Affordance-Based Placemaking and Incremental Neighborhood Renewal

*Tyler de la Plaine and Mukaddes Darwish* 

#### **Abstract**

Placemaking is a viable urban renewal process for creating vibrant and sustainable neighborhoods focused on improving the wellness and well-being of the community. As an interdisciplinary undertaking centered upon urban ecology and harmony between the natural and built environment, placemaking incorporates vision, leadership, research, design, construction, entrepreneurship, communities, and municipalities. Place-made neighborhoods become a more complex experiential environment through tailored businesses, local cultures, public spaces with art, interesting residence options for creatives and families, buildings integrated with nature, and modern infrastructure. This experiential environment of curated affordances centers on human perception and feeling where the amelioration of public spaces promotes social interaction and fosters healthier and economically resilient communities. Beyond buildings, it is the emotional experiences, interactions, and humanization within a location, its structures, and locales that make a place a place. In this paper, authors will consider the essence of place, creative inclusion of people and culture, and afforded experiences integral to placemaking. The exploratory research is interdisciplinary owing to the complexities of the expansive field of urban planning and urban renewal.

**Keywords:** place, placemaking, affordances, neighborhood renewal, livable streets, sustainability, urban agriculture

#### **1. Introduction**

 Urban issues continue to escalate globally, and it has become obvious that the value of a single "green" building or eco-labeled product is insignificant if it is not supported by sustainable urban infrastructure and a culture of sustainability. High vehicle miles of travel, insufficient level of services, diminished air quality, decayed sense of place, segregation in land use, and other nonurban feature problems create negative effects on the human quality of life. Quality of life is considered one of the most important dimensions for sustaining any urban development [1]. The essential goal of sustainable planning is the creation of a sustainable community which includes the defining features of a healthy climate and environment, social wellbeing, and economic security. However, sustainable planning is heavily focused on the environment and social and economic realms of sustainable development, and communities are ignored. Placemaking can be used to boost the social and economic bottom lines to balance sustainable planning and communities. Placemaking is conceptualized as a viable urban renewal process for creating vibrant and sustainable communities [2–4]. Place-based urban designers are responsible for addressing social issues (public health, social equity), economic issues (cost of services, return on infrastructure investments), and environmental issues (natural land preservation to development that improve our quality of life) [5].

Conceptually, place-makers should understand the values, cultures, and capabilities of the community and neighborhood they are working to renew. Urban renewal through placemaking has a higher chance of success if a communityinclusive process is utilized. A visionary project unfamiliar with the community is all but destined to fail [6].

Urban design impacts places beyond their physical dimensions of buildings and infrastructure. Life quality (LQ ) as an affordance is considered a critical dimension for neighborhood renewal [7]. Although a dynamic concept, LQ is used contextually as an urban design construct. Spatial quality affordances offer LQ through complex domains: placemaking, small-scale development, mixed-use design, heritage-inclusion, public art, culture, and urban agriculture [7]. In this interdisciplinary approach, small-scale urban designers, developers, and city planners interact to shape the physical form of neighborhoods. Hypothesized is that small-scale, mixed-use (SMU) buildings add environmental complexity to a neighborhood and provide an ameliorative design strategy for vibrant and resilient placemaking. Four arguments are covered: (1) discussion on place and placemaking, (2) affordance-based placemaking (ABP), (3) rooftop urban agriculture, and (4) incremental neighborhood renewal through small-scale, mixed-use urban development (SMU-UD).

 These arguments were viewed contextually as a holistic complex urban system, where afforded experiences (through ABP) center on human perception and feeling. Surmised is that incremental urban renewal would reduce the adverse social and cultural effects of disruptive large-scale urban development, particularly the displacement of residents. Envisioned is a viable and inclusive placemaking process where SMU-UD projects would slowly and equitably rebuild neighborhoods into sustainable, healthy, diverse, distinctive, and vibrant communities. Placemaking thus transcends an indistinct or undesirable place into a distinct and desirable place.

 The viability of these ideas is predicated upon the collective enterprising of existing community members, civic leaders, and entrepreneurs [8]. Community enterprising is based on the theory of social entrepreneurship which transcends tradition and signals an "imperative to drive social change with its lasting, transformational benefit to society" [9]. Furthermore, the wellness disparity of vulnerable and underserved populations should be identified and provided with opportunities for their pursuit of well-being [10]. Qualitatively, this placemaking approach incorporates a diversity of disciplines including entrepreneurialism, economics, psychology, agriculture, urban ecology, and sociology.

