“Studies have shown that vibrant public spaces allow people to linger 30% longer and spend more at surrounding businesses,” said STIPO senior advisor Hans Karssenberg.

KUALA LUMPUR: European placemaking advocate and consultancy STIPO, which stands for strategy, innovation, process development and open-source, recently facilitated The City At Eye Level Asia, a placemaking workshop at Ruang by Think City.

The workshop is aimed at arming urban stakeholders with the tools to transform public spaces. This initiative was in line to the upcoming Placemaker Week ASEAN which will take place this November, presented for the first time in Kuala Lumpur by Think City and UN-Habitat.

“Placemaking should allow all stakeholders to co-create a vision for a public space, translating concepts into long-term strategies that allows a space to be sustainable for the community,” said Karssenberg.

By discarding featureless facades and public spaces and replacing them with spaces that attract the eye through colour, movement and aesthetic features, people will be drawn to those spaces.

“As a placemaker, you need to build up your knowledge of the place and the more you do that, the deeper the understanding you have about that place which would help to create a more inclusive and intimate atmosphere. It is the combination of physical, socio-economic, and cultural interventions that makes a placemaking approach work,” he explained.

By 2030, eight out of ten Malaysians are expected to live in cities so there is more need than ever for clever and creative planning solutions to develop and maintain public spaces.

The two days City At Eye Level Asia placemaking workshop was also co-organised by the Malaysian Institute of Planners (MIP). The workshop was a response to the increasing need for urban practitioners to create great cities at the pedestrian level.

The participants for the City At Eye Level workshop will include representatives from the MIP, Badan Warisan Budaya, Majlis Perbandaran Subang Jaya (MPSJ), Petaling Jaya City Council MBPJ), Bukit Bintang Foundation, Think City and Nextdor Property Communications.

Part of the two-day programme included a place game, where participants needed to visit a site to identify its strengths and weaknesses and propose opportunities to improve it. In this workshop, attendees were assigned to explore different parts of Petaling Street. They were also encouraged to connect with people and local business owners for a more participatory approach to placemaking.

Karssenberg added, “Every street in a historic area has its own identity and you would need to discover its DNA and build on that. Each street has its own distinct character and a street, laneway or even a shop within a historic core is not a museum. It remains dynamic and must fit the needs of the community first.”

“To provide an authentic experience for the space users, you have to work on a bottom-up process and facilitate it. A top-down approach which is commonly used by municipalities and real estate developers often disconnects local communities and businesses from the space,” he said.