Placemaking Week

Sign-up links for all breakout intensives will be sent by email to conference registrants only in late September. Advanced registration required.

The growing influence of "big data" has promoted a bottom-line view of the world that often excludes the deeper values of placemaking. Let's build an alternative vision together—a place-led industry standard for urban metrics.

Data and metrics have always been a significant part of the placemaking movement, dating back to early innovators like William H. Whyte and Jan Gehl, who first quantified the use of public space. However, as our cities have become increasingly "data-driven" over the years, they have lost sight of the humanist intention behind these early efforts.

Inspired by the success of practitioner efforts like the Agile Manifesto, and how Web metrics standards were formed, we invite placemakers working on metrics for placemaking and those interested the advancing the core values of placemaking to co-write a working group statement on metrics standards, policies, and data principles in placemaking and city-building at large.