#### **2. A phenomenological approach to place and placemaking**

Placemaking is a creative and aspirational undertaking of envisioning and making an undesirable or non-distinct place into one that is vibrant, cultural, and esthetic. It is a place endeavored to enrich lives where the pursuit of wellness and well-being is possible. Compellingly, placemaking is art and science, theory and implementation, and holistic embodiment of complex, abstract factors. Place, in a positive phenomenological sense, is conceptually steeped in imagery of feeling where descriptors attempt to capture its wonderment. Symbolically it is an interesting, beautiful,

#### *Affordance-Based Placemaking and Incremental Neighborhood Renewal DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87836*

spiritual, healthy, enjoyable, or vibrant express, an emotional response from the phenomenological experience (perception-meaning) of a place [11]. The sense of place is an intriguing thing that with its tangible and intangible qualities permeates feelings that are felt [12]. Some of the world-class places that capture these perceptions are canals of Venice, the cafe-lined cobblestones of Stockholm, the bucolic Austrian surrounds of Pfarrkirche St. Magdalena, the persevering isolation of Skagway, and the spirituality of Thorncrown Chapel.

 Placemaking, as a complex system, posits that a place's whole is greater than and cannot be understood alone by its constituent parts [13]. As a sophisticated and collective process, placemaking necessitates contributions from multidiscipline professionals, community members, and civic leaders. Furthermore, it incorporates urban design tenets and sustainable development principles [10]. Additionally, it focuses on discovering and enhancing the local identity of people, their culture, and heritage. Embraced is the shaping of an environment's perceived quality through experiential feeling which adds value beyond architecture's traditional "form follows function" construct [14]. Residents, tourists, and through-goers become part of its movement, absorbing its environs, esthetics, and wonderment.

#### **3. Affordance theory and affordance-based placemaking**

 Affordance-based placemaking (ABP) offers a compelling phenomenological approach to urban development and renewal. As an alternative to the traditional physical design paradigm, ABP is a model where curated experiences or affordances form sensory and cognitive interrelationships between the populace and their environment [10]. ABP considers what type of affordances—access to local food, variable housing options, and economic opportunities—would best deliver the desired outcomes and goals of the place being made. Through these affordances, a place becomes experienced and known "reasonably intimately" by its discoverer because it is explored moving through with "two feet" [15]. Thus, the perceiver experiences and simultaneously becomes part of the environment experienced. In Gibson's eloquent words, affordance "cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behavior. It is both physical and psychical, yet neither" [16]. This complexity paradigm offers insight into the traditional (and limiting), spatial-structural construct of physical design.

 As an integral component in the inquiry-solution process, ABP adds value by informing complex urban environments with experientially rich affordances. This experiential fostering is intrinsic to tan emergence of place as a locale and is relative to its quality, vibrancy, and relatability [18]. Pedestrians are presented with a rich, immersive environment with affordances, art, architecture, and nature curated to create a feeling of being somewhere special, an engageable as illustrated in **Figure 1**. The transformation informs the place-made optimized for experience, locomotion, and vibrancy where one's discovery, "from one occluded vista to the next," offers a feeling of "being everywhere at once" [16, 19].

 Urban design impacts place beyond their physical dimensions of buildings and infrastructure. Livable, urban design has the potential to affect human wellness, well-being, and environment [4, 20]. Rooftop farms and edible landscapes develop into places of the heart where an urban landscape promotes healthy activities and community socialization which "encourages security and stability" [20]. Vertical rooftop farms create social ties and connections by encouraging residents to work, garden, and explore the places where they live. Massey's habitat of place, or "thrown togetherness," describes an "ever-shifting constellation of trajectories" and possible

**Figure 1.**  *Rooftop urban agriculture: an affordance-based design solution.* 

encounters [20]. Jagannath furthers Massey's concept as "a range of different elements present in the public space [which] contribute to how people feel in the space, particularly if they feel included and a sense of belonging" [21]. This belonging feeling, created by urban farms and community gardens, forges livable, healthy communities and contributes to a sense of place. Furthermore, urban farms bring purposeful nature to the built environment where Howard suggests a "joyous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a new civilization" [22]. This joyous biophilic union sets forth human connections and interactions with nature and provides tranquility and mental wellness uniting the "human need for fulfillment and happiness" [4, 23].

Wellness, particularly for vulnerable populations, with the predominance of cheap, low-nutrition, manufactured foods in inner cities, is a challenge [24]. Urban farms would offset urban development's consumption of more than 50 acres of farmland (every hour) and provide affordable, neighborhood access to fresh, quality whole foods [25]. Moreover, rooftop farms would improve air quality and lower street noise, reduce building energy consumption, control stormwater runoff, and afford ecological microhabitats for plants and animal species [25–27].

