What's next for Detroit: Investing in the passion for place. Walter Wasacz | Tuesday, October 18, 2011 Loft living, a city view from Willy's Overland Lofts in Midtown - Photo © Marvn Shaouni What is the next big thing?
To paraphrase the late Steve Jobs: it's you. Urbanized: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit. Telling the Placemaking Story. “Place matters” is a familiar declaration.
Its common use shows that profiling places, especially creative, urban places, is very much in vogue. For instance, the phrase graces the Atlantic Cities masthead, is the title of a New York City project that protects distinctive local environments, frames a non-profit corporation and is a campaign of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Similarly, the term “placemaking” has reached critical mass. The founder of the place-centric Project for Public Spaces (PPS), Fred Kent, recently recounted the increasing role of PPS around the world, including an interview in The Atlantic, here. While placemaking is not a profession, it is certainly a practice that has spread across multiple disciplines, far beyond design and planning roots.