School of Social & Political Sciences

For our next Early Career Place Network session on Friday 20 March (1-2 pm GMT), I would love to invite you to a 60-minute conversation on a simple question: where is placemaking headed today?

As a term, it’s used increasingly but interchangeably across sectors to mean different things. The idea for this session is to explore together the intellectual underpinnings of placemaking today. Who are the thinkers we cite in class to our students, use in our research or draw on in our work? Are we borrowing from theory or practice, or perhaps even policy?

We will use ‘the circle’ to open up the session, and each of us will be asked to contribute a short 2-3 minute pitch. This can include:

• Why you wanted to join the conversation

• One classic text you keep going back to

• One current reference you think is moving the conversation forward

• One provocation about the state-of-the-art of the placemaking field.

 

An interesting provocation and starting point can be this recent article by Andrew Zitcer and Joanna Taylor:

Zitcer, A., & Taylor, J. K. (2026). A Eulogy for Creative Placemaking. Journal of Urban Affairs, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2026.2615287

 

As always, you are welcome to come with more questions than answers.

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First published: 2 March 2026