Tourism Geographies

An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment

ISSN: 1461-6688 (Print) 1470-1340 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rtxg20

Tourism planning and place making: place-making

or placemaking?

Alan A. Lew

To cite this article: Alan A. Lew (2017) Tourism planning and place making: place-making or
placemaking?, Tourism Geographies, 19:3, 448-466, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2017.1282007

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2017.1282007

Published online: 31 Jan 2017.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 13350

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 103 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rtxg20
TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES, 2017
VOL. 19, NO. 3, 448–466
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2017.1282007

Tourism planning and place making: place-making or

placemaking?
Alan A. Lew
Department of Geography, Planning & Recreation, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Tourism destination planning and marketing are fundamentally place Received 25 September 2016
making actions intended to shape the image and imageability of a Accepted 30 December 2016
place. Place making is an innate human behavior, ranging from the KEYWORDS
organic and unplanned actions of individuals, defined here as ‘place- Place-making; placemaking;
making,’ to planned and intentional global theming by governments marketing; planning; urban
and tourism authorities, defined here as ‘placemaking.’ Place-making design; gentrification;
and placemaking are ends on a continuum of options, with most tourism planning; co-
places have a mix of local and global elements. These elements also production; worldviews;
range from the tangible (base in urban design) to the intangible authenticity; place
(peoplescapes and imaginations). The tools of place making are 关键词
essentially the same for both organic place-making and planned 地方建构, 地方营造, 营销,
placemaking, but the intentions and outcomes can vary enormously. 规划, 城市设计, 绅士化, 旅
Tourism development, as an economic activity, almost always has a 游规划, 合作生产, 世界观,
neoliberal planned placemaking agenda. Organic place-making 原真性, 地方
emerges through individual agency, which if allowed to proceed, will
make its imprint even in a heavily master planned tourism landscape.
An understanding of place-making and placemaking gives insight
into research questions on the political economy of tourism and the
roles of hosts and guest in co-producing tourism places. Examining
the elements of place making in a tourism landscape can more
clearly identify how different worldview perspectives have contribute
over time to the making of tourism places, and thereby assist in
planning for the future development of destination communities.

摘要
旅游目的地规划与营销本质上是地方塑造 [place making] 行为, 即
有意识地塑造一个地方的形象与表象。地方塑造是一种人类与生
俱来的行为, 从个人自发的、无意识的行动(这里称作地方建构
[place-making])到政府和旅游部门规划的、有意识的全球主题化
行动(这里称作地方营造[placemaking])。如果把人类的地方塑造
行为看作一个连续谱, 地方建构和地方营造位于这个连续谱的两
端, 并且绝大多数地方是地方与全球要素的组合。这些要素涉及
面广泛, 从城市设计中的可见要素到人化景观乃至人类想象的无
形要素。地方塑造的方法, 不管是无意识的地方建构还是有计划
的地方营造行为, 基本上都是相同的, 但是其目的和结果却大相径
庭。旅游发展作为一种经济活动, 几乎总是有一个新自由主义
的、规划的地方营造方案。无意识的地方建构发自于个人的行为,
如果允许其发挥作用的话, 即使在总体规划痕迹浓重的旅游景观
中也会留下它的印迹。地方建构与地方营造知识对于深化旅游政
治经济学和主客双方在旅游地方共同塑造中作用等研究问题都会

CONTACT Alan A. Lew [email protected]

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES 449

有所启发。考察旅游景观中地方塑造的要素可以更清晰地辨别不
同世界观视角是如何深化旅游地方营造的, 进而有助于规划目的
地社区未来的发展。

Definitions
‘Place making’, ‘place-making’ and ‘placemaking’ are three ways of spelling a popular con-
cept that has at least two broad definitions in the academic literature, as well as many
finer definitions. Although these definitions exist, there is no consensus on how they
might be associated with the three ways that the concept can be spelled. A review of 62
publications that make use of at least one of the three spellings found 40 of them (64.5%)
using ‘place-making’, 16 (26%) used ‘placemaking’ and 9 (14.5%) used ‘place making.’
(One edited volume on place attachment (Manzo & Devine-Write, 2014) used all three ver-
sions, and two of the sources used two versions). Tourism was a primary focus for 27
(43.5%) of the publications, and was peripheral or non-existent in the others. Overall, there
was no clearly discernable pattern that differentiated how each spelling was used.
Because it is the least used of the three spellings, ‘place making’ will be used hereafter as
the all-inclusive concept that encompasses the full range of meanings and definitions

encountered in the literature. (Kolas (2004) makes a similar distinction between a broader
‘place making’ and a narrower ‘place-making’).
The first broad meaning comes out of the cultural geography tradition and is closely
associated with ‘sense of place.’ It is how a culture group imprints its values, perceptions,
memories, and traditions on a landscape and gives meaning to geographic space (Coates
& Seamon, 1984; Massey, 2005; Othman, Nishimura, & Kubota, 2013; Rose-Redwood, 2011;
Tuan, 1977; Wortham-Galvin, 2008). This is often obvious and taken for granted for cul-
tures around the world that have been in-place for a long period, such as is seen in the tra-
ditional villages of Southeast Asia (Yea, 2002) and in the Tibetan cultural landscapes of the

Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau (Kolas, 2004). It is also seen in the distinct urban and rural
landscapes of different parts of Europe, and in the different ways that China and Taiwan
have evolved since 1949 (Brown, 2004). Perhaps more interesting is how ethnic immigrant
cultures transform newly settled spaces into distinct places in a relatively short period
(Castillo, 2014; Harney, 2006; Main & Sandoval, 2015; Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2008; Rios &
Vasquez, 2012; Trudeau, 2006). These are mostly organic, bottom-up processes, whereby
places are claimed and shaped through every day, and often mundane, social practices
(Dyck, 2005; Lems, 2016).
Overtime, such places can become popular tourist destinations, especially ethnic
neighborhood such as the Chinatowns, Korea towns, Japan towns and Little Italy neigh-
borhoods that are often found in large US cities (Lou, 2010), with similar corollaries around
the world. Ethnic cuisine and foods are among the essential organic place-making com-
mercial activities that draw tourists (Everett, 2012), although others (e.g. clothing, and reli-
gious arts and crafts) are also common.
The other broad definition is essentially the opposite of an organic approach, involving
a planned and often top-down professional design effort to influence people’s behavior
and shape their perceptions of a place (Lew, 2012). This approach has been a part of the
urban planning, architecture, and landscape architecture fields since at least the
450 A. A. LEW

Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution (late 1700s) when many of the capital cities of
Europe were re-made into symbols of the nation-state (Vale, 1992). In those fields, much
of what is encompassed by the study of urban (or community) design is today considered
placemaking (Cilliers & Timmmeran, 2014). The City Beautiful (late 1800s), the Garden City
(early 1900s), and today’s New Urbanism (in the US) are all top-down urban design move-
ments that sought (and seek) to reshape identity, experience, and behavior in urban set-
tings (Smith, 2002).
Although there is no agreement on how to spell this intentional and planned approach
to place making among the publications reviewed, there were two relatively recent books
(Markusen & Gadwa, 2010; Wyckoff et al., 2015) that used ‘placemaking’ to describe gov-
ernment sponsored efforts in the US to enliven the economic and cultural character of
neighborhoods and cities. Based on this admittedly slim argument, ‘placemaking’ is used
hereafter to refer to this more deliberate and purposeful approach to place creation. This
leaves ‘place-making’ to refer the more spontaneous and unstructured approaches. Today,
planned placemaking is widely seen in the form of themed pedestrian-oriented shopping
streets and downtown shoppertainment and eatertainment venues, which are major
attractions for both residents and visiting tourists in many cities (Gottdiener, 2001; Lew
2007b; Paradis, 2004).
A possible reason for the lack of clarity in the spelling of place-making, placemaking
and place making is because bottom-up, organic place-making and top-down, planned
placemaking are two ends on a continuum of place making ideas, theories, methods and
practices. Table 1 brings definitional clarity to the three spellings. As noted above, ‘place
making’ designates the overall framework that encompasses place-making and placemak-
ing, as well as in instances where there is sufficient overlap that neither of those concepts
is clearly applicable. The concepts outline in Table 1 derive from, and expands upon,
reviews of the literature on tourist attractions and combines both structural and cognitive
descriptors of place-making and placemaking sites (Lew, 1987). The descriptors are not
entirely consistent due to their multiple sources and the multiplicity of cases that they
may be applied to.
The key points that are evident in comparing the differences between place-making
and placemaking (Table 1) are as follows.

(1) All places undergo some form of place making through human encounters with the
world they inhabit. Place making is how people recognize, define, and create the
places they often call home, whether intentionally or not. It is also fundamental to
the tourist attractiveness of a place. Understanding place making from both its
organic and planned perspectives is an essential part of tourism destination devel-
opment and marketing (Lew, 2012), although these are not always framed in place
making terms.
(2) Organic place-making is often associated with bottom-up, local initiatives that
evolve in an incremental manner and are often driven through individual agency.
Bosman and Dredge (2011) referred to this a ‘minor placemaking,’ while Hollings-
head (2009) coined the term ‘unintentional worldmaking’ (as opposed to ‘inten-
tional worldmaking’). At a very basic level, it may simply involve the recognition or
naming of place (Light, 2014). Place-making is often not intentionally tourist ori-
ented, which gives it elements of unpredictability and risk for visitors, but also
Table 1. The tourism place making continuum.
Place-makings Mixed place makings Placemakings
Driver of change Individuals, local groups, human Collaborative, NGOs/NPOs Government, developers, socio-political structure
agency
Symbolism Local or traditional Glocalization Cosmopolitan, modern, or global
Process of change Bottom-up, organic and incremental, Co-management, co-creation, public Top-down, master planned, hyper-neoliberal
minor placemaking1, unintentional participation placemakinga, intentional worldmakingb
worldmaking2
Tourists Alternative tourists Specialty tourists Mass tourists
Ownership and accessibility Local owners, effort to visit, Locals and outsiders Outsider owners, easy to visit, accessible
inaccessible
Security Risk, uncertainty, surprise, escape Different Safe, known, predictable, familiar
Sought experiences Novelty, exotic, unique, individual Interesting Recreation, leisure, common, mass
Social space Back region Back and front regions Front region
Authenticity Objective authenticity, real, sense of Constructed authenticity, staged Inauthentic, contrived, fantasy, disneyfication,
place, vernacular simulacra, placelessness
Transformation Slow change, path dependent Moderate change, path divergent Rapid change, high efficiency, path creation
Development stage (TALC) Discovery, exploration Involvement, development Consolidation
Capacity Small/low capacity Medium capacity Large/high capacity
Guiding Unguided, tourism incognita Self-guided Guided, tourism cognita
Market orientation Local directed, craft tourism Regional and national directed International directed, industrial tourism
Experience Existential, experimental Experiential Recreational, diversionary
Semiotics Sight/site/place involvement, Mixed semiotics and engagement, Marker involvement, brand or theme oriented, sight
recognition, and orientation, place naming sacralization, socially constructed, metanarratives
self-constructed and personal
narratives
Fame Unknown, unimportant Regional importance Famous, important
TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES

Source: Based on Lew (1987) and Lew and McKercher (2006), with additional concepts from aBosman & Dredge (2011) and bHollinshead, Atleljevic and Ali (2009).
451
452 A. A. LEW

opportunities for novel and back-region experiences of discovery and experimenta-

tion. Through these experiences, tourists construct personal narratives of the places
they encounter (and consume) that contribute to their identity creation.
(3) Top-down placemaking, on the other hand, is often master planned, although even
when it is not, it still contains strong elements of modern, cosmopolitan, and pro-
fessional design and marketing influences. To varying degrees, these will reflect
the norms of social and political structures beyond the indigenous and local com-
munity. Placemaking environments are especially suited, in both their physical
design and brand image, for mass, international tourist consumption. They are usu-
ally safe and predictable, although also sometimes contrived and staged. Visitors
are more likely to engage with the metanarratives associated with MacCannel’s
(1976) sight sacralization, which also contributes to their personal identity, at least
to the degree that they can tell others of the famous places that they have visited.
(4) Most places fall somewhere along the middle of the place making continuum.
Smaller and less tourism-oriented places tend to be defined more by place-making,
while larger and more tourism-oriented places exhibit more placemaking. Because
tourism is primarily an economic activity it encourages placemaking over place-
making. This can result in tension within a tourism destination as place-making
advocates debate placemaking boosters. The best tourism places are most likely
those that exhibit both strong place-making and placemaking (Bosman & Dredge,
2011). This is also well recognized by placemaking advocates, who often (but not
always) consider public participation and support, and the recognition and
enhancement of local distinctiveness, as key elements in their master planning pro-
cess (Cilliers & Timmermans, 2014; Hou & Rios, 2003; Wyckoff et al., 2015).

Tourism perspectives on place making tend to be dominated by planned placemaking,

especially in relation to image making and marketing. Among the 27 tourism place mak-
ing sources sampled for this review, 22 (81.5%) mostly emphasized planned placemaking,
while only 5 (18.5%) presented a more organic and evolutionary place-making perspec-
tive. In addition, among the 22 tourism placemaking sources, 16 were mostly focused on
marketing and other purposeful image building (including myth-making) topics, with the
other 6 dealing more with the physical planning of destinations. By contrast, among the
35 non-tourism sources consulted, organic place-making was the primary focus of 22
(63%) publications, with planned placemaking being emphasized in 13 (37%) of the
sources.
In many ways, organic place-making is more fundamental to the cultural soul of a
place than is planned placemaking. There are approaches to community planning
and development that attempt to facilitate organic place-making by allowing a
strong local or indigenous influence over development decisions through public par-
ticipation and community-led initiatives. Transactive planning, advocacy planning,
and participatory planning are examples of this (Cilliers & Timmermans, 2014; Lew,
2007a; Whittemore, 2015). Community-based tourism, in its pure form, has a tourism
place-making agenda that includes local control over resource management and
development, along with local benefits (Hamzah & Khalifah, 2009). For many reasons,
such initiatives often struggle for success because it is difficult to create an organic
process through outside intervention (Blackstock, 2005; Goodwin & Santilli, 2009). In
 TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES 453

many instances, the best practice may be to simply allow the local and indigenous to
self-organize by removing external constraints.
If an indigenous tourism development process becomes successful, it is likely to attract
growing external interests pushing (or pulling) it into increasing levels of development
and placemaking. This may be considered an unfortunate situation by some or a fortunate
outcome by others. Either way, most tourism planning and development is placemaking,
involving a significant degree of government intervention even when private investors
drive it. This is because tourism is viewed by most communities as a tool for economic
development, employment growth, image and status building, and improving the overall
quality of life of a place or region (Bosman & Dredge, 2011). For these reasons, the follow-
ing discussion focuses on the process and implications of the planned placemaking
approach to tourism development.

