Can We Design for Culture? Paradigms and Provocations

Abstract

While creative placemaking has proved a long-standing paradigm for the arts in city-making strategy, recently there has been a shift towards a cultural infrastructure approach. This article takes critical stock of this paradigm shift, to engage the broader question of whether we can design for culture in the built environment. Conceptualizing creative placemaking within a larger genealogical framework, I argue that this shift might be understood as responsive to some of the limitations and unintended social consequences of the movement: its temporal nature and contribution to cycles of gentrification and displacement.