PLACEMAKING AS EMANCIPATORY PRACTICE IN ASIA?

Jeffrey Hou

A vast continent with rich cultural traditions, Asia is steeped in its extraordinary heritage of places, ranging from the majestic monasteries in the high plateaus of Tibet to the multicultural streetscapes of George Town on the island of Penang. For ages, these memorable and remarkable sites have evolved through exchanges of cultures and the economic and social life of their communities. They embody systems of cultural values and spatial practices that are integral to the local ways of life and the identities of those places.

For much of recent history, however, these longstanding practices of placemaking in Asia were disrupted by a multitude of changes, conflicts, colonisation, and rapid economic development, and through institutions imposed on the local communities, including none other than the professional planning and design practice. Over time, vernacular practices gave way to imposed economic and political imperatives. Human-scale places were demolished and replaced by large-scale developments. The city at eye level was transformed by policies at the high level.

It was not long ago that renowned planning scholar John Friedmann lamented that the “art of place-making has not informed planners of the swaths of the

urban in the newly industrialised global regions of Asia and elsewhere” (2010, p. 149). Today, however, a refashioned practice of placemaking is not only in vogue among professionals and state institutions in Asia but also among a wide array of civil society actors. The growing variety of practices have enabled individuals and communities to play a more active role in the shaping of the physical environment as well as the social and cultural life that unfolds in those places.

Placemaking as an age-old practice is not new to Asia, to say the least (Hou 2016). But placemaking as a refashioned attempt to address the shortcomings of institutionalised planning and design in the West has indeed become popular and more widely accepted in the fertile ground of Asia. These wide-ranging practices are the subject of this encyclopaedic volume that features a remarkable collection of projects and initiatives in Asia. This concluding essay intends to offer a few thoughts and ask pertinent questions. Specifically, what can we learn from these recent practices? How can we reflect on these emerging practices critically to avoid the trap of past mistakes?

Starting with lessons, first, it is abundantly clear that placemaking initiatives can provide a platform to engage a multitude of actors, in ways far surpassing conventional planning and design. In this volume, beyond the typical cast of professionals, developers, property owners, and governmental staff, we see the active roles of non-governmental actors including non-profits, philanthropists, social enterprises, artists, volunteers, residents, vendors, and business owners through collaboration, co-creation, and other forms of engagement. They include adults, teens, and children, both locally and from afar. Although Friedmann did not foresee the emergence of placemaking practices in Asia, he was absolutely right that “making places is everyone’s job” (2010, p. 159).

The ability for these projects and initiatives to engage such a broad range of actors represents a window for social transformation or possibly a “site of emancipation” (Lee 2004; Amin & Thrift 2004). As emancipatory practices, these placemaking initiatives are not just about transforming the built environment but also about building capacity and relationships in societies that have become increasingly fragmented. This includes providing agency for people who may have been historically marginalised, including migrants and children. In many specific cases, we see the potential of placemaking practices not only in creating “convivial and liveable urban environments” (Ho & Douglass 2008, p. 199), but also “to challenge top-down, procedure-driven, physical planning” (Huang & Roberts 2019, p. 3).

Secondly, similar to the wider range of actors, placemaking can engage a wide variety of places and types of interventions. Rather than conventional sites of planning and design, the collection of cases in this volume encompasses events, programs, murals, gardening, activation or rehabilitation of vacant and residual spaces, and a variety of short-term and longer-term interventions.

They take place on the street, in alleyways, under bridges, on rooftops, and also in commercial buildings and private residences, including both highly visible and strangely interstitial spaces. Because placemaking can involve all kinds of actions and take place in a wide range of contexts, it can be mobilised to address different needs, issues, and circumstances.

In some cases, placemaking can represent a form of resistance against development or encroachment, as in the alleyway murals in Colombo and community gardens in the Pokfulam village in Hong Kong. In other cases, placemaking can support experiments in an alternative way of life as in the cases of Pasar Papringan, an environmentally friendly pop-up market in rural Indonesia. Furthermore, placemaking can help revitalise declining communities and neighbourhoods, as in the cases of the Asahikawa Green Street in Hokkaido, Japan, and Escolta in Manila, the Philippines. Also, placemaking can serve as a vehicle for addressing the needs of underserved populations such as at-risk youths and children with disabilities as in projects by the Right to Play Thailand Foundation and the Livable City program in India.

Aside from existing communities and institutions and spontaneous acts of individuals, these projects are being led by a growing number of emergent practices. They include charity organisations that have begun to engage in placemaking projects, new nonprofits and neighbourhood associations with placemaking as the focus of their work, public space management consultants, architects and artists who use placemaking as a new medium, and even community media platforms. These new practices bring with them new energy, methods, and dynamism to the shaping of the built environments in Asia.

Thirdly, placemaking can be scalable in both time and space. What may begin as a simple, short-term intervention can blossom into a more substantial program with sustained impacts over time. The Yangon’s Alley Garden Project, one of the most remarkable cases in this volume, for instance, has grown to include twelve sites, totalling 15,000 m2 of urban space. Furthermore, the skills and experiences from the alleyway cleanup and activation have been applied to other sites including streets and playgrounds. In another case, about bicycle-friendly cities in Bangalore, what began as open street events to promote cycling has led to the building of cycling and pedestrian infrastructure and the introduction of a bike-share programme in the city. The scalability of placemaking initiatives is particularly critical to addressing issues of long-term sustainability and for building future-proof cities and communities.

