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PLACEMAKING AS REFERENTIAL ENGAGEMENT: Affirming placemaking values in dérives
COREY BRAY
Corey Bray is a PhD student in the School of Education at UNC Chapel Hill. He studies Public Pedagogy, or learning outside of schools, and cultural studies around discourse, affect, and games. His work centers on the everyday experiences of learning that surround us, and the affirmative implications of immanence.
SAMANTHA PACE
Samantha Pace is a dual master’s student in City and Regional Planning at UNC Chapel Hill and Environmental Management at Duke University. After receiving her undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from North Carolina State University, she worked at a biotechnology start-up in Research Triangle Park for 3 years. She is interested in equitable resilience planning, urban design, and green space.
ABSTRACT
Using three theoretical backgrounds, we argue that placemaking is local, engaged, and personal. Our notion of placemaking is informed by the Project for Public Space (PPS) and their Place Diagram, which assesses a sense of place. We develop an application of this framework with Guy Debord’s psychogeography and theory of the dérive. Our intentional wanderings, or dérives, are reflective of PPS placemaking goals, be it hiking to a glacier or meandering through a town. Finally, we incorporate Jean Baudrillard’s orders of value to claim that our placemaking through dérives is always based in referents. Referents cannot be abstract, but are mutually active, wherein they act on us and we on them. Denying abstraction means denying dereferentialization, where meaning is baseless. Instead, the permanence of referents in our placemaking means it must be something local, engaged, and personal, where people in the space make it a place.
INTRODUCTION
If institutions and power structures are the creators of places, then placemaking is permanent, hierarchical, and even authoritarian. However, we argue that placemaking is never as such because it is necessarily local, engaged, and personal. It is local, meaning relevant to immediate surroundings; engaged, meaning users are active and have some influence on the space; and personal, meaning the presence of a bond with the space and users. To illuminate our thinking, we bring three theories into conversation and use them to demonstrate the experiential power of place. These fields are the Project for Public Spaces’ (PPS) placemaking, Guy Debord’s psychogeography and dérives, and Jean Buadrillard’s orders of value.
PPS views placemaking as an intentional, community driven process, and created the Place Diagram to evaluate places. The diagram includes four quadrants: (1) access and linkages, (2) comfort and image, (3) uses and activities, and (4) sociability. To apply their assessment strategy, we engaged in our own placemaking processes by making intentional wanderings, or Debord’s dérives, to reflect on how we think about our movement in space and the influence we and the space have on each other. When we think about placemaking as PPS does and when we enact placemaking through dérives, we find a referential process. A referent is based in the real, as opposed to the abstract, and basis in the real requires us to be in proximity, actively participate, and share a connection. That is to say, our placemaking is local, engaged, and personal. It requires and rewards the involvement of people operating in and with the space.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
PLACEMAKING
Placemaking, in the most straightforward terms, can be defined as “the process of creating quality places that people want to work, live, play, and learn in” (Wyckoff, 2014). The notion of placemaking has roots in the work of urban activists and thought leaders William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs, whose criticism of top-down planning processes aimed to recenter the human scale in urban environments (Kent, 2019). After collaborating with the New York City Planning Commission on a comprehensive plan in 1969, Whyte was interested in evaluating the new public spaces, which led to his work on the Street Life Project (“William H. Whyte,” 2010). This project examined pedestrians and their engagement with public spaces in New York City and other urban settings. Whyte and his team directly observed spaces and their users, interviewed people, and used timelapse videos and photography to understand these spaces (Whyte, 1980). Whyte’s book and associated film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980) highlighted observations from the Street Life Project, new ideas about how people use public space, why some places work well for their inhabitants while others do not, and recommendations on how to better design public spaces for people. This work is fundamental to placemaking.
After working as a researcher on the Street Life Project, Fred Kent founded Project for Public Spaces (PPS) in 1975 (“About — Project for Public Spaces,” n.d.). The intention was for PPS to be a three-year endeavor to utilize and build upon Whyte’s findings in the Street Life Project and to “get public spaces to be planned as if people mattered” (“About — Project for Public Spaces,” n.d.). As PPS rounded out its third year, Kent and co-founders Kathy Madden and Steve Davies determined their work was far from complete and the organization continued to facilitate the process of making public space more people-centered.
Over the following years, PPS grew their public space expertise and research and in 1995 began to use the word ‘placemaking’ to describe their process of facilitating the empowerment of users to transform public spaces. PPS realized that community members and users of the place are the experts of the space, and the organization’s role lies in facilitating the realization of the communal vision.
Today, PPS describes placemaking as an approach to communally re-envision the public spaces that bond the community together (“What Is Placemaking?,” n.d.). Since its establishment, the organization has consulted with more than 3,000 communities across the globe to help transform their public spaces (“About — Project for Public Spaces,” n.d.).
