Does Placemaking Lead to a Resident’s Greater Place Dependence and Place Identity in Rural Communities? Empirical Evidence in Indiana

• Date: 01 June 2020
• Author: Brian Blackford,Jeongyoon Lee
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0160323X20979698
• Subject Matter: General Interests

General Interest

Does Placemaking Lead to

a Resident’s Greater Place

Dependence and Place

Identity in Rural

Communities? Empirical

Evidence in Indiana

Jeongyoon Lee

1

and Brian Blackford

2

Abstract

Placemaking is a valuable place-based development and integration tool in rural communities. This

study examines how placemaking processes and outputs are associated with residents’ bonds with

local places through survey data collected in rural communities in Indiana. Results reveal that policy

communication and localized public spaces design are critical for increasing residents’ place

dependence and place identity. These findings help pinpoint how local governments utilize place-

making in rural communities to effectively strengthen residents’ ownership of public spaces while

further providing implications for residents’ empowerment and community planning in local gov-

ernance scholarship.

Keywords

placemaking, place dependence, place identity, empowerment, community planning, rural

communities

Local government officials and community

leaders areincreasingly prioritizing placeinvest-

ments as a community developmentand integra-

tion strategy aimed at enhancing quality of

public amenities and bolstering vibrancy in

hopes of attractingand retaining a talented work-

force (Hambleton and Howard 2013).

For instance, Michigan’s then-governor, Rick

Snyder, said in 2011:

Neighborhoods, cities, and regions are awaken-

ing to the importance of “place” in economic

development. They are planning for a future that

recognizes the critical importance of quality of

life to attracting talent entrepreneurship and

encouraging local businesses. Competing for suc-

cess in a global marketplace means creating

places where workers, entrepreneurs, and

1

Martin School of Public Policy and Administration, Uni-

versity of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

2

Indiana Communities Institute, Ball State University,

Muncie, IN, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jeongyoon Lee, Martin School of Public Policy and Admin-

istration, University of Kentucky, 425 Patterson Office

Tower, Lexington, KY 40506, USA.

Email: jle240@uky.edu

State and Local GovernmentReview

2020, Vol. 52(2) 71-88

ªThe Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0160323X20979698

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businesses want to locate, invest, and expand.

This work has been described as a “sense of

place” or “place-based economic development”

or simply “placemaking.” (Kelly et al. 2017, 437)

Placemaking, or the process of reimagining and

becoming intimate with ones’ public surround-

ings (e.g., parks, downtowns, plazas, and

streets; Balassiano and Maldonado 2015), was

listed as a priority for local government leaders

in the most recent Indiana Advisory Council on

Intergovernmental Relations survey pertaining

to intergovernmental issues in communities

large and small (Palmer et al. 2018). New

York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, launched

an initiative in 2017 that funded placemaking

initiatives to advance economic development

and promote social integration in the western

part of the state (Welch and Anderson 2017).

A trendy term, placemaking is a long-

established practice deployed for renovation,

upgrade, or maintenance of public space and

concept in urban design and planning scholar-

ship. Over the past two decades, it has become

local government’s collaborative, participatory

policy tool where the public, private, and non-

profit sectors engage in placemaking planning,

decision-making, implementation, and e valua-

tion processes. Placemaking as democratic

intervention focuses on active involvement of

all interested community residents and can also

strengthen the bonds between residents and

community places (Manzo and Perkins 2006).

However, previous studies on placemaking

and public space almost exclusively examine

urban contexts. Rare are analyses that discuss

those in rural settings because urban areas are

seen as central points of supra-government and

hubs of populations (Potter 2010). Rural place-

making remains under-studied. Compared with

urban areas, rural regions show differences in

demographic and economic changes that deter-

mine political behaviors (Benton 2019; Cramer

2016). In rural towns, population density is low

due to out-migration, many neighbors are

known to each other, and residents are homoge-

nous in terms of ethnicity, age, and profession,

particularly in agricultural areas (Potter 2010;

Trautman 2016). Also, conformity pressures

in these areas weigh more heavily, and resi-

dents are politically conservative (Benton

2019; Cramer 2016; Catlaw and Stout 2016).

In this circumstance, many policymakers and

elected officials in rural communities are

investinginplacemakingtobringabouta

change in rural demography and economies

without fully understanding what works and

what does not work well. This study aims to

examine how rural placemaking plays a role

in building a resident’s place dependence

and identity as short-term and long-term pro-

gram outcomes, respectively, which in turn

affects demographic and economic trends in

rural areas.

Previous residents’ empowerment and com-

munity planning research discusses how place-

making can empower communities, strengthen

ownership of public spaces, and increase the

emotional and symbolic bonds between com-

munity residents and their public environments

(Vey 2019). Place dependence and identity

concern the positive socio-psychological bonds

that develop between individuals and their sur-

rounding environments (Gurney et al. 2017).

These place-based bonds are essen tial in local

politics and economies in rural areas because

they help overcome collective action problems,

enhance community cohesion, and reduce the

out-migration rates. As people are willing to

donate substantial amounts of time, money, or

efforts to improve the public places that they

treasure and belong to (Balassiano and Maldo-

nado 2015), understanding how placemaking

can be performed to increase a resident’s place

dependence and identity leads to more effective

community development and integration

strategies.

While placemaking, place dependence , and

place identity have been studied discretely to

varying degrees in the residents’ empowerment

and community planning literature, they have

not been considered together. Previous studies

have focused on individual feelings and experi-

ences toward local places and n ot fully elabo-

rated on placemaking processes and outputs

(as collective experiences toward “good” pub-

lic spaces) in developing a resident’s place

dependence and identity in a rural context.

72 State and Local Government Review 52(2)