From urban design to tourism placemaking

Urban design is the study of why cities, and other human settlement, look the way they
do, as well as the practice of planning a city’s building form and layout. Historically, urban
design focused on the key physical elements that have shaped human settlement over
time (Moughtin, 2003). Some of the more prominent of these include: ‘gateways,’ which
in some cultures were designed to welcome gods; ‘walls,’ which kept valuable resources
in and threats to the city out; ‘boulevards and plazas,’ which provided military access to
control the city; ‘public parks,’ which were originally spaces of leisure for local elites; and
‘marketplaces,’ which were primarily accessed by the working classes. Kevin Lynch (1960)
showed how city form was an essential element in shaping human perceptions and
behavior. To the list above, he added: ‘districts’ that have some shared characteristic;
‘edges’ that separated districts and define boundaries; ‘nodes’ that serve as focal points
and intersections of movement; ‘paths’ that people move along through city space; and
‘landmarks’ that people use as reference points to locate where they are. He was also
among the first to use the terms ‘imageability’ and ‘wayfinding’ in describing how people
perceive, understand, and interact with urban form.
All the elements defined above continue to provide basic building blocks for creating
city, town, village and rural spaces and places that people can easily understand, navigate,
and appreciate. Being able to easily and quickly comprehend and then navigate a place is
especially important for tourists who are often first time visitors. Urban design became
community design, which then became placemaking as urban planners, architects and
landscape architects became increasingly pressed to guide community development to
achieve economic goals (attract investment and employment), social goals (increase
equity and livability) and environmental goals (resource efficiency and sustainability)
(Wyckoff et al., 2015). Placemaking also received a major boost as a tool to enhance a city’s
competitive edge in attracting the creative classes (Florida, 2002) and fostering an innova-
tive economy (Landry, 2000) in a creative city (Richards, 2014). Money and talented
employees are attracted to places that have high amenities and a high quality of life,
which governments, through their planning and legal authority, have the power to
encourage and create.
Urban design as placemaking became ‘the process of creating quality places where
people want to live, work, play, shop, learn, and visit’ (Wyckoff et al., 2015, p. vi). It is a set
454 A. A. LEW

of tools used by design professionals and governments to guide infrastructure growth.

The focus of an urban design approach to placemaking is the public spaces that exist in a
community, including sidewalks and streets, and parks and other recreation and open
spaces. Semi-public spaces, such as large building lobbies and shopping malls, can also
be part of the local government placemaking realm. The public space of a sidewalk, for
example, has four design zones, each of which has distinct management considerations
(Benfield, 2013):

(1) the frontage zone: directly in front of the buildings, including building entrances,
and areas where shops spill onto the sidewalk;
(2) the throughway zone: where people usually walk in an unobstructed manner on
appropriate pavement or other surface;
(3) the furniture zone: where plants, lighting, benches, litter cans, and other objects are
placed, in part to protect pedestrians from vehicle traffic; and
(4) the edge zone: where the sidewalk ends and the vehicle zone begins, but which can
also be the site of parking and bicycle pathways.

The goals of public space placemaking is to create spaces that are easily walkable, have
a variety of mixed uses and architectural designs to attract both locals and tourists, and is
interesting, safe and comfortable. A respect for historic structures and monuments, where
they exist, can also enhance the interesting aspects of a place. The Singapore Tourism
Board (STB, 2016) specifically lists placemaking as one of its principal activities. The STB
works with public and private stakeholders in several neighborhood precincts to coordi-
nate infrastructure improvements, events and marketing campaigns ‘to improve visitor
experience and inject vibrancy to bring the precinct to life’ (STB, 2016, p. 1). The primary
areas in which they do this are in the city-state’s Chinatown and Little India neighbor-
hoods, along with the shopping districts of Orchard Road and the Sentosa Harbourfront.
Wyckoff et al. (2015; see also Wyckoff, 2014) suggest that there are four types of urban
design placemaking. Standard placemaking includes the many incremental, and perhaps
uncoordinated, improvements that are made to a place over time. This may include side-
walk widening, the introduction of plants and color coordinated awnings over shop fronts,
and putting up more clear directional and street signage. Cities undertake these types of
improvements on a regular basis as old infrastructure is replaced and there is a desire to
improve over the past. The other three types of placemaking may also be part of the stan-
dard, incremental placemaking process, or they may be independent and significant pla-
cemaking initiatives in their own right.
Strategic placemaking is the creation of a major new investment that is intended to be a
catalyst in defining a neighborhood or even a city, and thereby attracting other invest-
ments (Shaw & Montana, 2016). This could be a new shopping or eating center, an open
space plaza for public gatherings and events, an entertainment or arts venue, or a major
transportation node (such as street car or subway station). Such venues can, of course,
also become major tourist attractions, such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, the Sidney
Opera House in Sidney, Australia, and Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, USA.
Creative placemaking is the use of the arts to create more interesting and vibrant places.
These include street sculptures, mural paintings on empty building walls, and major public
art monuments. It can also include cultural performances, festival events, and art studios
 TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES 455

and businesses, as well as the artists who work in these various venues – although those
are not specifically urban design elements (Markusen & Gadwa, 2010). While not pure art,
the introduction of colorful and thematic street name signs to identify a historic or cultural
neighborhood is another form of creative placemaking.
Tactical placemaking is the fourth placemaking approach and includes a wide variety of
temporary and experimental placemaking projects. This might include closing a street to
vehicles and only allowing pedestrians and bicycles for a day or weekend, or perhaps turn-
ing it into a temporary children’s playground, or an arts and crafts market. Other ideas,
among many, include creating temporary parks where cars would normally park (known
as ‘parklets’) (P to P, 2016), placing temporary chairs in an open space that normally has
no seating for pedestrians, and starting a garden on unused land (with or without permis-
sion). These acts are intended to break people’s taken-for-granted thinking about what
might be possible to improve the quality of life in a place. Tactical placemaking also offers
a way of making placemaking more of bottom-up organic process, although it is still a
planned approach that is distinct from pure place-making.
At one level, placemaking appears to be about physical design. However, the purpose
of the many design guidelines that accompany placemaking is to enhance human con-
nectivity, social interaction, and social and relational capital (Cilliers, 2014; Johnson, Glove,
& Stewart, 2014; Nettler, 2013; Nikitin, 2013; Richards, 2014). This is the recognition that all
forms of place-making and placemaking reflect individual and collective human values
and motivations (Pierce et al., 2011). The intentionality of placemaking, therefore, requires
an awareness of the social consequences of planned change.

