Assessing residents’ perceptions of urban placemaking prior to hosting a major cultural event

Abstract

PurposeMore research is needed to consider residents’ perceptions prior to hosting large-scale events. This paper contributes new insight on residents’ perceptions of placemaking analysed by considering awareness, enthusiasm and participation prior to hosting a large-scale event. Placemaking is becoming increasingly important and this insight can help planners understand how locals perceive change and event planning preparations.Design/methodology/approach454 residents of Rijeka, Croatia completed a survey (seven-point Likert scale) of 17 placemaking principles, asked in three ways: (1) how you feel; (2) how you believe people near you feel and (3) if you feel that planning/preparing for ECoC 2020 has made a difference. The data analysis considers socio-demographics and the significance of awareness, enthusiasm and participation as factors affecting residents’ perceptions of placemaking.FindingsThe study found respondents originally from Rijeka expressed statistically significant higher level of agreement. Where statistically significant differences exist, female respondents expressed statistically significant higher levels of agreement. For six statements, the distribution of results was not similar for all age groups. Awareness and enthusiasm seems to influence placemaking principles to a greater extent than participation in this study, but all have proven to have statistically significant positive impacts on the placemaking principles assessed.Practical implicationsPlanners need to focus on effective promotional activities aimed at awareness and enhance enthusiasm to help increase perceptions of placemaking and increase local quality of life.Originality/valueexplores perceptions of “self” and “how others feel” by assessing principles of placemaking associated with the case of Rijeka. This allows researchers to explore understandings of how people perceive the attitudes of their fellow residents.

Exploring implicit and explicit cultural policy dimensions through major-event and neoliberal rhetoric

“…The research strategy adopted is framed within current cultural and urban policy debates. This paper focuses in on a local cultural policy development context, and builds on recently published research on the ECoC by Ganga (2021) and Wise et al, (2021aWise et al, ( , 2021b). An ex-ante qualitative case study of the Rijeka2020 Programme uses a kaleidoscopic approach to interpret explicit and implicit cultural policy dimensions of the programme as intended and with this impact of COVID-19.…”

Making or remaking people and places through festivals: an island tourism perspective

“…The concept of place-making extends from public space to place in general and from urban planning to sociology, politics and geography (Wise et al , 2021). Not only place experts, such as architects and planners but “all of us as human beings transform the places in which we find ourselves into places in which we live” (Schneekloth and Shibley, 1995, p. 1).…”

Creative entrepreneurship, urban transformation and the (Baltic) triangle model

“…Creative entrepreneurship enables the entrepreneur to act on opportunities in ways that can result in competitive advantage for the organization, while providing the foundation for innovation and business growth, as well as having a positive impact on society (Bilton, 2007). Placemaking enables people to associate through a shared sense of identity, which then strengthens community connections across socio-spatial milieus (Wise et al , 2020).…”