AAG 2016 CfP - Metrics of place: measuring and evaluating placemaking
American Association of Geographers annual conference, 5th to 9th April 2017, Boston
This session asks what metrics of placemaking, and in accordance with the co-convenors particular research interests, creative placemaking, are and how they are being measured.
The ‘creative’ in urban planning is a ‘fuzzy’ ‘buzzword’ (Lilliendahl Larsen, 2014, p.330), one that is used systemically through concepts of vitality and vibrancy to articulate how arts and culture change the qualities of place, such as with the Vitality Indices in the US and UK (Gilmore, 2014, p.20), Arts Council England’s recent metrics, and Vital Signs Evaluative Matrix (McKeown, 2015). In the culturised city (Zukin, 2009), culture and ‘the arts’ become part of the city’s symbolic and fiscal economy. Creativity in the city though is also a site of resistance to culturisation, a ‘call and response among different social groups’ (Zukin, 1995, p.264) to find, create and maintain sites of different cultural value through new city visualisations (Stern, in Lowe and Stern, in Finkelpearl, 2013, p.146). Further, existing paradigms (Scientific/Social Science) and their evaluative aims maybe irrelevant. Placemaking occurs within a complex dynamic system – with causal relationships difficult to establish and baselines from which to measure impact hard to define within dynamic non-stable contexts existing evaluation aims, creative acts of placemaking may require an entirely new approach.
The session aims to include both qualitative and quantitative research and project evaluations, as well as methodologies, from researchers and sector professionals, as well as critiques of the same.
Please submit an abstract for consideration, of no more than 250 words, by 24th October, to [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] Successful applicants will be informed by 7th November for their timely registration to AAG 2017.
Please note: all presenter places at the conference will need to be self-funded, with registration fees paid in advance, November 2017.
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