ABSTRACT
Placemaking is about ordering the environment. Individuals understand built form in a wide variety of ways. At the same time most people recognize common elements, like paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. Logics for making places legible and meaningful depend on critical attention to organizing movement, zones, and character. As a design team meets with an owner or a project committee, the conversation may include a varied group of stakeholders. Each of these individuals may bring a different logic to the big table to identify the key elements and assemble them into a new place. Designing is a form of action anthropology. Designers immerse themselves in the culture of the people for whom they design. They try to create places that make sense and will be useful to the ultimate occupants. The logic of organizing space frequently identifies zones, which create useful adjacencies that serve social, economic, or functional goals.
