Cultural Heritage and Placemaking

The role cultural heritage plays in our understanding of place and urban planning is underdeveloped within placemaking research activities. Placemaking Europe highlights that “a placemaking project never starts from scratch, it is intimately linked to a specific context and to the cultural heritage of a place- both tangible and intangible. Whether tangible (key monuments, squares, statues) or intangible (social customs, rituals, expressions), this heritage needs to be embraced by placemakers along with the community to understand the “soul of the place” (Placemaking Europe, 2022). Whereas the multifaceted concept of cultural heritage can be understood in different ways this section offers insights into the role of both tangible and intangible elements and how they might contribute to and impact on placemaking practices.