Placemaking Week Europe is an annual festival that brings together 500+ placemakers, urban planners, city officials, and community leaders from across Europe and beyond. Placemaking is an approach to urban planning and design that focuses on the people who use a space, rather than just the physical structures or buildings. The idea is to create places that are not just functional, but also beautiful and meaningful to the people who live, work, and play there.

The ICC Programme participated in the Placemaking Europe Week in Rotterdam (Netherlands). The event took place over 4 days, from 24 to 27 September.

Three ICC members (Reggio Emilia, Wroclaw and Vinnytsia) and the ICC Secretariat participated in this event within the framework of a capacity building pilot project, Cities in Placemaking. Designed by Placemaking Europe and supported by the Intercultural Cities (ICC) Programme, the aim of Cities in Placemaking is to build awareness and practical knowledge of placemaking in a way that allows it to foster meaningful, long-term change. It promotes continuous learning designed for municipal public administrations, during which new standards for elevating communities through better public spaces will be set. The final goal is to create a next generation of placemaking experts in governance that can contribute to shaping more human-centered cities for increased well-being, based on the core principles of intercultural inclusion. 

On the first day, a dedicated session was held for participants of the pilot project as a workshop session to discuss progress and outcomes. It asked participants to consider what a manifesto for placemaking would look like, and how the change aimed at by Placemaking Europe can be implemented at municipal level. The focus in this session was on recognising, building and promoting synergies between the Intercultural Cities Programme’s approach and placemaking, and participants were asked to consider how their “placemaking” activities might benefit, or might have already benefited, from the intercultural approach – focusing in particular on promoting interaction and ensuring diverse participation.

The rest of the Week was organised around four topics: climate adaptation, living with water, local power and the battle for space, creating place and making it last, with different sessions and a large array of speakers. The ICC Secretariat presented the work of the Intercultural Cities Programme during a plenary session, which dealt with ways of building bridges between people – at individual and community level – where practical examples were presented alongside the conceptual approach of the programme. It also looked at shared challenges for both placemaking and building intercultural cities and societies.

More information can be found here: Rotterdam 2024 – Placemaking Europe (placemaking-europe.eu)