ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a rich breadth and depth of projects that traverse urban design and art heritage, theory and practice, planning and policy and cultural and place heritage and politics. It explores definitions and the understanding of creative placemaking. The book presents the shift from cultural policy driven by a socially orientated state-level system towards an entrepreneurial neoliberal approach, while illustrating the difficulties and conflicting ideologies and social requirements at play within public sector-initiated projects within 'vulnerable, economically weak and socially segregated areas'. Increasingly, there is recognition of the need for an ecological model of cities that acknowledges an ecosystem with living and non-living organisms co-existing in dynamic interactions. The book also offers signposting to the type of thinking that is taking the creative placemaking sector into its next era.
