Abstract
Placemaking is an approach to planning, design and management of public spaces that uses local community's assets to create vibrant public places. It aims to improve health, happiness, and well-being in cities. Placemaking accelerated in the 1960s, when designing cities for people rather than for cars emerged. This approach is all the more relevant today as many fast growing cities follow top down planning processes. Placemaking can break down silos between citizens, planners, designers engineers and decision-makers, and support the collective aim of making liveable cities. Placemaking efforts aim to: • Help stakeholders build on a rich history of public space action and advocacy, • highlight the importance of quality public spaces, • engage policy makers and other stakeholders in dialogues to promote walkable, vibrant networks of spaces, and • improved citizen involvement in public space management. As a result, cities and regions have taken concrete steps to develop liveable spaces. Some of these steps include launching car free days, holding urban dialogues (Nairobi) or improving public spaces (Wuhan). ISOCARP has been actively involved in different placemaking events since the Wuhan Placemaking Week, 2018. The role of planners and urban practitioners in creating liveable and vibrant cities is crucial, and yet the Global South strongly lacks such professionals. For example, India has only 1 planner per 400,000 people. In order to mitigate this gap, the country needs 300,000 planners by 2031. The session aims to discuss the role of placemaking as a planner’s tool to enhance liveability in cities and make the planning process transparent, effective, and community driven. ISOCARP representatives from past collaborative placemaking events, such as those held in Pune, (Placemaking Weekend India), Valencia (Placemaking Europe) and Wuhan (Wuhan Placemaking Week), will share their learnings from these events. The session will be divided into three parts: 1. An introductory presentation (20 minutes) will highlight the importance of placemaking in building resilient and liveable cities. 2. Panel of experts (40 minutes) will discuss the placemaking weeks organized till date and share their learnings. Panellists will make 3 to 5 minutes interventions responding to questions from the moderator. 3. A conclusive session (20 minutes) will discuss possible ways of replicating the placemaking process in countries and cities participants represent.
