People shape places and places shape people
Placemaking is a collaborative innovation process that brings people together to create positive changes in a place or area. This also includes improving existing spaces to make them more comfortable, accessible, active and attractive.
Placemaking works across and incorporates the best of many disciplines and approaches, including urban design, economic development, events and activation, community development, urban planning, arts and culture, engineering, transport, infrastructure, sustainability, community safety and more.

Placemaking is a philosophy and an iterative, collaborative process for creating public spaces that people love and feel connected to. Placemaking is a people-focused process, not a destination and it is never finished. It aims to improve not only the physical elements of a space, but also the way people think and feel about the world around them.


Town Team Movement and the global leader of the placemaking movement, PlacemakingX, have partnered to create the world’s first online education platform with structured training courses to help you learn more about placemaking. We have collected and curated the most important placemaking concepts, tips and lessons learned into one place to make it easier and faster for you to learn.
Placemaking.Education’s online courses allow you to learn at your own pace, when you want, where you want! Check out the current courses we offer.
Online Placemaking Training Courses Currently Available
The free Placemaking in 12 Minutes course will provide you with a quick introduction to placemaking in just 12 minutes!
Time commitment:
About 12.5 minutes
Price: FREE
Start the crash course today!
https://www.placemaking.education/p/placemaking-in-12-minutes
This is a condensed version of the Introduction to Placemaking course.
4 online lessons
Time commitment:
Around 2 hours of learning and content, plus additional readings if you are keen
Price: $140 Australian dollars including GST.
Start learning today!
https://www.placemaking.education/p/introduction-to-placemaking-abridged
Learn the most important concepts in placemaking, plus the practical, street-level secrets from some of the leaders of the placemaking movement in Australasia.
9 online lessons
Time commitment:
Could take about 6 hours, but you can learn at your own pace. Plus complete tasks to embed and practice your knowledge.
Price: $275 Australian dollars including GST. This including a Certificate of Completion, endorsed by PlacemakingX and Town Team Movement!
Start learning today!
https://www.placemaking.education/p/introduction-to-placemaking
The Placemaking: making it happen in local governments online course provides ideas and tools for making it happen in a local government context.
9 online lessons
Time commitment:
Could take about 5 hours, but you can learn at your own pace. Plus complete tasks to embed and practice your knowledge.
Style: Online course. Learn at your own pace, when you want, where you want!
Price: $275 Australian dollars including GST. This including a Certificate of Completion, endorsed by PlacemakingX and Town Team Movement!
Start learning today!
The Placemaking in State Governments online course provides principle-based and practical placemaking guidance for State Government professionals, advisors and politicians
9 online lessons
Time commitment:
Could take about 7 hours, but you can learn at your own pace. Plus complete tasks to embed and practice your knowledge.
Style: Online course. Learn at your own pace, when you want, where you want!
Price: $275 Australian dollars including GST. This including a Certificate of Completion, endorsed by PlacemakingX and Town Team Movement!
Placemaking Coaching and Group Learning
One-on-one coaching
- Work on projects or topics that are important for you
- Build your capacity and confidence
- Develop your skills
Price: A$300 ex GST for a 2 hour online session
A$400 ex GST for a 3 hour online session(s)
Plus get 25% off online placemaking courses.
Email [email protected] to register or find out more.
Group learning sessions
- Connect with and learn from peers in these online group learning sessions
- Build your capacity and confidence
- Develop your skills
Price: A$50 per person ex GST for a 1 online hour session
Plus get 25% off online placemaking courses.
Complete the Expression of Interest via Google Forms
Or email [email protected] find out more.
Project for Public Spaces founded the placemaking approach in the 1990’s. PPS defines placemaking as:
“As both an overarching idea and a hands-on approach for improving a neighborhood, city, or region, placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community. Strengthening the connection between people and the places they share, placemaking refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value.
More than just promoting better urban design, placemaking facilitates creative patterns of use, paying particular attention to the physical, cultural, and social identities that define a place and support its ongoing evolution.
With community-based participation at its center, an effective placemaking process capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential.”
Project for Public Spaces
Example of what you might learn at Placemaking.Education
Placemaking is often used as a “catch-all” term. This can make it confusing and difficult to understand.
Placemaking is a word used in a range of disciplines and contexts – planning, urban design, development, health, marketing, economic development, community development and more.
As a philosophy and process, placemaking seeks to bring separated disciplines together to work for a common vision of creating better places. We pull apart the components of ‘Place’ shown in the diagram below to better understand them.
Being clearer and more specific in the use of these words can help to improve your understanding of the concept, which can then make it easier to implement.
https://www.placemaking.education/p/introduction-to-placemaking
