Placemaking for Cities (Aspiring to Become) Creative [Роль технологии плейсмейкинга для креативного развития городов]

МЕДИОТЕ Элиас Хосе

Федеральный университет Висозы (Висоза, шт. Минас-Жерайс, Бразилия); докторант по направлению «Туризм и наследие»

ПИМЕНТЕЛЬ Тиаго Дуарте

Федеральный университет Жуис-ди-Фора / UFJF (Жуис-ди-Фора, шт. Минас-Жерайс, Бразилия); доктор социальных наук; директор Латиноамериканского центра туризма; заместитель директора Центра социальных исследований;

РОЛЬ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ ПЛЕЙСМЕЙКИНГАДЛЯ КРЕАТИВНОГО РАЗВИТИЯ ГОРОДОВ

В статье проводится концептуальный анализ роли управленческой технологии плейсмейкинга в стимулировании взаимодействий между государством, обществом и территориальным развитием, исходя из опыта городов, которые уже обладают или стремятся получить статус креативного города. Исследование опирается на интерпретативный анализ литературы по территориальному развитию, управлению, креативности и плейсмейкингу. В обсуждении развития, особенно в креативных городах, выделяются два основных трека: один воспроизводит традиционную капиталистическую модель, другой основан на солидари-стских принципах. Анализ показывает, что современные технологические трансформации требуют всё более предпринимательских и инновационных ответов, включающих сотрудничество местных акторов для продвижения территориального развития через плейсмейкинг как один из эффективных инструментов управления. В заключении делается вывод, что понимание территориального развития требует изучения динамики и взаимосвязей между местными акторами. Также показывается, что управление плейсмейкингом в настоящее время является важным инструментом для решения ряда проблем, таких как социально-пространственные неравенства, в креативных и стремящихся к такому статусу городах, повышая эффективность инициатив по развитию их территорий.

Дата поступления в редакцию: 24 ноября 2025 г.

Дата утверждения в печать: 10 июня 2026 г.

The current context and the zeitgeist for placemaking

This paper is a conceptual and analytical essay that develops a critical reflection on territorial development from a creative perspective in the contemporary context, considering the growing emphasis on the re-signification of territories through the digital era, urban marketing, urban planning, and institutional arrangements shaping current urbanization processes and their models of urbanization.

In Brazil, the deindustrialization processes that took place during the 1990s forced numerous regions to readjust through innovation- and entrepreneurship-driven strategies, in response to rising unemployment and economic crises. Creativity-oriented strategies – particularly those based on public–private cooperation, the development of creative industries, and the attraction of human creative capital–along with the strengthening of research centers, knowledge production, and higher education institutions such as universities and polytechnics, became central to this new context. This form of cooperation became known as the Triple Helix, aiming to enhance and leverage existing local economic assets, including technological capabilities derived from spin-off industries and processes of “smartification” (Beck, 2011; Covas & Covas, 2020; Van Boom, 2017).

Nevertheless, creativity – aligned with the techno-scientific tools of the current social context and embedded within a capitalist framework – has also intensified competition and increased investments in technology and innovation aimed at generating new demands and needs within geographic spaces, also conceived as territories. Thus, these territories are becoming increasingly interconnected, shaped by the dynamics of civilizational risks produced by capitalism, which in turn render them more commodified and subject to processes of legitimation (Beck, 2011; Furtado, 1978).

Creative cities are spaces of experimentation and innovation, where cooperation and informational exchanges (ideas) among individuals play a crucial role in building communities and places that are better suited for living, working, and leisure. These cities are constructed upon diverse forms of knowledge and rely on public participation to address complex urban issues related to housing, inclusion, preservation, and development (Bradford, 2004). According to Machado and André (2012), the cities of the future will be creative communities in which cultural recognition and the arts will be central to regional life, as well as to the formation of leaders and workers within the knowledge economy.

In the Luso-Brazilian context, 17 creative cities have been identified – 10 in Brazil (Ministério do Turismo [MTUR], 2021) and 7 in Portugal (Comissão Nacional da UNESCO, 2021). These cities are recognized across diverse fields, including gastronomy, design, crafts and folk arts, music, cinema, literature, and digital arts. All these dimensions contribute to strengthening and recognizing local culture, encouraging cities to mobilize their creative and innovative capital to foster development, generate business opportunities, employment, income, and civic engagement (MTUR, 2021).

The exploration of the population’s creative potential and the interaction among diverse public and private actors presuppose the configuration of urban governance arrangements, as governance can be understood as a system of arrangements and modes of action that incorporate civil society into the policymaking process, aligning with the idea of decentralized welfare (Queirós, 2010). Given placemaking as a key instrument of urban planning and territorial management, directly linked to the strengthening of local culture, grounded in values of creativity and innovation derived from creative cities (Machado & André, 2012; Mediotte et al., 2021; Richards & Duif, 2018), the central question that emerges is: how can placemaking contribute to development in creative cities?