DÉRIVE THEORY
As an investigation of placemaking, we decided to engage our own experiences and implement the practice of the dérive. The dérive is a psychogeographical technique theorized by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, an artistic and intellectual collective. Psychogeography is a study of the mental, emotional, and behavioral effects of a geographical environment on people (Debord, 2006). In other words, it is the affect of place and the ways our thinking and movement are influenced by our physical surroundings. The dérive is a specific way of engaging this affect, wherein a small group of people, perhaps two or three, have a “playful-constructive” goal to make them aware of psychogeography (Debord, 1956). The participants are meant to “drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there” (1956). For example, “get to that landmark” or “pursue paths accented with green.” By arbitrarily drifting through a space, participants reflect on the psychological influence of placemaking on their engagement with the place.
ORDERS OF VALUE
To further theorize placemaking, we orient both PPS and the dérive through Jean Baudrillard’s orders of value. These orders champion experience and connection over empty signification, what Baudrillard names dereference. The first value is “natural,” the second “exchange,” and the third “structural” (Baudrillard, 1993). For Baudrillard, natural value reflects things valued for themselves, like affection from a loved one or a useful tool. The second value, exchange, is based in reference, and requires understanding and agreement to function well. Modern economic systems ostensibly run on exchange value (1993). However, Baudrillard warns of the third value, structural, wherein the worth of something is determined by its place in a system. For example, money becomes dereferentialized when it ceases to reference anything natural and is solely valuable because we claim it to be so. Without reference or natural value, things become signs alone and everything loses meaning (1994).
APPLICATION
PLACE DIAGRAM
Project for Public Spaces created the Place Diagram model to help users understand the quality of a space (“What Makes a Successful Place?,” n.d.). According to PPS, great public spaces generally demonstrate four important qualities: that the place should be well-connected/accessible, comfortable, lively with activities, and host socializing. These qualities are summarized in the four quadrants of the Place Diagram: (1) access and linkages, (2) comfort and image, (3) uses and activities, and (4) sociability. Each attribute is then further elaborated with seven to nine “intangible qualities” like proximity, walkability, and neighborliness, and further still with four or five measurements, like volunteerism, pedestrian activity, and property values.
These quadrants also pertain to the local, engaged, and personal nature of placemaking. Locality is addressed in the access and linkages quadrant, with consideration to walkability, visibility, convenience, and connections between this place and nearby places. Engagement pertains to the quadrant of sociability and the quadrant of uses and activities in the Place Diagram. Engagement highlights the interactive nature of people in the space and their decision to be present in the space, relating to sociability. The uses and activities quadrant demonstrates the engaged nature of placemaking by considering the availability and choice of things to do in the space and which groups of people and individuals choose to do an activity in the space. The personal nature of placemaking is characterized in the sociability quadrant, through relationships grown through welcomed interactions, and in the comfort and image quadrant, when users feel attracted to the place and feel safe and welcome in it.
OUR DÉRIVES
We conducted three dérives, each in a different place with a different goal. First, we looked for the highest point in a small Italian town, Tarquinia. Then we used public transit to reach the river in Stockholm, Sweden. Finally, we hiked to the glacier in Tarfala, Sweden. During each dérive we made a timelapse of our progress to document the place, the people in it, and our movement through it (see Figures 1 and 2). The relations between the places and our goals augmented the placemaking we experienced and enacted, but the local, engaged, and personal qualities remained constant.
The first dérive through Tarquinia contained a semi-abstract goal, to always be moving towards the highest point in the town, in a dense tourist area. At each junction of the paths, we chose the one that seemed to slope upward, but our final destination was not in sight until the very end of our journey. Our dérive began in more public spaces with retail and commercial uses. As we continued to take the higher paths, we were moving out of public spaces and into residential areas, and we began feeling that we were encroaching which led us to double back and take another path. The dérive through Tarquina exhibits the Place Diagram’s component of accessibility through its walkability and well-connected and continuous paths. Tarquina’s historic aesthetic and the comforts of safety and cleanliness contribute to the quality of the space.
The second dérive in Stockholm, Sweden was the most abstract, as we used street signs, bus routes, and landmarks to guide us to the river in a bustling urban environment. There were many ways to travel, from foot to bus to car, and an abundance of information about locations and paths. Our dérive was ‘interrupted’ by visiting a cafe, sightseeing, and getting lost. This dérive was interactive and engaging for participants and the streetscape created a welcoming atmosphere, demonstrating the Place Diagram’s sociability quality. From a coffee shop to views of the river, the urban nature of this dérive highlighted the many activities, uses, and motivations to visit and experience this space.
The final dérive was the most immediate as we could see our destination for the duration of the hike. We simply had to overcome the terrain to reach the Tarfala glacier. The path crossed streams, snowbanks, and rock piles. There was evidence of other people’s placemaking in cairns and footprints in the snow, but otherwise we forged our own path. The clean and natural views of Tarfala contribute to a memorable image of the space and, per the Place Diagram, contribute to a quality sense of place. The experience of hiking to the glacier is an enjoyable and active use, which inspires people to visit this place and partake in this special experience.
