Placemaking is nearly 50 years old as an industry, but it still behaves like a start-up: people struggle to define what it is, lots of money is being spent on it, nobody really knows how to value it, nor whether it will work… and there are plenty of bad ideas and operators in amongst all the good. Placemaking should be a forest by this stage but it’s still a jungle.

Placemaking NSW is a new armature of the New South Wales Government that deals with particularly valuable, sensitive and significant places owned by the state. To help the agency get underway on the right footing, our CEO Barrie Barton made a series of presentations to the organisation as part of a purpose, vision and values exercise. Entitled ‘The Past Present’ and ‘Future of Placemaking’, the 20-minute presentations tracked the evolution of the industry, its emerging trends and illustrated why Covid-19 is really the shot in the arm for a discipline that is of increasing importance. The insights from the presentation helped Placemaking NSW carve out a definition of the term and approach to placemaking that is unique, simple and actionable.