Using dialogical exchanges and social interactions to evaluate and improve placemaking practices

The success of various placemaking practices, initiatives or installations are inherently linked to how it facilitates engagement among and between multiple stakeholder groups. Given this, placemaking projects are often challenged by a complex set of social interactions, which present competing interests, perspectives, objectives and goals. As a result, the complexity of these social interactions can become difficult to assess or understand. If we cater for various social interactions in the design stage of a placemaking initiative we might assume that the chances for success are improved. If ignored, we might be assuming that the outcome of a placemaking initiative is less sustainable or impactful. In this chapter, we ask, how can placemaking improve engagement? We focus on the density of communications among multiple stakeholders, where they occur and how they might be encouraged. We focus on three forms of dialogical exchange as a means to understand social interactions and where the density of communications might be acknowledged within a given space. These dialogical exchanges include social interactions between people; people interacting with artefacts or objects i.e. a piano in a train station eliciting a response; and finally, people interacting with ideas and abstractions i.e. a feeling of "inclusion" or "liberty" (Baralou & Tsoukas, 2015; Tsoukas, 2009a, 2009b). We use PlaceCity case histories to illustrate how ubiquitous these different dialogical exchanges are within placemaking practices. We look to identify where the density of communications can be found or facilitated within the design stage of placemaking projects. From this we illustrate the variety of hidden dialogical exchanges which often go overlooked. The first case history focuses on placemaking with high school students in Oslo, Norway. The second case focuses on the concepts and ideas for urban regeneration in Vienna, Austria. Our third case focuses on a cooperatively led urban regeneration project addressing expanded gentrification in Lisbon, Portugal. While we present these case histories merely as examples, our goal here is to illustrate the complex mix of dialogical exchanges that can be observed as densities of communications occurring naturally within our urban spaces. We suggest how this could be used as a starting point to improve placemaking design. In turn, we argue that this ensures outcomes are more sustainable and impactful. By improving engagement, i.e. social interaction and dialogue, we highlight how placemaking can contribute to knowledge production in society.