There is more to placemaking than the actual making of places, understood as placing benches, adding flowers, changing pavements, and the like, and I am convinced people involved in these activities would share my views. Creating social situations, around which the real physical settings would be built in future, conveys a method to change reality. The strength of local communities gathered and unified around a place is in the position to provide brand new and often very creative proposals based on the in-depth observation of the real-life situations performed by many. Strength stemming also from the complex composition of a group of various and multiple profiles increases the potential for creativity. The daily usage of space yields numerous small-scale situations which call for better, more comfortable solutions. Not being afraid of people, collaborating with them, architects and urban designers may use this knowledge, answer these needs. Add a support to a bench here to help an elderly lady sit comfortably. Add a seat there, in the shadow so a group of teenagers could protect themselves from the summer heat. Use the breeze which cools the air and which nobody would expect in a place like that. Slowly develop solutions, starting with temporary prototypes. Often not even real just to understand each other and actual needs. Show local people they are respected and ask their opinion, your work may change real-life conditions of a few and of so many.

Great rulers of the past understood social needs, this is perhaps why they deserve to be called great now. Bacon explains that once, the famous pope Sixtus the Fifth, walking the paths of Rome from one church to another followed by groups of pilgrims, must have noticed the need to give the processions a proper scenery. With time these processions acquired physical form in one of the most recognisable layouts of streets forever. We may multiply such examples.

Contemporary society is different; we are no longer unified around one single vocation. Guessing what different people want would be a chore, much easier is just to ask or sometimes to show examples. Not only would we learn about the desired culture of usage of space, but also gain support for our further efforts. We just work in order to achieve these goals with the local community, not against them. Otherwise, given little means, urbanists are given in the contemporary world, with our role reduced to advisory only, we may just sit comfortably in our armchairs and complain that in the past, urbanism used to be great.

This is a little piece of a philosophy behind our recent involvement in the workshop our students held at the Institute of Architecture and Town Planning of Lodz University of Technology where I work. The workshop itself deserves a separate entry and it will get it very soon. Stay tuned!