Placemaking is a comprehensive approach to planning, designing and managing public space that uses the resources, inspiration and potential of local community to create public spaces promoting health, happiness and well-being.
Public space planning in cooperation with local people has been developing in contemporary urban planning practice under the influence of different circumstances. Mainly it responds to the needs of residents and local communities, as well as to the problems of other landowners and public administrations as they manage space, and it concerns both public and common, as well as private spaces. The approach is very well established in open space planning, and it is often also used for the planning of closed public and other common spaces.
Placemaking brings together residents, owners and local administrations, while the planning process is usually supported by interdisciplinary expert groups. The initiative and the interest in public space planning in cooperation with inhabitants can originally come from one side, however, in the process always everyone comes together and gets connected: inhabitants, local community and local administration as well as landowners.
Public space planning in cooperation with local people as a spatial management approach brings benefits to all groups of actors, representing an important contribution to the economy and functionality, and above all to satisfaction. The added value of this approach are social benefits. The approach contributes to increasing and improving the effects of regulating the local environment and the work of public administration, while at the same time contributing to the greater satisfaction of local population and property owners.
IPoP deals with placemaking in several ways:
- Monitoring and investigating domestic and foreign practice of public space planning in cooperation with residents
- Participating actively in the development of domestic practice
- Promoting and offering expert support to actors using the placemaking approach to address their specific problems with spatial planning
Within this framework IPoP offers the following services to interested actors (municipalities, local communities, landowners, consulting companies, non-governmental organizations):
- Counselling for municipalities / local communities and landowners on the planning of public and common space through public participation
- Drafting strategic assessments of the possibilities for public space planning in a town / municipality in cooperation with residents for the needs of the municipality / local community
- Advising municipalities / local communities, owners and non-governmental organizations to launch a concrete initiative for spatial planning with the participation of residents
- Cooperation with a municipality / local community, owners and non-governmental organizations in launching and implementing a specific planning case
Recently, we participated in the implementation of placemaking at Vodnikova cesta and Tobačna in Ljubljana, and we also participated in the implementation of sustainable urban regeneration project in Idrija.