What is placemaking?

At the risk of sounding circular with my answer, “placemaking” is the making of place. Or, as many philosophers have noted, it is the production of place.

Naturally, we cannot produce new locations nor even adjust old locations. Location cannot be changed by any human, only by God. GPS coordinates will always be what they are, despite how a place is being experienced by others.

Locale and sense of place, however, can be produced. For example, a terrain and climate may influence the production of a specific place when they change the locale or its sense of place. Artists can produce place. Moms and Dads can produce place. Corporations can produce place. Governmental officials and policies can change old places or even produce new ones. Technology can produce new placial change. Thus, in The Placial Project we focus on the development of locale and its sense of place.

When we refer to placemaking, we shall mean the analysis of changes in locale and sense of place over time, from the place’s past to its present to its future. Naturally, as Christians, we realize that not all placial change is good, which, itself, begs the question of “good in the eyes of whom?” We would therefore, as Christians, define good placemaking as good in the eyes of God as God’s perspective is revealed in the Bible. (Examples of where this distinction will become important will be topics of our newsletters.)

We look at a place in time, contextualizing it within the larger placial journey that the Bible reveals for making creation to be the sort of place that God would want it to. Every detail about a place’s locale and sense of place is open to analysis. Both placial components, locale and sense of place, are to be assessed from all four perspectives of firstspace through futurespace.

We ask questions such as: How is a place doing on this journey, placially speaking when using the Bible as the criteria? What needs to be affirmed? What needs to change? What needs to be challenged? What is the responsibility of a Christian, both as an individual Christian and as a collective group who are the people of God in the world?

Placemakers care deeply about this placial mission. So, while all peoples of the world are placemakers by default, Christians are responsible to be a different kind of person, being people of God who are the salt of the earth and who are passionate about contributing to good placemaking, the type that God is pleased with.