ANALYSIS
In each of our journeys, we recognized elements of PPS’ placemaking and acted in local, engaged, and personal ways. We were steeped in the locality of place in our choices of travel, from navigating busy sidewalks to learning bus routes to hiking icy cliffs. The access we had and the physical paths we chose is dependent on the specific locales, rather than generalizable norms. Each dérive created engagement by allowing us to talk with other placemakers and enjoy the spaces’ opportunities. We do not pass by like ghosts, but instead acted on and were acted on in return. We would spot a restaurant to visit later, have a conversation on a bus, and communicate with future travelers via footprints. All of this was based in personal experience, as our relation to public/private space alters our course, our lack of knowledge of the city allows us to explore it as outsiders, and our interest in geography and climate leads us to a remote glacier. The placemakers before us planned for the comfort of walking, for the accessibility of exploration, and the sociability of interpersonal connection.
In terms of placemaking practices, we can experience dereferentialization. For example, when we are in a new place and follow signs without knowing their origin or purpose, we are engaging in dereferentialized practice. Perhaps a barrier is placed across half an alleyway, and so we do not enter it. There may be a gate into a park or a path without footprints which each deter us. We do not know the reference of these signifiers, but we operate as if we do. Perhaps the barrier was from an earlier parade and was set to the side, the gate is unlocked during daylight hours, or the path is washed each day. The point is that we do not know the meaning of the signs, but are still psychogeographically impacted by them in a derefentialized manner.
However, the use of a dérive and the analysis of placemaking gives us access to referents in all of our movements. First, the dérive helps us recognize how our decisions are related to our goals. Without a predetermined goal statement, we would still be making decisions, but their purpose would be less clear. The dérive process creates a focus for us to analyze placemaking, though we assert it would happen even without the predetermined goal. If we seek to “go uphill,” we are more likely to bypass an ambiguous barrier than if our goal was to follow our habits.
Second, when these goals combine with situational and local placemaking, our reading of geographical markers is rooted in the lives of people around us rather than unknown systems and policies. The wandering takes us into tracks left by others or pathways full of people or a group queue for a bus. The signs around us are always based in the meaning of their engagement, which is co-produced by the signs, the people nearby, and ourselves.
The three dérives, as read through the paradigms of PPS, demonstrate the natural and referential value of placemaking. As discussed, the four paradigms are imbricated with local, engaged, and personal qualities: local in access and linkages, engaged in both sociability and uses and activities, and personal in both sociability and comfort and image. Local, engaged, and personal places must be referential. The locality demonstrates points of reference, if not natural value, engagement creates references where they might not have previously existed, and the personal makes references meaningful to prevent the creation of empty signs. This also means placemaking is natural and/or referential. Access and linkages require or allow direct involvement, which is natural or referential. Sociability pulls on the references of relationships and the engagements requisite to make them. Uses and activities are founded on natural value for their immediate embodiment in the space. Comfort and image rely on our understanding of a place, which is to say our reference with it.
To illustrate our thinking, we developed a Referential Placemaking Diagram (Figure 3). Centered in the image is placemaking practices, which for our purposes was the dérive. However, all placemaking practices are situated in this triangle. Extending from the center are the three qualities we believe are necessary for placemaking, namely local, engaged, and personal. These tenets of placemaking can be connected to the four quadrants of place quality as assessed by the PPS Place Diagram, which are (1) access and linkages, (2) comfort and image, (3) uses and activities, and (4) sociability. While the qualities of placemaking could each extend to multiple quadrants, we illustrated how we think of those connections forming, from local to access and linkages, from engaged to uses and sociability, and from personal to comfort, image, and sociability. All of these connections are located within referential placemaking, as they require real, rather than abstract, relation to the place. The reciprocal connection between place and person radiates from the center of the diagram. If the connection is lost, meaning that the placemaking ceases to fulfill the four quadrants or is somehow discontinuous with local, engaged, and personal practice, the placemaking becomes deferential. However, we draw a solid line between referential and dereferential space, as we claim that any placemaking practice must be deeply integrated with the space it inhabits. The act of operating in and with place must be local, engaged, and personal, and it cannot be purely abstract.
CONCLUSION
Engaged experience through placemaking helps ground us in the referents of our everyday lives. Without these referents, place would be pure abstraction without meaning. However, our dérives and subsequent analysis using the PPS model can only occur with referents, and therefore must be local, engaged, and personal. The PPS model helps reinforce our understanding of geographies as lived experience, and our psychogeographical dérives remind us that we are affected, and thereby referenced, in our movement through our environment. Placemaking and movement through place must therefore always be something local, mediated by personal engagement, and imbricated in reference. Our referents only appear when people engage with that space, which must be a local and personal experience. It is the individuals and groups that make the place, and are made by it, existing in a mutually constructive relationship. From the social vantage of PPS or the theoretical lens of orders of value, it is the connection people have with their space that results in meaningful placemaking.
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