The History and Future of Places – Part 9: The emergence of places as products

Around 1990 there were two important events that have had growing implications for places. The establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 brought global warming to widespread public attention. And in 1989 Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, which opened the door for the global expansion of the internet.

I will discuss these developments in coming weeks. But first, and more briefly, I will describe other recent trends that have affected our way of understanding, promoting, making, and experiencing places. Most seem to have grown exponentially since 1990.

The remarkable rise of academic interest in place

Since the 1990s the formerly esoteric interest in place has seen a veritable explosion in academic disciplines. These include, but are not limited to architecture, anthropology, business, geography, psychology, literature, art, political science, neuroscience, ecology, sociology, urban design and planning, and archaeology. It’s impossible to survey it all, but my sense is that much of the research is theoretical, though some has spilled over into place practices and policies. Perhaps the most obvious example of this has been in place branding and placemaking. The dramatic increase in research and publication lies in the background of recent trends that have affected places.

The practice of promoting places to attract visitors or new residents has a long history. In the 1990s, within the context of neo-liberalism and competition between world cities for investment, it came to be called ‘place branding’. The term captures its relationship to the advertising of products. It involves the creation of slogans, logos, website design and marketing strategies to attract investors and tourists. It further aims to generate identity with place among residents. Most cities, regions and universities have now been branded, and there are numerous consultancies, journals, and institutions devoted to both place branding and placemaking.

Placemaking

Previously in this series, I have used the term ‘placemaking’ to refer to the ways in which places have been built over the last two and half millennia. This has included architecture, planning, infrastructure, belief systems and world views. However, the term was rarely used before the 1990s. Since coming into widespread usage it has variously referred to expressions of suppressed ethnic identity, the transformation of local environments, and the socio-economic production and reproduction of places. The American consultancy Project for Public Spaces, which considers itself the central hub of the global placemaking community, provides a definition of how it is most commonly understood:

“Placemaking is both an overarching idea and a hands-on tool for improving a neighbourhood, city or region.”

It is along these lines that placemaking has become a widely used idea and practice in planning, urban design and development.

Non-places

In the 1960s, Melvin Webber wrote about the “non-place urban realm.” By this, he meant communities, such as those of academic, professional or business groups, formed around shared interests, rather than around proximity and propinquity. In 1995, French anthropologist Marc Augé’s book Non-Places: Introduction to the Anthropology of Supermodernity expressed a different idea.  Augé stated that non-places are the parts of modern built environments without history, culture, or residents, such as hospitals, expressway service stations, shopping malls and airports. In these non-places, experiences are contractual and temporary because we are patients or customers, or are simply passing through on our way to somewhere else. They are convenient, efficient, and largely anonymous because they have to be comprehensible to people with diverse backgrounds. They are essential in a mobile society.

Mobility and overtourism

Mobility broadens experiences and reduces parochialism. Yet, it also contributes to the need for non-places and weakens long-term commitments to particular places. Increased mobility began with the railways and was dramatically reinforced by the invention of motor vehicles and airplanes. It has continued to accelerate since 1990 at a rate far exceeding population growth. The number of motor vehicles per capita has risen in all parts of part the world since 2005. In Asia, vehicle ownership has risen by 140%, in Africa by 35%, by 9% in Europe and 6% in North America. In short, a greater number of people everywhere are driving more, and place experiences involve views through windscreens.

These increases in travel and tourism have led to serious overcrowding in popular destinations. Even before 1990, many World Heritage Sites were experiencing problems. In the years since, entire cities have been overwhelmed by what has come to be known as overtourism.

Places experiencing overtourism are diminished to something like a blend of theme parks and non-places. The place experiences of tourists are reduced to glimpses through crowds and brief opportunities for selfies. The explosive growth of Airbnb, founded in 2008 as a modest attempt to connect travellers and hosts, has played a role in this. By 2019, it had 500 million listings in 191 countries and 81,000 cities.

Airbnb’s mission is, in part, to create “a world where anyone can belong anywhere.” In other words, it seeks to make all places equally accessible. Its international success has, however, contributed to local housing shortages and pushed up housing costs, as its listings have displaced conventional rentals. While Airbnb has enhanced place experiences for travellers, it has led caused accommodation scarcity and rent inflation for permanent residents. In doing so, it has undermined place experiences for those people who call the world’s tourist destinations home.