ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts an urban design orientation, showing how healthy, sustainable placemaking can be achieved. Placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community. Conversely, the design process outlined in this chapter, and essential for shaping neighbourhoods for health and sustainability, is presented as a ‘narrative’ in all its stages, inviting the community to engage with the story of the inception, objectives, the understanding of context and site, and the evolution of the vision and concept of a project. A key consideration in placemaking decisions regarding these components is that of hierarchy; in scale and form, density and function. In many urban cultures, especially in southern Europe and the Global South, the neighbourhood square is the focus of the community, and is a setting for the public life. Neighbourhood planning and design must have regard to all those who live, work and use public realm, and ensure that barriers to movement are minimised.
