Most city streets are now designed with a bunch of attributes as you mentioned - pedestrian plazas, green spaces etc. These then replace conventional car-heavy traffic, but lends a very similar designed aesthetic to that place. CG Road in Ahmedabad, for example is touted as a public space intervention, but all it did was create a place that mimicked shopping streets elsewhere in the West.
Urban design studios I was part of, was hell-bent on replicating these very particular models of place. It had very good sense of human scale, achieving high equity ratio for the pedestrian over car. But they were still “placeless” or non-place..on the plan and in real life.
Thanks for bringing place ’making’ to our attention, Tim. Having reviewed Maxwell Street on my Substack in relation to place ‘writing’, I find there is much more to say about place and our human relationship to it.
I feel that, all too often, those who have the power and money to bring new places into being rarely consider the long term effect of their design and planning. Schemes for change tend to overlook what we need at the heart of place and, instead, consider surface aesthetics and practicalities to meet short term objectives.
Do you think that enough research is being done to provide appropriate and specific guidance to planners? Or are there many more avenues of interest to explore?
Thanks Yasmin - and thanks for the lovely review which I recently read. Much appreciated. As for advice to planners - I think the placemaking phenomenon did arise from advice from academics like William Whyte...and academics are often not keen to give advice as life is always more complicated than the kinds of simplicity that planning demands. There are many spaces around the world that were, at some point, planned, but are genuinely successful and lively - but sometimes a period of time needs to intervene.
Thanks Ian. Aberdeen too! There is certainly a case for the argument that real lively places mostly happen organically and take time. However, even these include aspects of architecture and planning along the way that either help or hinder that process. In some ways the places of the poor in Global South urban peripheries are genuine, bottom-up, places but they are also places with almost no investments from professionals - and many would not want to live in them. A difficult balance.
Thanks Jacob. Yes. Ideas about place that flow globally can then contribute to a strange similarly between places emerging all over the world. The ingredients seem good from a particular perspective, but they tend to be the same ingredients and not always specific to the place in question.
Good writing as always, Prof. Tim!. I recently wrote in a paper: “ these places (streets) are designed elsewhere, flow through power/knowledge regimes (Peck & Theodore, 2010) and are then foisted onto a place, ignoring its historicities and meanings.”
Most city streets are now designed with a bunch of attributes as you mentioned - pedestrian plazas, green spaces etc. These then replace conventional car-heavy traffic, but lends a very similar designed aesthetic to that place. CG Road in Ahmedabad, for example is touted as a public space intervention, but all it did was create a place that mimicked shopping streets elsewhere in the West.
Urban design studios I was part of, was hell-bent on replicating these very particular models of place. It had very good sense of human scale, achieving high equity ratio for the pedestrian over car. But they were still “placeless” or non-place..on the plan and in real life.
Thanks for bringing place ’making’ to our attention, Tim. Having reviewed Maxwell Street on my Substack in relation to place ‘writing’, I find there is much more to say about place and our human relationship to it.
I feel that, all too often, those who have the power and money to bring new places into being rarely consider the long term effect of their design and planning. Schemes for change tend to overlook what we need at the heart of place and, instead, consider surface aesthetics and practicalities to meet short term objectives.
Do you think that enough research is being done to provide appropriate and specific guidance to planners? Or are there many more avenues of interest to explore?
Thanks Yasmin - and thanks for the lovely review which I recently read. Much appreciated. As for advice to planners - I think the placemaking phenomenon did arise from advice from academics like William Whyte...and academics are often not keen to give advice as life is always more complicated than the kinds of simplicity that planning demands. There are many spaces around the world that were, at some point, planned, but are genuinely successful and lively - but sometimes a period of time needs to intervene.