From the tangible to the intangible

As most tourism professionals will realize, urban design-based placemaking is an essential
element that is widely employed in creating destinations that are interesting to tourists.
Sometimes these are small and subtle enhancements to a local culture that has a strong
legacy of traditional place-making. The addition of a visitors’ center and designated visitor
pathways that complement the heritage architecture of the Pueblo Indian villages in the
American Southwest (New Mexico and Arizona) would be an example of this (Lew, 1999).
At other times, however, placemaking can completely transform a place into a touristic
theme park, which can be seen in some of the more extensive theme town makeovers in
the US (Hoelscher, 1998; Lew, 1989), and in the recent rise in European-stylized residential
developments in China (Bosker, 2014), although these are not always successful (Kelly,
2015). Most of the time, however, an urban design approach to tourism placemaking is
something in between these two extremes.
From a tourism perspective, it is also clear that there is much more to placemaking than
the physical design and appearance of a place. Even more than the physical design, the
image and experience of a place reflect a mix of reality and fantasy, history and mythol-
ogy, and intentional and unintentional events (Amaomo, 2012; Ma & Lew, 2011; Wor-
tham-Galvin, 2008). Unlike urban planners and design professionals, it is more likely that
tourism professionals are trained in placemaking as a programming and marketing activ-
ity, in which place images and identities are created through storytelling and image crea-
tion (Dredge & Jenkins, 2003). Table 2 identifies the differences in these two aspects of
placemaking by distinguishing between the tangible attributes of place (design) and the
456 A. A. LEW

Table 2. Tangibility scale and tools of place making.

Tangible Mixed Intangible
Physical design People practices Mental image
(landscapes and builtscapes) (ethnoscapes and peoplescapes) (mindscapes and storyscapes)
Street furniture Festivals and special events Branding, marketing, advertising
Sidewalk, street width and Street life and local dress and public relations
pavement Type of shops and products for sale History and heritage: famous people
Building architecture, height and Foods and drinks and events
facades Myths: fairy tales, legends, fiction novels
Aural (sound) and olfactory
Plants and greenery sensations (smell) Social media
Building color, art and signage Shop advertisements Word of mouth reputation
themes Formal and informal entertainment Movie and entertainment tourism
Bikeways and parking News stories
Open space: parks and plazas
Public art and monuments
Source: Appadurai (1990) on mindscapes; Berleant (2003) on ethnoscapes; Rickly-Boyd (2010) on storyscapes; Williams
and Lew (2014) on peoplescapes and builtscapes; and author.

intangible (image) attributes. Being a continuum, there are also elements that combine
both the tangible and the intangible, many of which are seen in the everyday practices of
people who occupy these planned places.
These tools of place making are essentially the same for both organic place-making and
master planned placemaking. Both, for example, influence building façades, local foods
and dress, and the image and myths of place. The primary difference is that the decision
to perform these in a place-making manner is made by individuals who are responding to
and performing traditional and indigenous cultural norms. In a pure placemaking context,
on the other hand, these tools are selected, placed, and performed to replicate a pre-
defined set of norms that have been chosen for the marketing value. This simulacrum
may be representative of an ethnic or heritage identity (Wortham-Galvin, 2008), or it may
reflect a more generic global modernity.
The elements identified in Table 2, therefore, may be expressed through different
scales and intentions between place-making and placemaking. From a tourism planning
perspective, the question is which of these tools should be manipulated, and with what
purpose or goal should they be impacted. In terms of tangible physical elements, the role
of the government in some place may be intentionally limited (either by policy or budget)
to making modest improvements to the physical design and infrastructure of public
spaces. In others, such as a historic district, local governments may adopt stringent physi-
cal design controls and invest in significant restoration and conservation efforts. Others
communities may see major government driven tourism development projects that
completely transform the physical space of a destination. The tangible dimension is, in
fact, the easiest to influence, manipulate and change from a governmentality perspective.
For most destinations, tourism development has more to do with the intangible ele-
ments in Table 2 than the tangible ones. The degree to which a community intentionally
manages intangible place making tools will vary, along with the mechanisms employed.
Marketing and branding builds on the built tourism infrastructure and other physical
resources, but is much more than that. In some places, heritage and myths have an attrac-
tive value that can be stronger than any built structure for tourism purposes (Hollingshead
et al., 2009). And reputations based on social media and general news events can be chal-
lenging to control (Lew, 2012). Traditional cultural practices maintain intangible place
 TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES 457

knowledge in a locally-oriented place-making way, which in itself can be a major attrac-

tion for visitors. However, as tourism becomes more important to the economic livelihood
and quality of life in a place, intangible traditions are more likely to be managed in a pla-
cemaking manner through, for example, staged authenticity (MacCannell, 1976).
The mixed area on the continuum in Table 2 offers some interesting possibilities for
combining place-making and placemaking. The human use of a physical space or place
merges the tangible with the intangible in a way that, if left to its own accord (without
government barriers or interventions) could bring place-making into the placemaking
agenda. Many minority ethnic neighborhoods are managed in this way, with some gov-
ernment intervention in developing thematic public space elements (such as street signs
and public park art), along with some private sector joint marketing of an ethnic theme
(Lou, 2010). However, the actually day-to-day street life of the people is left to its own
accord, displaying itself in their dress, the shops and food outlets that cater to their needs,
and the practices that reflect their values and beliefs. In the case of the Singapore Tourism
Board (STB, 2016), this is seen in their different approaches to the country’s Chinatown,
which has become a mostly placemaking experience, and its Little India precinct, which
still retails elements of local place-making in it day-to-day life.
The urban design placemaking literature is also aware of the importance of program-
ming as a form of placemaking, which is also a key in tourism destinations (Richards,
2014). For example, the Project for Public Spaces (PPS, 2009) has proposed ‘The Power of
10C’ concept for placemaking. This suggests that to attract people, a single place or dis-
trict within a city should have ten or more things for people to do. These might include
different types of shopping, different foods and drinks, a playground, live music to listen
and watch, and a place to sit and watch people passing by. At a larger scale, a major desti-
nation should have ten or more of these specific places or districts for people to go to.
And at a still broader scale, a tourism region should have ten or more identifiable destina-
tions. PPS suggest that having a ‘10C’ variety of people activities that are integrated and
well planned, and present across different geographic scales, will secure the image of a
place and region as an attractive destination. Such diversity will also make the destination
more resilient to unanticipated problems that might arise in any one of the 10C activities
or places (PPS, 2009).

Critiques of placemaking
Placemaking is not without its critics. Both place-making and placemaking are inherently
political processes (Buser, Bonura, Fannin, & Boyer, 2013; Hultman & Hall, 2012; Nichols,
2001; Peirce, Martin, & Murphy, 2011). The simple act of place naming, for example, can
have significant political overtones (Hall-Lew & Lew, 2014). Whether is it Ayers Rock or
Uluru, or Mt Mckinley or Denali, place making through place naming reflects the con-
tested politics of ‘nationalism, (post)colonialism, identity politics, and the spatialization of
collective memory’ (Rose-Redwood & Alderman, 2011, p. 2). Part of this is seen in the
struggle between human agency (associated with place-making) and socio-political struc-
tures (associated with placemaking). However, it is much more complicated than that.
Individuals and groups of individuals have their own worldviews through which they
define their taken-for-granted lifeworld (Coates & Seamon, 1984) and maintain it though
worldmaking actions (Hollingshead et al., 2009), of which place making is an essential
458 A. A. LEW

part. Different worldviews will result in different place makings, some of which are poten-
tially incompatible. Tourism as a worldview has often been denigrated for violating, expro-

