The session recording will be archived on the site until June 25th, 2023

This session was streamed but not recorded

Curated Track: 

Description:

Place management can be broadly understood as a series of actions, interventions and practices with the solely aim to make places better. It is a well-established outcome-based practice that aims to tackle serious and complex social problems within urban centres, and a form of urban public policy that is increasingly influencing a place’s social, economic, human and natural capitals (Adams, 2008; Mant, 2008). Such practices initially stemmed from the need to steer away from aspatial and mainstream policy deliveries that were driven from globalization, economic rationalism, managerialism and entrepreneurialism, and tackle inter-spatial disparities by specifically targeting socially and economically disadvantaged areas (Collins and Burgess, 2007). Place management thinking has progressed in the last 20 years and encompasses:

- special place-based partnerships and institutions that organise, promote and represent places and extend beyond the public sector, such as Town Centre Management bodies, Business Improvement Districts, Town Teams, Local Economic Partnerships, etc.
- organisations that adopt the marketing and management of a place product, further extrapolated to the policy field and fitted to places for specific purposes (e.g.,regeneration and sustainability projects, public space management, conservation of culture and heritage)
- bodies responsible for the implementation of retail and land use planning policies
- organisations and communities tasked with the successful development of the built environment and public space in cities and towns

It is evident that the place management field – as deeply influenced by policy and practice -, “can include any process, tool, design, intervention or practice that aims to contribute in place” (Ntounis et al., 2020: p. 336). This plurality necessitates inputs from many fields of knowledge and disciplines in order to address the interdependencies and traverses between different initiatives and practices. However, most place management approaches have been merely prescriptive, and thus have failed to provide the field with a solid theoretical underpinning that could resonate further to practice, making it “less hierarchical and myopic and more place-based and “porous” to allow more intelligence and input from the location” (Millington et al., 2015, p. 5). As the practice of managing places is deeply rooted in geographic thought, there is indeed a need to conceptualise the field of place management towards a geographically-sensitive approach, which gives equal emphasis on the economic, spatial, and social aspects of places.

This session aims to unpack the geographical potential of place management and provide a foundation for its conceptualisation and theorisation beyond prescriptive approaches that focus on policy development, resource allocation and/or service delivery (McDougall and Groenhart, 2007). As a global turn towards place-based approaches and interventions to tackle multiple wicked problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973) is underway, there is an opportunity for place management to be conceptualised as a holistic field of strategic significance in the long-term impact and sustainability of places (Coca-Stefaniak and Bagaeen, 2013). Such reflexivity in conceptualising and theorising place management also aligns with the conference theme, as is allows for the development of more inclusive place management concepts and models that embrace the polymorphy and diversity of a place’s users. Consequently, the session is designed to confront one-dimensional understandings of place within the domain of place management and examine it from a relational lens that allows exploration of practices of judgement and resistance within groups and communities invested in places.

Non-Presenting Participants