Sustaining Cities: Urban Policies, Practices, and Perceptions

5. The Art of Place-Making

76 Many people today, throughout the world, seem to feel that any place, be it city or neighborhood, should have its own distinctive character, its own place identity. In an ever globalizing world, once regionally inflected built form—the kind of environment that signaled the uniqueness of a place—is no longer a given. Now, urban designers, planners, architects, landscape architects, politicians, and people from all walks of life are investigating how to achieve distinctive and positive place identities. Such places, it is argued here, are rooted in the past but are also evolving and changing to meet different cultural and societal needs. The process through which such places are shaped is called the art of place-making. This essay first addresses the issues of local distinctiveness and place identity, and how we can achieve these through planning and design processes. A number of theories that underpin the conceptualizations of local distinctiveness, as well as place identity and its relation to our sense of personal and group identity, are discussed. The essay next proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing places from the identity perspective, and illustrates, through a case study of Angell Town, Brixton (London), how we can work collaboratively to pursue the art of place-making that creates a sense of place identity for resident users. Georgia Butina Watson The Art of Place-making i the art of place-making 77 Searching for Identity and Place In the past, places used to be shaped by local people employing the vernacular processes, using locally sourced materials through which most buildings and settlements were produced. Limited knowledge of structural principles and constructional techniques influenced the range of building types in any particular place, producing localized , unique solutions.1 By the middle of the nineteenth century, in the industrializing parts of the world, these localized building traditions began to change. This was due to the mass production of building materials and relatively cheap transportation by canal and rail systems, enabling building materials to be drawn from distant sources. Scientific and technological developments also increased the range of ways in which built form was produced. New design ideas began to be spread through design books and magazines, and by a growing number of designers working across ever wider geographical areas. Now, after more than a century of these changes, regionally distinctive built form no longer happens by default. According to Michael Hough, “the question of regional character has become a question of choice and, therefore, of design rather than of necessity.”2 Building type choices offered to everyday users today, particularly in new housing, are increasingly becoming standardized , and similar typologies are being produced internationally, as a result of the globalized systems of built form production. Many critics see these built form solutions as anonymous, anywhere places, where space and time are converging into homogenized cultural landscapes. In contrast to such anywhere places, shaped by globalized form-production processes, cities such as Oxford, England , display a unique character and a strong sense of place identity. This is due to gradual transformation processes over time, where the city’s original morphology, street pattern, and building typology all form strong associations of deep-rooted historic heritage where each new addition respected what was there before. Such cities are loved and admired by their users, and the processes through which we build such places are intrinsic to the art of place-making. Promoting one particular understanding of what local distinctiveness and place identity might mean, for example, many professionals and organizations, such as the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and design review panels, are searching for tools and methods that would enable designers and city builders to produce places that have a special character and a distinctive place identity. The shared nature of such desires provides a platform for political debates and campaigns. and the issues of place identity now engage even mainstream politicians. in many parts of the world. Local distinctiveness and place identity have also recently acquired economic salience. Place identity has become a sought-after sales commodity worldwide, “the unique selling proposition ” through which localities are marketed as tourist destinations in what has become the world’s largest industry.3 Faced with these increasingly powerful social, political, and economic pressures, many planners and designers now wish to address the issues of place identity in their work. In Great Britain, for example, the importance of place...