priating, and commodifying the lifeworld of local residents (Insch, 2011; Kolas, 2004; Ma &
Lew, 2012; McKercher et al., 2015; Morgan, 2014; Scho €llmann, 2003; Winter, 2014). But
such contestations over place making can also occur between different local or indige-
nous interests (Martin, 2003; Blackstock, 2005), and between different governmental
authorities seeking power over what they perceive as their turf (Dredge & Jenkins, 2003).
For Hollingshead et al. (2009), placemaking (as defined here) is one aspect of the broader
concept of worldmaking, which also included people-making and past-making, and is
driven by the mythologies that social groups create of themselves. The authors content
that (p. 432) ‘all who work in tourism (however intermittently!) unavoidably engage in’
tourism worldmaking. An understanding of how different world views (or worldmakings)
are expressed through the tools of place making (Table 2) in both bottom-up place-mak-
ings and top-down placemakings can provide critical insight into how power is distributed
in different ways among actors and interest groups, and how and why this changes over
time.
Possibly the most significant criticism of master planned placemaking is that it is part of
the larger process of gentrification Frank, 2012; (Lou, 2010; Richards, 2014). Gentrification
is the cumulative impact of placemaking improvements to lower income neighborhoods,
which are gradually transformed as the middle classes (the gentry) move in and displace
the original residents (Buser et al., 2013; Lou, 2010). Placemaking is a key component in
gentrification, as is tourism to the degree that it is associated with placemaking (Liang &
Bao, 2015). Some of the benefits of placemaking and tourism gentrification include
improved housing conditions, reduced crime rates, increased tax revenues for local gov-
ernment, and an increased mixing of social classes. Negative impacts associated with gen-
trification in general, but also tourism gentrification, include the loss of affordable
housing, the displacement of lower income people and lower profit businesses, and an
increase in homelessness and living costs.
Both Buser et al. (2013) and Richards (2014) suggest that creative placemaking, which
has a strong arts orientation, is inherently contradictory in that the artists involved often
represent political resistance to conservative social institutions, but are also complicit in
urban regeneration actions that may be contrary to those goals. One critic of placemaking
asks, ‘[w]hich people do we want to gather, visit and live in vibrant places? Is it just some
people? Is it already well-off people? It is traditionally excluded people? Is it poor people?
New people? People of color?’ (Mehta, 2012, p. 1). A focus on physical design, as well as
image marketing, can gloss over the complexity of human relations that real places are
made of (Nikitin, 2013). On the other hand, some studies have contradicted this indict-
ment of placemaking gentrification, finding that displacement was not as common or
deep as critics claim (Woronkowicz, 2015).
As suggested above, place making, especially when mass tourism is goal, will often
shift over time away from the organic place-making that may have been the foundation
of the destination towards planned placemaking. In doing so, placemaking increase
homogenization or sameness between places (Richards, 2014). The same chain stores or
restaurants start to appear in every tourism place, leading to a lack of diversity. This is a
form of economic and cultural globalization, resulting in a diminishing of localness and an
increasing in placelessness (Friedman, 2010; Relph, 1976). Disneyfication (predictability
 TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES 459

with a lack of surprise) and McDonaldization (efficiency and the lack of risk) (Ritzer & Liska,
1997) are other characteristics of thematic placemaking. Based on the overwhelming eco-
nomic success of mass tourism theme parks, cruise ships, and historic shopping streets
and shopping centers, this appears to be what the majority of tourists want.
In a postmodern argument, Lowenthal (2015) suggest that cultural authenticity is not a
fixed commodity. It is continually negotiated and re-invented with every act of recogni-
tion. This occurs through economic development and commodification, through national-
ism and other political interpretations, through heritage conservation and museumization
of the past, and through the creation of new culture and arts (Richards, 2011). In that
sense, is there any hope for a traditional, organic place-making in our contemporary glob-
alized and post-modern world?

Tourism planning and tourism place making

Critiques of placemaking in general, and tourism placemaking in particular, are similar to
those of mass tourism (Hall & Lew, 2009). A leading proponent of placemaking in the US,
the Project for Public Spaces (PPS.org), agrees that placemaking that comes about through
a master planning process and is solely focused on physical design is not true place making.
As they state,
A bike lane is not placemaking (sic); neither is a market, a hand-painted crosswalk, public art, a
parklet, or a new development. … To get there, we must develop mechanisms and
processes that make people of all backgrounds feel welcome, as co-creators, in the making of
places—in essence, we need a more place-centered form of governance. (PPS, 2015, p. 1)

For planned placemaking to foster a true and satisfying sense of place requires allowing
space for the natural evolution of organic place-making to add to and influence master
planned environments with vernacular and homegrown overtones. From this perspective,
planned placemaking becomes a stage or action that is part of the larger meta context of
place making and community development, and which also included organic place-
making. PPS (2013) refers to this a ‘place governance,’ which is an intentional effort to
increase equity, participation, inclusiveness, and social capital through the placemaking
process. Place governance is also about integrating government functions around creat-
ing successful public place (Kent, 2013), which should also be a goal of tourism advocates
(Hultman & Hall, 2012). Fortunately, organic place-making does not require planning
because it is human nature to created places that reflect who we are as individuals and as
cultural groups (Pink, 2008), even when faced with significant levels of globalization
(Martin, 2003). If anything, place-making can be stifled by excessive government regula-
tion and control.
From a tourism planning perspective, the major question is how can concepts associ-
ated with place making (including both place-making and placemaking) inform the strate-
gic marketing and development of a tourism destination? There is a clear distinction
between places that are deeply formed through an organic place-making experience,
drawing their attractive tourism power from that, and places that are fully master planned
thematic destinations, which also have a powerful tourist draw (Table 1). It is also clear
that there are many other places that are a mix of these two extremes, and that even
those that fall clearly into one or the other form have the potential to shift their
460 A. A. LEW

orientation. Over time, a place-making destination will likely experience more placemak-
ing activities, and a placemaking destination can experience increasing place-making pro-
cesses (Hultman & Hall, 2012).
A potential key to understanding these processes are the place making tools presented
in Table 2. When these place making elements are almost entirely grounded in an organic
place-making intention, then that orientation will be clearly expressed and experienced.
When most of these elements have their origin in a planned placemaking process, then
that too will be perceived and experienced by residents and visitors alike. From a compre-
hensive tourism planning perspective (including both physical design and destination
marketing), Table 2 offers a tool box from which elements can be selected to guide desti-
nation development in a place-making or placemaking way, with the more common goal
of seeking a balance between the two approaches.
As noted above, balancing place-making and placemaking is a political process that
inherently requires trade-offs among different interests (Hultman & Hall, 2012; Peirce
et al., 2011). The tools of place making do not solve that challenge. However, they could
make the negotiating process more clear by enabling participants to better visualize the
potential tangible and intangible outcomes of different policy and programming options.
This is the kind of skills that professional planners should bring to the table to help com-
munities to come to a consensus over their future evolution (Lew, 2007a).
Comprehensive place making for tourism, therefore, requires a meta level approach to
societal guidance (Friedman, 1987). From this higher and more reflective perspective, pla-
ces might be considered or designated for different levels for place-making and place-
making, from the completely unplanned, local, and organic to the completely themed,
safe, and global. The latter would require an existing or otherwise guaranteed mass tour-
ism market, and may not be appropriate in the earlier stages of emerging destination.
Local place-making, however, is always appropriate and should always be encouraged
through appropriate policies and practices.

