The case for moving to slower cities
participatory and action research approaches to place-making.
Placemaking can fuel further gentrification with its well-known set of associated issues and consequences. Activating places often aims at making nearby retail and residential properties more profitable. Yet genuine and slow placemaking can add further value by unlocking a city’s diversity advantage.
Many placemaking techniques such as urban hacktivism and urban acupuncture tend to be small and hyperlocal. They have been criticised for being limited in scale and impact. Can placemaking through DIY urban design scale up from subversive citymaking to systemic change?
Contemporary placemaking reliese more more on and stereotypes. An example is the iconic architectures of kerbside coffee shops. Christian Norberg-Schulz speaks of the genius loci as a fundamental element of placemaking: the essence of a place that makes it unique.
This approach seems currently ignored in favour of a cookie-cutter approach. Copying success stories — Venice in Vegas, for example – is a constant in architecture and urban design. But the trends of tactical urbanism, pop-up interventions and gentrification actually risk impoverishing our urban landscape and our urban ecologies. In addition to a set of ongoing challenges, there are exciting opportunities on the horizon for slowing down placemaking and for placemaking to slow down cities.
Our fast-paced world of automation and smart cities prioritises speed and efficiency.
Yet the health and wellbeing of city residents can be improved by slowing down.
This is about not only a slower pace of pedestrian flow, traffic and life in public spaces.
It also relates to appreciating artisan crafts, food provenance, seasonal changes, local customs, and even boredom and getting lost.
In Australia, the cities of Goolwa (South Australia), Katoomba ( New South Wales) and Yea (Victoria) have joined Cittaslow — “the international network of cities where living is good”. Revisiting Henri Lefebvre’s “right to the city,” we understand placemaking as a strategy to bring about muchneeded social change and urban renewal through grassroots democratisation.
Cities often participants in decision-making.
Yet why limit people to just providing feedback to city governments as part of conventional community consultation processes? Genuine placemaking regards them as cocreators in collaborative citymaking.
The exposure to diverse ideas, places and communities is crucial for innovation and the functioning of democracy. We believe placemaking can help develop a better dialogue between citizens, communities, government, businesses, civic groups and non-profits.
Placemaking is meant to provide a close connection between people invite people as urban planning and their locale. Placemaking has to be specific and unique to urban space, taking into account its community, environment, culture, food and social practices.
Finally, cities certainly need to face up to the challenges of climate change.
Placemaking provides opportunities for more sustainable ways of life not only by creating accessible, healthy, democratic and slow cities, but also by imagining the postanthropocentric city.