Community Level Placemaking
Community Level Place is built from connected Neighborhood Level Places throughout the community such as a village, town, or city. As with Neighborhood Level Places, the means of connection, whether physical connection or social connection, adds further meaning and identity to the larger Place. Quality community physical form improves the chances villages, towns, cities and regions serve as “a positive and vivid symbol of society’s conception of itself in its setting” (Lynch, 1981). Quality community social function, while not the focus of Lynch’s Theory of Good City Form, can similarly improve society’s conception of itself. Strong Community Level Places are dependent on strong Neighborhood Level Places. Strong connections are not enough.
To refresh, Placemaking includes action that preserves and tells stories, reflects values, supports experiences, personalizes or enables temporary and sustainable change, increases mindfulness, or makes the space more legible and memorable. Community Level Placemaking could thus involve preserving and telling the story of a community’s natural setting or settlement and development history. Placemaking could also reflect broader community values such as nature, conservation, or youth engagement. Community Level Placemaking should strive to offer experiences that engender positive community feelings, including efforts to improve community wayfinding. Effective wayfinding prevents negative feelings associated with getting lost and facilitates access to the community’s many Neighborhood, Site, and Interior Level Places. While not impossible, it is harder to conceptualize action at the level of community that personalizes. However, a key goal of comprehensive planning is to enable sustainable change.
Following or respecting design principles such as paths, nodes, landmarks, districts, and edges within Lynch’s Theory of Good City Form can make a community more legible. Placemaking could also have ties to Alexander’s pattern language (1977). Familiar and comfortable patterns of Place as well as unique and memorable modifications to those familiar patterns can have utility for increasing mindfulness and triggering meaning. Familiar patterns have greater potential to affect different people in a similar way which can be helpful if/when Placemaking for a diverse community.
Transforming Community Level space to a Place for community residents and visitors can improve quality of life and quality of visit, and thus resident and visitor retention and attraction. Further, resident and visitor retention and attraction are all crucial elements of the community economy.
On the physical side, Community Level Placemaking targets community physical form to improve the chances for communities to transform into Places. Examples of community physical form research and tools to support your self-help Community Level Placemaking efforts include:
- Placemaking Guides for comprehensive planning
- Planning for a clear edge and strong center with natural context exterior to Place and natural materials interior to Place.
- Preserving, developing, and communicating cultural and historic resources, and integrating art (dignity, drama, whimsey).
- Place Identification and Navigation Guides (designing paths, nodes, landmarks, districts, edges)
- The role of symbols/symbology in Placemaking: the impact of cultural exposure to and creation of certain Place patterns
- The role of learned behavior/response in Placemaking
- Primal landscapes and Placemaking
- Planning and designing for inclusive access, reduced physical barriers (e.g., ped, bike, transit, auto, ADA)
- Imageability Mapping
On the social side, Community Level Placemaking targets community social function to improve the chances for communities to transform into Places. Examples of community social function research and tools to support your self-help Community Level Placemaking efforts include:
- Wayfinding Guides: focus on scripting wayfinding with signage as support
- Planning and designing for inclusive access, reduced social barriers
- Planning and designing for options allowing for choice (mixed use, programming)
- Citywide and Regional Market Research Tools
