The Influence of Economic Development on Place

Nine years ago, while working on a masters' thesis in urban and regional planning, I built a case study on "placemaking" as enabled by a large-scale capital project to build a new art museum in the downtown market district of the City of Roanoke, Virginia. My research identified the shortfalls around the public language of placemaking and the conflict between large development projects and their stakeholders and community-based interests.

While I still believe that these interests are not mutually exclusive, the struggle between local economic development and local understandings of place continues everywhere. When site-specific projects at the neighbourhood scale have clear objectives to address the history and culture of neighbourhood, through historic preservation or cultural programming for example, there can be a common narrative derived from community input. To overlay development without an understanding of place identity is a missed opportunity.

One thing is clear. The image I derived from Lawrence Buell's concepts of place-connectedness suggests that the overlay of digital information, which in 2007 was barely a whisper, is now in full swing and largely accessible. If communities don't step up to develop the content that delivers their narrative, then it will be filled in for them.