We find ourselves in a political era where language is being weaponised. Leaders are saying the exact opposite happened from what we are directly experiencing. “Truth” is becoming more and more the opinion you can yell the loudest.
Our extreme circumstances reveal something that has always been true: language matters. The words we use and the meanings they hold are often the kernels that shape behaviours, our surroundings and our collective life.
And into this wake, we pronounce that placemaking is dead.
Well, at least, the term “placemaking” is.
A Victim of Its Own Success
The truth is that placemaking is a victim of its own popularity: people have begun to recognise its importance as an approach and a need. This is the first complication. We have collectively identified that we need better places, and that so much of our modern defaults are not very good. But we don’t have a common understanding or agreement about what makes a sense of place, even though we all want it. Into this void enters the catch-all term “placemaking,” which can now refer to an action, a process, an outcome or a project toward an undefined end by different people at different times.
Like so many other concepts that become buzzwords (often due in part to some real success and value), and then get used ad nauseam, “placemaking” has lost most of its functional meaning. When a once-specific concept starts to require qualifiers like “standard placemaking, “strategic placemaking, “creative placemaking,” “tactical placemaking,” or “placekeeping” to know what someone’s even talking about anymore, you know we’ve lost our way.
Read the full news on the website of Project for Public Spaces.
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