Future place making research questions

From a tourism social science perspective, place making raises several serious research
questions, of which five are identified here. The first is who defines success? This is a politi-
cal economy question, with a focus on development, social change, control, and empow-

erment in the placemaking process (Kolas, 2004; Shaw & Montana, 2016). Those who
define success are mostly likely those who will benefit the most from that definition. The
second question is whose story is being told through placemaking? This is a question of cul-
tural heritage and social history, which is usually, but not always, incorporated in the pla-
cemaking theme of a place (Alderman et al., 2012; Lou, 2010). Placemaking can have
significant implications for underrepresented or oppressed groups within a community,
by either appreciating their contributions or continuing to suppress them.
The concept of worldmaking is directly related to these first two questions. Worldmak-
ing is similar to placemaking, but broader in context and more critical in its definitions
and applications. Hollingshead et al. (2009, p. 431) see worldmaking as the ‘very common-
place acts of normalizing and naturalizing’ one preferred world view of people, places, and
pasts over another. In Table 1, worldmaking is associated with the intentionality of such
acts. However, it should be noted that while placemaking as tourism image creation is
 TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES 461

mostly considered an intentional worldmaking act, it often hides unintentional or

unaware presuppositions about the value of underrepresented or undesirable people, pla-
ces, and pasts. This can result in unintentional consequences, as well.
Organic place-making as a human endeavor is universal across the globe. To the
degree that placemaking is a hyper-neoliberal globalization process (Bosman & Dredge,
2011), it too will have some common characteristics, especially in more cosmopolitan
urban centers. However, it is also possible that placemaking will also vary from one culture
or county to another, resulting in different placemaking expectations. Most of the litera-
ture on place making conceptualizations and applications are based on experiences in
North America, Europe, and Australia. The worldmaking context (cultural dynamics, politi-
cal economy, and social values) of Asia, Africa, and South America, especially at the
regional and local scales, can be quite different from those of the West, resulting in differ-
ent community challenges, needs and solutions (Friedman, 2010; Samadhi, 2001). This is
an area that has been little explored in the placemaking literature, but which may have
significant implications for our understanding of both placemaking and place-making.
The third question is who owns the new touristed placemaking landscape? This is a ques-
tion of commodification and appropriation, and has both political economy and authentic-
ity implications. The superficiality of thematic placemaking can allow outsiders to replace
locals as owners, shopkeepers, and performers in tourism places, which for example is often
the case in rural China (Yang & Wall, 2008). Such a scenario destroys the opportunity for a
truly indigenous place-making to emerge. Peirce et al., (2011) suggest that place making is
primarily about networked socio-spatial relationships, and without this perspective, our
understanding of the political economy of place making will remain (see also Hultman &
Hall, 2012). To remedy this, they propose a ‘relational placemaking’ approach that critically
examines network relationships and political processes that are framed by place.
The fourth question is how do tourist contribute to place making? The planner’s role as
placemaker, and the local’s role as place-maker are fairly well understood. But the tourist’s
role in place-making and placemaking is more ambiguous. It comes through the perfor-
mative nature of being a tourist, which involves creating place stories (Rickly-Boyd, 2010)
and sharing images and stories through social media (Baka, 2015). In this way, the tourists
is an ethnographer seeking to understand place, while also making place at the same
time (Thurlow & Jaworski, 2014). As they consume place, they become co-producers and
co-performers in place-making (Everett, 2012). Su (2010) sees these impacts emerging
from the tourist’s imagination and consumption behavior. As Pink (2008, p. 193) puts it,
‘the tour can be understood as an ethnographic pathway which, through its entangle-
ments with the pathways of others, gathered memories, imaginings and the immediate
present though multiple modes and media.’
Finally, the fifth question is how do people know, experience, and engage with place
makings? Whether place-making or placemaking, the tools used to manipulate and create
a sense of place are the same, which presents some interesting ontological and epistemo-
logical questions related to authenticity, postmodernity, experience, and identity. How is
it, for example, that most people have an instinctual ability to distinguish a place-making
environment from a placemaking one? From a postmodern perspective, how is the
authenticity of placemaking comparable to that of place-making? And in an increasing
global and globalized world, how does local place-making agency continue to express
itself, rather than being overwhelmed by placemaking?
462 A. A. LEW

Conclusions
Place making shows us the potential of both the organic and the planned approaches to
creating great places for locals and visitors. It provides us with a clearer understanding of
the elements of urban design and human behavioral responses to urban design, as well
as place programming and image building. It also informs us of what we cannot control,
and what needs to be given freedom to evolve in its own way and in its own time. Allow-
ing this natural evolution is probably the most difficult and risky task for tourism planners
and marketers. Placemaking, especially in its creative forms of public art, may even serve
as a vehicle of resistance and protest against neoliberal global capitalism and mass tour-
ism (Buser et al., 2013), and in support of the local (Fletchall, 2016).
Place making is an activity that humans naturally do as individuals and in social groups
in the places that they inhabit. It is also the foundation of most tourist attractions, whether
relics of past place-making, or the result of modern placemaking processes. This overview
of the definitions, approaches, and implications of different types of place making should
make it clear to planners who work for tourism communities, to tourism professionals
who contribute to community development, and to tourism researchers who seek to
inform the human condition, that a deeper understanding of place making practice and
performance is vital to understanding the dynamics of contemporary tourism
destinations.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Alan A. Lew is a professor in the Department of Geography, Planning, and Recreation at Northern
Arizona University where he teaches courses in geography, urban planning and tourism. He is a
member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and is the founding editor-in-chief of the
Tourism Geographies journal. His interests and writings focus on tourism across East and Southeast
Asia.

ORCID
Alan A. Lew http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8177-5972

References
Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory Culture Soci-
ety, 7, 295–310.
Alderman, D. H., Benjamin, S. K., & Schneider, P. P. (2012). Transforming Mount Airy into Mayberry:
Film-induced tourism as place-making. Southeastern Geographer, 52(2), 212–239.
Amoamo, M. (2012). (de)Constructing place-myth: Pitcairn Island and the “Bounty” story. Tourism
Geographies, 15(1), 107–124.
Baka, V. (2015). Understanding valuing devices in tourism through “place-making”. Valuation Studies,
3(2), 149–180.
 TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES 463

