Urbanism as a network of public spaces
Introduction
Placemaking is an urban term that refers to the planning, design and management of public spaces that promote urban vitality, as well as the health, happiness and well-being of people.
The idea is related to the creation of public spaces that attract and encourage people to stay and are not just a place of transit.
The ideas behind the concept of placemaking originated in the 1960s, when writers such as Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte offered innovative ideas about designing cities that catered to people and not just cars and shopping malls. His work focused on the importance of lively neighborhoods and welcoming public spaces. Jacobs advocated for "citizen ownership" of streets through the now famous idea of "eyes on the street." Whyte emphasized essential elements to create social life in public spaces.[1].
Origin of the term
The term began to be used in the 1970s by landscape architects, architects and urban planners to describe the process of creating squares, parks, streets and promenades that attracted people because they were pleasant or interesting. Landscape often plays an important role in the design process. The term placemaking encourages the disciplines involved in the design of the environment to work together in the search for qualities that each of them cannot achieve alone.
Bernard Hunt of HTA Architects noted that: "We have theories, specialties, regulations, exhortations, demonstration projects. We have planners. We have highway engineers. We have mixed use, mixed tenure, architecture, community architecture, urban design, neighborhood strategy. But what seems to have happened is that we have simply lost the art of place-making; or, put another way, we have lost the simple art of place-making. We are good at putting up buildings, but we are bad at making places."
Jan Gehl said: "First life, then spaces, then buildings; it never works the other way around"; and "In an increasingly privatized society with private houses, cars, computers, offices and shopping malls, the public component of our lives is disappearing. It is increasingly important to make cities attractive, so that we can meet our fellow citizens face to face and experience them directly through our senses. Public life in good quality public spaces is an important part of a democratic and fulfilling life." [2].
The writings of poet Wendell Berry have contributed to an imaginative understanding of place and place-making, particularly in reference to local ecology and economy. He writes that, "If what we see and experience, if our country does not become real in the imagination, then it can never become real to us, and we will be forever separated from it... Imagination is a particularizing and local force, native to the ground beneath our feet."