A place-based perspective on urban development

This chapter proposes a set of choices that do not only concern specific disciplines but also the way of understanding urban development problems. The place-making concept and practice have become the keys for prioritizing and justifying some paradigmatic options. The chapter considers urban planning as an autonomous field, nor a matrix that can generate subsequent policy or design approaches. The need for a critical review of traditional models in the urban planning field is an even more evident and influential challenge. Urban design shares some important goals with planning: first and foremost place-making. Some policy-making approaches and tools represent potential outlets for some planning evolutions and perhaps their now-inevitable metamorphosis. A place-based approach requires more accurate attention to the positional features of any problem. Therefore, the way in which an evaluative question is formulated is more important than the available methods and techniques even if much management expertise concerns the availability and use of tools.