On September 22, 12 noon – 1:30 p.m., Leslie Titchner, a graduate student in the Department of Landscape Architecture at NCSU, will give a presentation on ‘placemaking’ in downtown Raleigh. Feel free to bring your lunch.

Placemaking has emerged as a valuable contribution of landscape architecture, especially as cities dedicate millions of dollars to urban renewal projects nationwide. But “place” is an ill-defined concept among design professionals and there is no standard approach for describing it, much less making it. Working from such an incomplete foundation, cities, designers, and developers can unknowingly “renew” their prized districts into underperforming placeless areas. Therefore, an integrated, holistic understanding of place, an intelligent method to capture it, and a guide for applying place information is needed to give urban designers and planners the ability to lead redevelopment projects that preserve, enhance, and even create a city’s placeness.

Leslie Titchner sought to fill her professional knowledge gap with her master’s project on the current redevelopment of downtown Raleigh. Beginning with a multi-disciplinary literature review and survey of Raleigh citizens, and ending with a design application of her findings, Titchner answers the following questions:

• What makes place?
• How do differences in area scale affect placemaking in urban settings?
• What defines downtown Raleigh as a place?
• How can downtown Raleigh enhance its placeness and maximize return on investment as it redevelops?