#### **4. Small-scale, mixed-use urban development: incremental placemaking**

Paramount to great urbanscapes is the interplay of approachable design and nature, mixed-use buildings with neighborhood businesses, and inclusivity of people's heritage and culture, without which, there would only be infrastructure and placelessness. Small-scale, mixed-use development is imagined as a both a design and process to create viable, vibrant, and sustainable neighborhoods principled on wellness and well-being. As an incremental strategy for neighborhood placemaking, street-specific projects would be developed to meet specific needs. Mixed-use designs address the need for community-based economic development in neighborhoods by allowing a means for social exchange and social entrepreneurship [9]. Additionally, economic development (as an afforded design) promotes social change by providing a design solution where negotiated exchanges between parties occur [27]. The SMU paradigm provides structure for affordance-based design, e.g., access to healthy local food, nature, and space. From this construct, ABD informs

#### *Affordance-Based Placemaking and Incremental Neighborhood Renewal DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87836*

the traditional physical design process. Additionally, affordance-based salutogenic design as part of Antonovsky's [28] "salutogenic model" provides experiential design factors that support wellness and well-being in neighborhoods and homes [10–29].

Affordable and decent housing is increasingly becoming scarce in urban neighborhoods. As a design solution, SMU-UD would include varied housing options from studios to family dwellings. In addition, incremental urban development would reduce the adverse social effects of large-scale urban redevelopments and the displacement of local residents through gentrification [30]. With a community-inclusive process, SMU developers gain a deeper understanding of the mix of local residents, their culture, and local heritage. And with the benefit of lower developmental cost for small-scale projects, the barrier to entry is reduced enabling broader participation for small-scale developers and community projects. With small-scale developments, placemaking's lasting neighborhood improvements are not just about beautification, also they can have a real impact on people's lives [31]. Stronger community identity equates to safer and more resilient neighborhoods and "creates elevated measures of trust, participation, and stewardship." Human-focused model offers a framework for urban neighborhood redevelopment, economic advancement, social change, and communitydriven renewal [31–33]. **Figure 2** illustrates small-scale, mixed-use urban development: incremental placemaking.

#### **Figure 2.**

*Small-scale, mixed-use urban development: incremental placemaking.* 

#### **5. Resilience and placemaking**

According to the UN Summit 2019, global emissions are reaching record levels. The effects of climate change are already apparent having very real consequences on people's lives physically and disrupting national economies. The frequency of recent

incidents including natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes and difficulties caused by the economic downturn have emphasized the vulnerability of and made the appropriate consideration of resilience in the planning for future of urban areas of vital significance [35]. Natural disasters and uncertainties resulting from anthropogenic causes can be devastating that economic recessions remove opportunity and jobs causing tremendous stress on community members. Shortage of affordable housing, availability to quality food, access to green space, fresh air, and low-noise environments all add stresses on communities [36].

Although challenges are present, there is an increasing recognition that affordable, scalable solutions are available now that will enable us all to create cleaner, more resilient cities and economies. Placemaking is changing the way designers and engineers think about city resiliency [35, 37]. Viewing places and their natural, anthropogenic, and social uncertainties through a complex lens could offer insight into what is salient for a community's resiliency: economy and society, infrastructure and environment, and leadership and strategy [34]. System dimensions can be moderated, to a certain degree, for resiliency at the community level. Adding complexity to neighborhood environments, as layers of resistance, creates business diversification, green spaces, local food sources (community urban farms), strong community development programs focused on inclusion, a spirit of equitability, and cooperative contingency planning. This holistic community-inclusive process offers an opportunity for dynamic interaction and design-thinking between civic leaders, emergency responders, volunteers, business owners, engineers, architects, and environmental designers to explore solutions for resiliency building. This synergistic problem-solving paradigm offers insight and innovation toward building community resilience. Therefore, placemaking is a link between sustainability and livability toward creating physical, economic, and social resiliency.

#### **6. Conclusion**

Placemaking is a complex and collective process necessitating contributions from creatives, multidiscipline professionals, community members, and civic leaders. Affordance-based placemaking offers a compelling phenomenological approach to incremental urban development. This ABP creates a curation of street-tailored affordances and spaces where public art and esthetics, green spaces and mixed-use designs, rooftop farms, and walkable streetscapes create harmony and synergy. Affordances offer local food through rooftop farms, affordable housing through small-scale developments, and economic opportunity through mixed-use spaces. By determining which affordances provide the best experiences for a community's culture and value, a physical design becomes informed. These experientially based places promote meaningful engagement, wellness, and well-being for its inhabitants and add to its environmental complexity. Formed is a vibrant and viable locale that is inclusive, cultural, and esthetic where meaningful engagement informs its milieu. Creating resilient cities emphasizes the importance of creating smarter infrastructure and enhancing community disaster preparedness. Placemaking is the process that can be utilized creating resilient cities with building relationship between people and their environment. Because placemaking focuses on creating quality livable places, it builds the shared value, community capacity, and interdisciplinary collaboration that is the base of resilient cities and prosperous communities.

*Affordance-Based Placemaking and Incremental Neighborhood Renewal DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87836* 

### **Author details**

Tyler de la Plaine1 and Mukaddes Darwish<sup>2</sup> \*

1 Interdisciplanary Studies, Texas Tech University, Texas, USA

 2 Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering Department, Texas Tech University, Texas, USA

\*Address all correspondence to: mukaddes.darwish@ttu.edu

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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#### Chapter 49
