'Placemaking' in the Fourth Dimension

Whether you are a planner, an urbanophile, or just an active newspaper reader, you have probably come across the phrase “sense of place.”  To many, this concept might seem visceral—we travel through a neighborhood and grasp the strong character of its spatial environment.  In the era of placemaking, many planners are trying to establish or enhance the sense of place in communities.  For this purpose, we need a more measurable definition of place.

In “Politics and Space/Time,” geographer Doreen Massey rejects prior spatial theories and argues that space is very much a function of time.  Space is not an outcome, but a moment in time that is defined by historic and social relationships that describe the past and influence the future.

Today’s planners share both a placemaking agenda and new tools for understanding place.  However, our tools (census data, GIS, etc.) present a snapshot (2D or 3D) in time.  Without a more dynamic perspective of the forces that define space, how can we truly capture, understand, and improve our places?

An example of our technical limitations is a new search engine created by a University of Cincinnati professor.  This tool provides a heat map of similar places across the U.S. based on selectable environmental and socio-economic variables.  The ultimate goal is to "offer the user a total search for a sense of place."  This notion seems a bit naive in light of Massey's critique.  We must recognize that a static view of space or place is an incomplete view.  In the age of ‘big data’ how can we involve the 4^th dimension in our analysis of places and our attempts at placemaking?