Citymaking

Citymaking is a collaborative process in which residents, designers, planners, policymakers, developers, and other stakeholders work together to shape urban spaces and governance. It treats the city as a dynamic system that can be steered through participatory design, experimentation, and collective stewardship, with attention to social equity, economic vitality, and environmental resilience.

Practices include participatory planning and design workshops, charrettes, community mapping, co-design sessions, and civic technology projects. It also relies on urban prototyping and tactical urbanism—temporary interventions such as pop-up parks, street experiments, and short-term uses—to test ideas before broader implementation. Data, storytelling, and open collaboration platforms are often used to inform decisions and widen participation.

Citymaking involves multiple actors: residents and neighborhood associations, local businesses and nonprofits, universities and research institutes, city agencies, and private developers. Effective citymaking requires clear governance structures, accountable processes, and flexible funding. It also demands attention to power dynamics, inclusivity, and potential risks such as displacement and unequal influence on decision making.

Outcomes may include better public spaces, stronger social ties, more responsive services, and improved legitimacy for urban policy. However, challenges include navigating political constraints, securing long-term funding, measuring impact, and ensuring that experiments scale without harming existing communities.

Citymaking sits at the intersection of placemaking, participatory planning, and urban design. It emphasizes learning by doing, place-based solutions, and ongoing revisiting of priorities as cities change.