Placemaking: the Soul Searching of a Place

What if we treat a place like a person?

We, with decent self-esteem ourselves, will probably start to become more careful about what to put and not put in a public space - because we do not want to hurt a person; likewise, we don't want to ruin a place.

We placemakers, should be professional "place nurturers": we respect her personality, appreciate her beauty, tolerate her quirks, and encourage her sustainable growth. We encourage her to develop unique characters and strengths at a soul searching level, rather than merely following the trend and market.

Nurturing place is much broader than simply designing the physical space/environment. There is another utmost important element to placemaking - people. Yes, we placemakers should be as passionate about people as we are about place. We care about who is going to use the place, who is going to ruin the place, and who can help a place to grow its integrity and beauty. And most importantly, how can a place and its people growth at the same time?

What we should value in making a place?

Simplicity: "Keep it simple" is hard. But there's so much wisdom to simplicity - the key is the explore the fundamental value of a place, and stick to it. It is easy to get confused or lost along the way. We need to be aware of what we are doing on every step of placemaking.

Authenticity: An authentic and genuine person is attractive. Authenticity of a place is about "form follows function", it is about exploring and respecting the original beauty of a place, and it is about staying true to the local while learning from others. We want to avoid being generic, superficial, and lack of self-respect.

Creativity: Placemaking is an art. It is about aesthetics, open-mindedness, and flexibility. It requires us to have a wide range of knowledge, from planning, sociology, human behavior, to engineering, marketing and spirituality. On top of everything, a successful placemaker plays with these areas of knowledge he has, creating an authentic story for the place and its people, without looking trying too hard. A good placemaker is a master. 

Health: A place has its health condition and life cycle, just like us human. The health includes the physical sustainability and energy balance. For a deteriorating neighborhood, its physical condition is going downhill as much as its negative (or yin energy in Chinese Fengshui philosophy) is increasing. We placemakers can restore the health condition of a place by remove the hazard, renew the physical structures and land-use, and adjust the human activities in the area. 

Functionality: This is the responsibility of a place. If it is a residential community, how can we let it serve its people to the best and in a healthy way. If it is a natural reserve, then it's function is to help regulate the local ecologic and environmental system; then we need to limit human activity within the area. A place is not always about letting people to occupy, use and exploit it; but rather, it is about growing a holistic living environment. Place and people have different roles.

Placemaking is a trend, but it is a traditional profession; or it is not so much a profession, it is what people have been doing for thousands of years. Placemaking is such a straightforward term, yet many people do not understand it, because we are so used to fancy, intimidating and confusing profession titles. It is time for us to keep it simple and return to the original. 

"We are placemakers. We create nice, pretty, and enjoyable places." We can tell people this when they ask what is "placemaking".

"To be a good placemaker, we need to do soul searching of the place that we are working on." We need to remind ourselves of this as we proceed in our placemaking projects.

The following pictures show the birth of the Grove Park at Hot Springs Village as the first Placemaking Project:

Site walk in mid Feburary, 2014.
(Photo by author.)

Preliminary concept drawing, late Feburary 2014.
(Photo by author.)

Construction, March 2014.
(Photo by author.)

Opening date of Grove Park, May 8, 2014.
(Photo by author.)

Author at Grove Park sign on the opening day.
(photo by Stephanie Heffer.)