Benfield, K. (2013, July 17). Streets can be public spaces too. The Atlantic CityLab. Retrieved from
http://www.citylab.com/design/2013/07/streets-can-be-public-spaces-too/6235/
Berleant, A. (2003). The aesthetics of place. In S. Menin (Ed.), Constructing Place: Mind and Matter (pp.
41–54). London: Routledge.
Blackstock, K. (2005). A critical look at community based tourism. Community Development Journal,
40(1), 39–49.
Bosker, B. (2014, January 25). Why China’s homeowners want to live in fake Paris. The World Post.
Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bianca-bosker/china-fake-towns_b_4610715.
html
Bosman, C., & Dredge, D. (2011). Histories of placemaking in the Gold Coast City: The neoliberal
norm, the State story and the community narrative. Urban Research Program, Research Paper 33
(April). Brisbane: Griffith University.
Brown, M. J. (2004). Is Taiwan Chinese?: The impact of culture, power, and migration on changing iden-
tities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Buser, M., Bonura, C., Fannin, M., & Boyer, K. (2013). Cultural activism and the politics of place-making.
City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action, 17(5), 606–627. doi:10.1080/
13604813.2013.827840
Castillo, R. (2014). Feeling at home in the “Chocolate City”: An exploration of place-making practices
and structures of belonging amongst Africans in Guangzhou. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 15(2),
235–257.
Cilliers, E. J., & Timmermans, W. (2014). The importance of creative participatory planning in the pub-
lic place-making process. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 41, 413–429.
Coates, G. J., & Seamon, D. (1984). Toward a phenomenology of place and place-making: Interpreting
landscape, lifeworld and aesthetics. Oz, 6, 6–9. doi:10.4148/2378-5853.1074
Dredge, D., & Jenkins, J. (2003). Destination place identity and regional tourism policy. Tourism Geog-
raphies, 5(4), 383–407.
Dyck, I. (2005). Feminist geography, the ‘everyday’, and local-global relations: Hidden spaces of
place-making. The Canadian Geographer (Le Geographe canadien), 49(3), 233–243.
Everett, S. (2012). Production places or consumption spaces? The place-making agency of food tour-
ism in Ireland and Scotland. Tourism Geographies, 14(4), 535–554.
Frank, T. (2012). Dead end on shakin’ street. The Baffler, 20, 1. Retrieved from http://thebaffler.com/
articles/dead-end-on-shakin-street.
Fletchall, A. M. (2016). Place-making through beer-drinking: A case studies of Montana’s craft brewer-
ies. Geographical Review, 106(4), 539–566.
Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class, and how it’s transforming work, leisure community and
everyday life. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Friedman, J. (1987). Planning in the public domain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Friedman, J. (2010). Place and place-making in cities: A global perspective. Planning Theory & Practice,
11(2), 149–165. doi:10.1080/14649351003759573
Goodwin, H., & Santilli, R. (2009). Community-based tourism: A success? The International Centre for
Responsible Tourism (ICRT) Occasional Paper 11. ICRT. Retrieved from http://www.haroldgood
win.info/uploads/CBTaSuccessPubpdf.pdf
Gottdiener, M. (2001). The theming of America: American dreams, media fantasies, and themed envi-
ronments (2nd ed.). Boulder: Westview Press.
Hall, C. M., & Lew, A. A. (2009). Understanding and managing tourism impacts: An integrated approach.
Oxford: Routledge.
Hall-Lew, L. A., & Lew, A. A. (2014). Speaking Heritage: Language, Identity and Tourism. In A. A. Lew,
C. M. Hall, & A. M. Williams (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell companion to tourism (pp. 336–348). Oxford:
Blackwell.
Hamzah, A., & Khalifah, Z. (2009). Handbook on community based tourism: How to develop and sustain
CBT. Singapore: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Secretariat.
Harney, N. D. (2006). The politics of urban space: Modes of place-making by Italians in Toronto’s
neighbourhoods. Modern Italy, 11(1), 25–42.
464 A. A. LEW

Hoelscher, S. (1998). Heritage on stage: The invention of ethnic place in America’s little Switzerland.
Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Hollinshead, K., Atleljevic, I., & Ali, N. (2009). Worldmaking agency–worldmaking authority: The sover-
eign constitutive role of tourism. Tourism Geographies, 11(4), 427–443.
Hou, J., & Rios, M. (2003). Community-driven place making: The social practice of participatory design
in the making of Union Point Park. Journal of Architectural Education, 57(1), 19–27.
Hultman, J., & Hall, C. M. (2012). Tourism place-making: Governance of locality in Sweden. Annals of
Tourism Research, 39(2), 547–570.
Insch, A. (2011). Ethics of place making. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 7, 151–154.
doi:10.1057/pb.2011.23
Johnson, A. J., Glove, T. D., & Stewart, W. P. (2014). Attracting locals downtown: Everyday leisure as a
place-making initiative. Journal of Park and Recreation Management, 32(2), 28–42.
Kelly, D. (2015). Abandoned, European & Western-Themed Ghost Towns of China. Urban Ghosts.
Retrieved from http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2015/02/9-abandoned-european-themed-
western-ghost-towns-china/
Kent, E. (2013). Toward Place Governance: What If We Reinvented Civic Infrastructure Around
Placemaking? Project for Public Spaces website. Retrieved from http://www.pps.org/reference/
toward-place-governance-civic-infrastructure-placemaking/


Kolas, A (2004). Tourism and the making of place in Shangri-La. Tourism Geographies, 6(3), 262–278.
Landry, C. (2000). The creative city: A toolkit for urban innovation. London: Comedia.
Lems, A. (2016). Placing displacement: Place-making in a world of movement. Ethnos, 81(2), 315–337.
Lew, A. A. (1987). A framework of tourist attraction research. Annals of Tourism Research, 14(4), 553–75.
Lew, A. (1989). Authenticity and sense of place in the tourism development experience of older retail
districts. Journal of Travel Research, 27(4), 15–22.
Lew, A. A. (1999). Managing tourist space in pueblo villages of the American Southwest. In T. V. Singh
(Ed.), Tourism development in critical environments (pp. 120–136). Elmsford, NY: Cognizant Com-
munications Corporation.
Lew, A. A. (2007a). Invited commentary: Tourism planning and traditional urban planning theory:
Planners as agents of social change. Leisure/Loisir: Journal of the Canadian Association of Leisure
Studies, 31(2), 383–392.
Lew, A. A. (2007b). Pedestrian shopping streets in the restructuring of the Chinese city. In T. Coles, &
A. Church (Eds.), Tourism, power and place (pp. 150–170). London: Routledge.
Lew, A. A. (2011, April 19). The best tourism places. Tourism Place Blog. Retrieved from http://tourism
place.blogspot.com/2011/04/best-tourism-places-pecha-kucha.html
Lew, A. A. (2012). Geography and the marketing of tourism destinations. In J. Wilson (Ed.), The Rout-
ledge handbook of tourism geographies (pp. 181–186). New York, NY: Routledge.
Lew, A. A., & McKercher, B. (2006). Modeling the movement of tourists in a local destination. Annals
of Tourism Research, 33(2), 403–423.
Liang, Z.-X., & Bao, J.-G. (2015). Tourism gentrification in Shenzhen, China: Causes and socio-spatial
consequences. Tourism Geographies, 17(3), 461–481.
Light, D. (2014). Tourism and toponymy: Commodifying and consuming place names. Tourism Geog-
raphies, 16(1), 141–156. doi:10.1080/14616688.2013.868031
Lou, J. J. (2010). Chinatown transformed: Ideology, power, and resources in narrative place-making.
Discourse Studies, 12(5), 625–647.
Lowenthal, D. (2015). The past is a foreign country – revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Boston, MA: The MIT Press.
Ma, L., & Lew, A. A. (2012). Historical and geographical context in festival tourism development. Jour-
nal of Heritage Tourism, 7(1), 13–31.
MacCannell, D. (1976). The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class. New York, NY: Schocken Books.
Main, K., & Sandoval, G. F. (2015). Placemaking in a translocal receiving community: The relevance of
place to identity and agency. Urban Studies, 52, 71–86.
Markusen, A., & Gadwa, A. (2010). Creative Placemaking. Washington, DC: National Endowment for
the Arts. White paper for The Mayor’s Institute on City Design. Retrieved from http://arts.gov/
pub/pubDesign.php
 TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES 465

