Finding the ROI in Placemaking

An easily accessible, free tool can help define and measure the elements of a successful place.

By Steve Pomerenke
Design Director

“Placemaking” is an often-used term, but it is still a mysterious, hard-to-define concept. Even within the design industry, it’s discussed as part science and part magic, something we want to achieve and “we’ll know it when we see it.”

As designers, we know that placemaking is about creating active spaces that engage and inspire people. But that can mean different things on different projects. A successful, active place in a civic facility may measure success by community and access; on a school campus, the priority might be about socializing and collaboration.

On many projects, it can be frustrating to discuss the value and importance of designing a place. We can talk about the power, passion and joy of a place. But if we are simply relying on perceptions, it’s hard to validate that in any meaningful way, especially when we’re talking to clients and developers who have to put money on the table to make a place happen.

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As stewards of our clients’ vision, we should be more analytical in our approach to placemaking and present it in a meaningful, codified, measurable way. Fortunately, there is a growing library of tools that can help us translate the elements of a place into hard data to support and quantify the results of design decisions.

For a recent presentation to designers, LPA Senior Design Researcher Rachel Nasland and I focused on a tool created by the Project for Public Spaces, a 50-year-old nonprofit organization helping communities develop public spaces. The Place Diagram is a simple, easily accessible way of analyzing and defining placemaking that helps benchmark success in tangible ways, with universal principles that can apply to all types of projects.

The tool breaks down placemaking into four broad categories that provide a solid framework for starting the analysis of any place.

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Sociability

A place is a favorite spot for people to meet and gather. We always talk about that sense of community, but it’s a real attribute to a place. Does that place foster community? Or does it hinder a sense of community?

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Uses & Activities

This is a fun one and often overlooked. The issue of the activity and the actual uses, whether they’re curated or serendipitous, are what really make a place. And sometimes those have tobe overtly designed and curated.

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Access & Linkages

How do you get there? Is it easy to get there? Do you know where you are? Does the space say hello or is it foreboding? Can you move through it? Are there places that you can pause? All those things.

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Comfort & Image

It goes to the issue of what does it feel like to be in a place, but also the branding and image of a place. Is there a portal on arrival that says, “You are here. You have arrived”? And once you are there, does it lead you to another place or an activity within a place?

With those four ideas at the center, the circular tool then adds a ring of what they call intangibles, which are attributes of each category that are desired but harder to define. It’s the “soft and fuzzy” ring. Under Uses & Activities, for example, is there a sense of fun? Is it special? Are there indigenous activities happening? The intangibles are broad, but they reflect very real elements of a successful place; elements we can all recognize.

The outer ring is the hard data portion, which provides criteria to develop tangible, measurable data around those intangible ideas in each category. Is it having a real impact? Is pedestrian activity increasing? What does traffic data show? Have there been changes in transit usage? Around Usages & Activities, we can explore if the spaces affect local retail sales, rent levels and local business ownership.

The last layer provides a set of data points that can help clients and communities determine the real impact of a place. The wheel concept allows designers and clients to discuss statistic-based and “soft” approaches together, without going too far into the weeds.

There’s always an interesting tension between the loose intangibles and the measurable data in design, and this group connected the dots. Typically, people either stay in the big ideas of center circles or they exclusively live in the data-based outer circle — very few groups that do placemaking weave those two together into a coherent lens to look at a place.

For designers, the Project for Public Spaces’ tool provides common attributes to placemaking that can be defined and measured. It’s another way of communicating this concept of placemaking with clients and communities after they’ve done the goalsetting and placemaking becomes a real part of the design discussions.

We are in the business of changing lives through design. Accomplishing that requires the same rigor that we apply to the other areas of our work. Storytelling, the idea behind a place, is the reason we do this work. This placemaking tool allows us to tell the story a little bit more coherently, a little bit more reliably. It also allows us to hold the mirror up to what we’ve done and see if it works, so we don’t just rely on pretty pictures and anecdotes to measure our success.