ABSTRACT
Place-making is one of those terms, like ‘community,’ which invoke broadly positive images while being recruited to a wide range of agendas. In general terms, place-making refers to the activity of giving meaning or coherence to a locale. Beyond this, it is used in different circles to mean quite different things. Place-making can have community development objectives, enacted through shared arts activities, for example, and be employed in the interests of inclusive cultural planning (Sarkissian 2005; Winikoff 1995). It can refer to the intent to “revamp and re-envision … underperforming public spaces” (Kent 2007: 1) or to “the use of events to build communities and to brand destinations” (Allen 2002). It can be tied into place-promotion and advertising, and be used to impose themed designs onto precincts such as Chinatowns (Anderson 1987). It can stereotype places and their inhabitants, contribute to displacement, and function to include some people and keep others out (Zukin 1995). It can also simply draw attention to existing practices of daily engagement in a place, to highlight the processes by which meanings come to be associated with ‘places’ of many kinds (Fincher et al. 2009).