Martin, D. G. (2003). ‘‘Place-Framing’’ as place-making: Constituting a neighborhood for organizing

and activism. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93(3), 730–750.
Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: Sage.
Manzo, L. C., & Devine-Wright, P. (Eds.). (2014). Place attachment: Advances in theory, methods and
applications. London: Routledge.
Mazumdar, S., & Mazumdar, S. (2008). Religious placemaking and community building in Diaspora.
Environment and Behavior, 41(3), 1–31.
McKercher, B., Wang, D., & Park, E. (2015). Social impacts as a function of place change. Annals of
Tourism Research, 50, 52–66.
Mehat, N. (2012, October 16). The question all creative placemakers should ask. Next City. Retrieved
from https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the-question-all-creative-placemakers-should-ask
Morgan, N. (2014). Problematizing place promotion and commodification. In A. A. Lew, C. M. Hall,
& A. M. Williams (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell companion to tourism (pp. 210–219). Oxford: Blackwell.
Moughtin, C. (2003). Urban design: Street and square (3rd ed.). Amsterdam: Architecture Press
(Elsevier).
Nettler, J. (2013, January 31). Placemaking is about more than just ‘cool urban amenities’. Planetizen
website. Retrieved from http://www.planetizen.com/node/60517.
Nichols, K. (2001). Tourism as a nation-building tool in the Baltic Republics. Middle States Geographer,
2001, 341–349.
Nikitin, C. (2013). All placemaking is creative: How a shared focus on place builds vibrant destina-
tions. Project for Public Spaces website. Retrieved from http://www.pps.org/reference/placemak
ing-as-community-creativity-how-a-shared-focus-on-place-builds-vibrant-destinations/
Othman, S., Nishimura, Y., & Kubota, A. (2013). Memory association in place making: A review. Proce-
dia — Social and Behavioral Sciences, 85, 554–563.
Paradis, T. W. (2004). Theming, tourism, and fantasy city. In A. A. Lew, C. M. Hall, & A. M. Williams
(Eds.), A companion to tourism (pp. 195–209). London: Blackwell.
Pavement to Parks (P to P). (2016). San Francisco Parklets Manual. San Francisco, CA: Pavement to
Parks. Retrieved from http://pavementtoparks.org/parklets/
Peirce, J., Martin, D. G., & Murphy, J. T. (2011). Relational place-making: The networked politics of
place. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36; 54–70.
Pink, S. (2008). An urban tour: The sensory sociality of ethnographic place-making. Ethnography, 9(2),
175–196.
Project for Public Spaces (PPS). (2013, March 17). Stronger Citizens, Stronger Cities: Changing Gover-
nance Through a Focus on Place. Project for Public Spaces website. Retrieved from http://www.
pps.org/blog/stronger-citizens-stronger-cities-changing-governance-through-a-focus-on-place/
Project for Public Spaces (PPS). (2009, January 31). The power of 10C: Applying placemaking at every
scale. Project for Public Spaces website. Retrieved from http://www.pps.org/reference/the-power-
of-10/
Project for Public Spaces (PPS). (2015, June 19). Equitable placemaking: Not the end, but the means.
Project for Public Spaces website. Retrieved from http://www.pps.org/reference/equity-placemak
ing-gentrification/
Relph, E. (1976). Place and placelessness. London: Pion Limited.
Richards, G. (2011). Creativity and tourism: The state of the art. Annals of Tourism Research, 38(4),
1225–1253.
Richards, G. (2014). Creativity and tourism in the city. Current Issues in Tourism, 17(2), 119–144.
doi:10.1080/13683500.2013.783794
Rickly-Boyd, J. M. (2010). The tourist narrative. Tourist Studies, 9(3), 259–280.
Rios, M., & Vasquez, L. (2012). Dialogos: Placemaking in Latino communities. London: Routledge.
Ritzer, G., & Liska, A. (1997). “McDisneyization” and “Post-tourism.” In C. Rojek & J. Urry (Eds.), Touring
cultures: Transformations of travel and theory (pp. 96–109). London: Routledge.
Rose-Redwood, R., & Alderman, D. (2011). Critical interventions in political toponymy. ACME: An Inter-
national E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 10(1), 1–6.
Samadhi, T. N. (2001). The urban design of a Balinese town: Placemaking issues in the Balinese urban
setting. Habitat International, 25, 559–575.
466 A. A. LEW

Scho€llmann, A. (2003). The production of tourism space: A case study of the space-place dialectics in
contemporary tourism promotion (PhD thesis). Lincoln University, Christchurch.
Shaw, K., & Montana, G. (2016). Place-making in megaprojects in Melbourne. Urban Policy and
Research, 34(2), 166–189.
Singapore Tourism Board (STB) (2016). What we do: Placemaking. Retrieved from https://www.stb.
gov.sg/about-stb/what-we-do/Pages/Placemaking.aspx
Smith, N. (2002). New globalism, new urbanism: Gentrification as global urban strategy. In N. Brenner
& N. Theodore (Eds.), Spaces of neoliberalism: Urban restructuring in North America and Western
Europe (pp. 80–103). Oxford: Blackwell.
Thurlow, C., & Jaworski, A. (2014). ‘Two hundred ninety-four’: Remediation and multimodal perfor-
mance in tourist placemaking. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18(4), 459–494.
Trudeau, D. (2006). Politics of belonging in the construction of landscapes: Place-making, boundary-
drawing and exclusion. Cultural Geographies, 13(3), 421–443.
Tuan, Y. F. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Min-
nesota Press.
Vale, L. J. (1992). Architecture, power, and national identity (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Whittemore, A. H. (2015). Practioners theorize, too: Reaffirming planning theory in a survey of prac-
tioners’ theories. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 35(1), 76–85.
Winter, T. (2014). Material culture and contested heritage in tourism. In A. A. Lew, C. M. Hall, & A. M.
Williams (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell companion to tourism (pp. 368–377). Oxford: Blackwell.
Williams, S., & Lew, A. A. (2014). Tourism geography (3rd ed.). London: Routledge.
Woronkowicz, J. (2015). Art-making or place-making? The relationship between open-air perfor-
mance venues and neighborhood change. Journal of Planning Education & Research, 36(1), 49–59.
Wortham-Galvin, B. D. (2008). Mythologies of placemaking, Places, 20(1), 32–39.
Wyckoff, M. (2014). Definitions of placemaking: Four different types. Planning & Zoning News, 32(3), 1.
Retrieved from http://landpolicy.msu.edu/news/article/lpis_mark_wyckoff_authors_article_on_
four_different_types_of_placemaking
Wyckoff, M. A., Neumann, B., Pape, G., & Schindler, K. (2015). Placemaking as and economic develop-
ment tool: A placemaking guide. East Lansing, MI: Land Policy Institute, Michigan State University.
Su, X. (2010). The imagination of place and tourism consumption: A case study of Lijiang Ancient
Town, China. Tourism Geographies, 10(3), 412–434.
Yang, L., & Wall, G. (2008). Ethnic tourism and entrepreneurship: Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China.
Tourism Geographies, 10(4), 522–544.
Yea, S. (2002). On and off the ethnic tourism map in Southeast Asia: The case of Iban longhouse tour-
ism. Sarawak, Malaysia, Tourism Geographies, 4(2), 173–194. doi:10.1080/14616680210124945