Placemaking and the Future of Cities

This handbook will serve as a guide for use by municipal leaders in future public space projects laying out 10 best practices for public space projects. These 10 facets of the Placemaking approach illustrate the process that PPS and UN-Habitat have undertaken together, and demonstrate the effectiveness of such global partnerships in sustainable urban development through networks such as SUD-Net.

UN-Habitat has been developing a vision for public space. PPS has taken this vision as a starting point and has expanded it to incorporate case study narratives describing the impact of the Placemaking process in nearly a dozen cities throughout the Global South. The goal is to bring Placemaking to bear in the development of public space on a global scale.

UN-Habitat plans to use this document as a template for other public space projects and will share these tools, examples, and processes with other cities for them to then adopt for their own public space projects. This is a draft that will continue to evolve and be expanded over time to incorporate the outcomes of additional joint Placemaking initiatives.