The Concept of Placemaking and Its Potential Contribution to Territorial Development

It is thus argued that creative cities have increasingly become targets of transformation into entrepreneurial cities, driven “without hesitation or mediation by those who understand business: capitalist entrepreneurs” (Vainer, 2011, p. 4). These dynamics can be observed in public–private partnerships, particularly through forms of co-concession from the public to the private sector – an arrangement strongly associated with the principles of New Public Management. Moreover, recalling Karl Marx’s phrase “No admittance except on business” inevitably evokes Benjamin Franklin’s well-known maxim, cited by Weber, “Time is money.”

Despite this critical perspective, the literature has emphasized territorial development grounded in the inclusion of civil society and the exercise of citizenship as fundamental conditions for collective construction. This includes the creation of interaction spaces that privilege and foster initiative and autonomy in managing public affairs (Bradford, 2004; Hall, 2000; Machado & André, 2012; Rodrigues & Franco, 2020). In this sense, development is understood not merely as an economic driver, but as a governance-based process in which economic dimensions interact with sociocultural, environmental, and political factors, from which development ultimately emerges (Martins et al., 2010; Mediotte et al., 2021).

Therefore, the central challenge of placemaking in the public sector lies in transforming public spaces into places:

“…where people wish to use them regularly, offering a diversity of activities and amenities that enhance the quality of life in the locality. For this to occur, there must be a level of active citizenship committed to building partnerships with stakeholders and establishing co-re-sponsibility agreements for development (including the maintenance of these spaces)” (Badenhorst, 2019, p. 3).

Innovation and entrepreneurship are closely aligned with development approaches grounded in placemaking, as they aim, more dynamically, to foster a society capable of transforming urban spaces into generators of creative potential, where human interactions occur in conjunction with more democratic practices. In this regard, it is essential to reaffirm the need to build multi-level partnerships so that new ideas, directions, and solutions can be effectively implemented – particularly in the context of development, which fundamentally requires continuous renewal (Dallabrida, 2017; Emmendoer-fer et al., 2020).

Preliminary Reflections: the room for Placemaking in Creative Cities, its Context and Perspectives

The dynamics produced by capitalism influence not only the intensification of transportation and communication flows, but also the very construction of new identities–particularly within the framework of territorial reengineering and ludification, or territorial re-signification. In response to these tensions, governance and placemaking are proposed as appropriate mechanisms to address the socio-spatial inequalities present in creative cities, which may arise either from conflictual power relations between the State and society or from dynamics driven predominantly by capitalist elites.

Although the relationship between creative cities and the potential for creation through multi-level governance networks is widely recognized, creativity has increasingly been instrumentalized as a means to achieve specific objectives – particularly those associated with economic dimensions. Territorial marketing strategies adopted in recent years have reconfigured the very notion of creativity, often generating greater resistance among the creative class rather than enhancing a city’s capacity to attract it.

The plurality of creativity, as a means of addressing emerging urban demands and problems, suggests that its conceptualization encompasses processes of innovation, application, and usability, as well as the notion of novelty itself. These assumptions can also be linked to the concept of Creative Cities through three core approaches: (i) creative planning, understood as the development of new solutions to complex urban problems; (ii) creative industries, clusters, and the prevailing cultural economy; and (iii) creative human capital, associated with the rise of the creative class (Van Boom, 2017).

Creative planning for territorial development seeks to transform post-industrial economies by stimulating creativity through creative thinking, openness to diversity, and receptivity – especially considering that, at the local level, there was a prior need to recover from the effects of industrial economic decline (Richards & Duif, 2018; Van Boom, 2017). These conditions were marked by challenges such as social fragmentation, the erosion of place identity, fear, and alienation, reflecting the inability of transitional policies to adequately address such issues (Richards & Duif, 2018; Van Boom, 2017).

In this sense, creative cultural production is embedded within a networked system in which cities play a central role as hubs of knowledge and information production and consumption. In this sense, creative cultural production is understood to be embedded within a networked system in which cities play a central role as hubs for the production and consumption of knowledge and information. This is because the nature of creative cultural production inherently requires sharing, interaction, and learning. Accordingly, territorial development–when linked to creative cities–can be interpreted through the lens of authenticity, while simultaneously enabling socio-spatial interactions and fostering the emergence of creative industries and tourism-related clusters. These dynamics attract tourists and new residents seeking distinctive urban experiences (Richards & Duif, 2018; Van Boom, 2017).

Thus, fostering public–private partnerships and citizen engagement becomes both viable and necessary, promoting a more balanced relationship between the State and society. Such arrangements aim to advance inclusion, equity, and resilience, counteracting the asymmetries derived from power concentration and domination – particularly those associated with processes of elitization and inequality embedded within territories.

Finally, this paper ultimately advances a critical provocation aimed at deepening the understanding of how management, governance, and placemaking articulate as mechanisms for mobilizing creativity and territorial development in contemporary contexts. Moreover, it demonstrates the need to reconsider socio-spatial and socio-cultural dynamics increasingly shaped by market-oriented, algorithmic, and self-regulatory logics that characterize the current landscape of creative cities.