---
title: "Creative placemaking"
description: "An approach to community development that puts arts and culture at the center of how a neighborhood plans, builds, and understands itself."
glossary: "https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary"
source: "https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/creative-placemaking"
---

# Creative placemaking

> An approach to community development that puts arts and culture at the center of how a neighborhood plans, builds, and understands itself.

Glossary: https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary  
Source: https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/creative-placemaking

The term was popularized by Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa's 2010 white paper
for the US National Endowment for the Arts, and it names something more
specific than placemaking generally: projects with explicit cultural and
economic development goals, cross-sector partners (arts organizations plus
housing agencies, transit authorities, business districts), and outcomes that
are supposed to be measurable.

The critique to know: done carelessly, creative placemaking can accelerate
displacement of the very communities whose culture it trades on. The
practitioners worth learning from treat that risk as a design constraint,
not a footnote.

Related terms: [Placemaking](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/placemaking), [Cultural plan](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/cultural-plan), [Public realm](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/public-realm)