In terms of critical reflections, as an approach embraced by grassroots and institutional actors alike, the practice of placemaking also raises important issues that require further examinations and debates. In this volume, while we have seen bottom-up efforts by artists, non-profit organisers, and professionals that represent challenges to the status quo, there are also projects led by

developers and governmental authorities in which the agency and subjectivity of community stakeholders are not as evident or clearly presented. In other words, as placemaking becomes increasingly used as an institutionalised planning tool, will it simply become another form of elitist intervention and fail to fulfil its emancipatory potential?

Even if community-engaged consultants and artists are commissioned to facilitate the projects or initiatives, can such arrangements substitute for the organic processes of placemaking? Does the consultancy model replicate the power structure that has been responsible for the disruptions of local places in the first place? In a study that examines the involvement of artists in placemaking projects in Berlin, Bain and Landau (2019, p. 406) find that “contrary to collaborative and participatory governance ideals, artists are often singularly responsibilised by civic leaders to realise place-narratives for a community rather than with them.” In Detroit, Montgomery (2016, p. 776) finds that placemaking driven by business and real estate interests “subordinates the black urban poor, even as it incorporates their street culture.” Do the projects in Asia face similar constraints and predicaments? As places and placemaking increasingly become the subject of institutionalised planning and design, what will happen to the fluid and evolving identities and meanings of a place? As the line between placemaking and place-marketing or branding becomes increasingly blurred, who gets to determine the identity and narrative of a place? Do these processes contribute to the reification of place meaning and identity? As placemaking becomes closely aligned with urban regeneration and beautification, how can we prevent gentrification and displacement from happening? As placemaking is increasingly adopted through the neoliberal model of public-private partnership, who is being held accountable to the public? How are decisions being made concerning the use and, at worst, enclosure of public spaces and resources?

Lastly, while placemaking initiatives offer opportunities for quick fixes and early wins, how do these projects address the longstanding, systemic disparities in society? How do they empower those who historically marginalised? While short-term outcomes are desirable, how will the effort be sustained over time? How do they meet the needs for long-term impact, investment, and sustained engagement?

“As places and placemaking increasingly become the subject of institutionalised planning and design, what will happen to the fluid and evolving identities and meanings of a place? ”

While many projects are promoted as human-scaled and human-centric, which human populations are they intended to serve? Do these innovative practices challenge the status quo or become just window dressing and, at worst, undermine the agency and capacity of the public?

As a practice that is characteristically fluid and almost all-encompassing, placemaking does present a powerful and critical counterpoint to the narrow, technocratic exercise of planning and design that has governed the making of the built environment in Asia for too long. Compared with planning and design practices that too often prioritise profit and institutional priorities rather than the interest of communities and the reality of everyday lives, placemaking can serve as an emancipatory alternative through the agency of the public. However, placemaking as currently practised in Asia and elsewhere is often fraught with conflicts and contradictions. With a lack of clear definitions and the predominance of political and economic interests, placemaking can be easily co-opted and appropriated for other agendas or imperatives.

Placemaking can serve as a vehicle for learning. Just as identities and meanings of places are often contested and negotiated over time, and just as placemaking often involves trials and errors, we must, therefore, continue to debate and examine the ongoing practice and evolution of placemaking in Asia. It is through continued experiments and critical reflections that we may build capacity within communities and institutions over time to address the complex and systemic challenges facing the built environments and society in Asia.

REFERENCES

Amin, A., and Thrift, N. (2004) ‘The ‘Emancipatory’ City?’ In Lees, L. (ed.), The Emancipatory City? Paradoxes and Possibilities, p. 231-235. London: Sage Publications.

Bain, AL., and Landau, F. (2019) ‘Artists, Temporality, and the Governance of Collaborative Place-Making’. Urban Affairs Review, 55(2): p. 405-427.

Friedmann, J. (2010) ‘Place and Place-Making in Cities: A Global Perspective’. Planning Theory & Practice, 11(2): p. 149-165.

Ho, KC., and Douglass, M. (2008) ‘Globalisation and liveable cities: Experiences in place-making in Pacific Asia’. International Development Planning Review, 30(3): p. 199-213.

Hou, J. (2016) ‘Everyday Urban Flux: Temporary Urbanism in East Asia as Insurgent Planning’. In Chalana, M., and Hou, J. (eds.) (2016) Messy Urbanism: Understanding the ‘Other’ Cities of Asia, p. 193-214. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Huang, S-M., and Roberts, JL. (2019) ‘Place-Making’. In Orum, A. (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, 1-5. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Lees, L. (2004) ‘The Emancipatory City: Urban (Re)visions’. In Lees, L. (ed.), The Emancipatory City? Paradoxes and Possibilities, p. 23-39. London: Sage Publications.

Montgomery, A. (2016) ‘Reappearance of the Public: Placemaking, Minoritization and Resistance in Detroit’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 40(4): p. 776-799.