The Political Dimension of Making a Place: Framing the Right to the City in Placemaking

This chapter focuses on the political dimension of placemaking. While placemaking has the potential to foment political change, recent discussion about placemaking seems to revolve around its methods and outcomes. Departing from the perspective of placemaking as outcome, this chapter positions placemaking as a dynamic process, shifting attention to the actors involved and their motivations. This political dimension is explored by adopting a framework of the right to the city, enabling a critical examination of existing power structures and circumstances in the transformation of the urban landscape. Drawing on a few cases of placemaking to illustrate the questions about who has the right to make places, this chapter emphasizes the need for structural change in the transformation of urban spaces for public use. As the current approach for placemaking is criticized for fueling social inequalities, asymmetrical political processes, and spatial issues, such as gentrification and displacement, a new framework is required to reorientate placemaking toward a people-led approach. This chapter shows how, by employing the right to the city framework, placemaking can be interpreted beyond its physical outcomes as a unique set of conditions and circumstances that facilitate or hinder people’s ability to make a place. Moreover, the right to the city provides a lens to examine the processes involved in the transformation of the urban landscape and acknowledges the potential of placemaking to challenge these processes.