Strategies for inclusive place making

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a new approach for analyzing place making structure and processes and discuss strategies for inclusive place making in urban areas.

Design/methodology/approach

The theoretical approach is based on social systems theory and organization design theory, representing a constructionist and socio-structural approach to inclusive place making. The methodology is based on a comparative analysis of three cases of inclusive place making.

Findings

The main findings are that place making systems today lack the necessary complexity in their politics and planning to secure inclusive place making and fail to organize for face-to-face interactions in place making processes.

Research limitations/implications

In a social systems approach, the author observes how place stakeholders and systems observe place making realities and problems and constructs place images. This introduces some degree of uncertainty into the analyses but constitutes an effective basis for studying inclusive strategy development.

Practical implications

The findings indicate that observing how place stakeholders construct their opinions about the problems and possibilities for inclusive place making and face-to-face interactions probably constitutes the best basis for practical support for inclusive place making.

Social implications

The paper directs attention to the fact that current urban development strategies and policies toward inclusion of groups with limited resources today lack the necessary knowledge bases and means to deal effectively with the complexity related to current inclusion problems.

Originality/value

The paper demonstrates that an approach, which supplements the basic governance systems with face-to-face interactions, can deal effectively with today’s problems of inclusivity.

Citation

Omholt, T. (2019), "Strategies for inclusive place making", Journal of Place Management and Development, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 2-19. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMD-09-2017-0098