Culture Places and Local Knowledge Production: an Introduction

Placemaking is a method of planning, designing and managing the quality of open public places through active collaboration between professionals, citizens, local government and stakeholders in order to achieve an attractive, comfortable, safe, accessible, healthy urban environment. It usually combines “expert knowledge” and “local knowledge” and from both perspectives of top-down and bottom-up approaches, which result in knowledge exchange and conversion. During any placemaking process, participants share knowledge and learn new skills to transform their own environments and, as a result, they can help experts to discover and preserve the identity of the place and its cultural needs.