Placemaking is the retention of the essence of the place while giving it new physical

and psychological meaning (Gunn, 1994).

Heritage and Character

Heritage provides a second important source of character. Heritage is about identity. It is
something that
gives us a sense of place and informs us about who we are and how our society has
developed over time.
Heritage can be something valued by a single person or it can be part of a wider groups
sense of identity
and character. Its scope is much broader than place; it includes intangible as well as
tangible heritage
facets of our past and present that have special significance to us, spiritual and social
connections, as well as
physical structure and natural features. It may be significant for scientific, aesthetic,
architectural or
historical reasons or for any other special cultural value. Heritage is a linkage between the
past and the
future and enables us to connect with traditions and celebrations that we may otherwise
know little about.
Our shared heritage can help us understand the richness and complexity of our identity, as
well as that of
our own local communities. This report does not attempt to survey the extensive literature
that exists on this
subject. It mainly focuses on the discussion of built heritage. However, more information on
historic heritage
can be found in the Whangarei District Historic Heritage Report, which formed one of the
Sustainable
Futures 30/50s background documents.
The literature finds that historic buildings make a great contribution to the character,
diversity and sense of
identity of urban area (as cited in Ministry for the Environment, 2005). This attribute implies
more than a
memorable or attractive appearance. Historic buildings and those neighbourhood buildings
associated with it, such as schools, shops and places of worship, all help to define an areas
sense of place and meaning. A
basic tenet of good urban design is to understand this concept of local distinctiveness.
Heritage value in urban areas can be defined by a number of criteria and describes a range
of meaning
building up a picture of particular distinctiveness of individual places and their contribution
within a greater
urban context.
Whangareis historic residential, commercial and industrial buildings and structures are a
valuable and finite
resource. They are important in shaping the character of our CBD and each of the suburbs.
The influence of
early architecture and land development patterns on the districts settlements makes a
strong contribution to
our sense of place.
Some of the buildings and precincts that remain from the past include:
Springhead (55 Russell Road) Built in 1852 and the oldest remaining home in Whangarei.
Keytes Barn (19 Aubrey Street) Built in the early 1860s and used as a funeral parlour.

 Reyburn House (Lower Dent Street) Built between 1865 and 1875. It is a landmark in
terms of
Whangareis history and visual identity.
Cubitts House (11 Mill Road) Built between 1874 and 1876. It is one of the best examples
in
Whangarei of the early colonial style architecture.

Urban design amenity pg 18

3.4 Sense of Place
The term sense of place has been mentioned several times throughout the report. So, what
is a sense of
place?
Sense of place is one of many characteristics displayed by people congruent with local
identity (Xu, 1995).
People develop a sense of place through experience and knowledge of a particular area. A
sense of place
emerges through knowledge of the history, geography and geology of an area, its flora and
fauna, the
legends of a place, and a growing sense of the land and its history after living there for a
time.
The sense of place comprises two essential elements:
The community or those people who feel attachment or a sense of belonging to a place;
The physical and intangible elements of a place that contribute to its special character or
familiarity.
Given the community is an integral component of the overall definition of sense of place,
consideration
needs to be given to the definition of the community and to setting parameters that will be
considered when
identifying the values that contribute to a sense of place.
Thus, in considering and defining a sense of place, it is important to recognise the following:
That everyone has a unique sense of place but that there are some common values that
contribute
to the special character of some areas;
That the sense of place is dynamic and will change over time and across communities;
and,
That the definition of the community will influence those matters and elements that are
considered
and that recognition needs to be given to the diversity of these communities and the
differences
(and commonalties) between groups.
Urban design amenity

The characters of place in urban design

It concerns the connections between people and places, movement and urban

form, nature and the built fabric, and the processes for ensuring successful villages, towns and
cities. The city
thus becomes the outcome of complex intersections created by a number of operators who
modify the system for
different reasons. It becomes necessary to identify a microsystem within the macrosystem of the
city able to make
the urban variants intelligible: place is at once porous and resistant, a receptor for complex
interactions. The concept
of place, in the sense of a space endowed with unique features that is fundamental for
establishing the identity
of the contemporary city, is meant as a key concept of urban design. We illustrate the
environmental, historic,
symbolic, urban, perceptive, anthropological, sociological and psychological characteristics,
extending as far as
virtual place and non-place.

Specifically regarding the quality aspect, place

as Healey (2010, pp. 3334) asserts is also related
to the meaning that people give to their surroundings
and their capacity to influence them. Places
are not just a set of objects positioned on a site in
order to make up a part of a city or of a territory.
They assume a specific meaning in the moment in
which we infuse them with a value. Indeed the term
place such as meant by Healey does not concern
the objective reality and their buildings, streets,
landscapes and facilities, nor is it considered as
necessarily coterminous with administrative jurisdiction.
Things may be co-located, and relations
may overlay each other in physical spaces when we
feel that we have arrived somewhere, when we
sense an ambiance, when we feel that we are at
some kind of nodal space in the flows of our lives.
Rossi (1984, p. 106) refers to the study of Gallia
by Eydoux on places that have always been
considered unique, and he suggested further analysis
of such places, which seem to have been predestined by history. These places are real signs
of
space; and as such they have a relationship both to
chance and to tradition. I often think of the piazzas
depicted by the Renaissance painters, where the
place of architecture, the human construction, takes
on a general value of place and of memory because
it is so strongly fixed in a single moment.
Cities become historical texts; in fact, to study
urban phenomena without the use of history is
unimaginable, and perhaps this is the only practical
method available for understanding specific
urban artifacts whose historical aspect is predominant.
() The second point of view sees history as
the study of the actual formation and structure of
urban artifacts. It is complementary to the first and
directly concerns not only the real structure of the
city but also the idea that the city is a synthesis

of a series of values. Thus it concerns the collective

imagination. Clearly the first and second
approaches are intimately linked, so much so that
the facts they uncover may at times be confounded
with each other (Rossi, 1984, pp. 127128).
Historical places can also become symbolic.
Urban environments contain not just meanings
and values but also symbols which are the fields
of investigation of semiotics.
The sensory quality of a place consists of all the
elements that can be perceived by the senses: smell
and noise, but also sensations of touch, sight and
taste. All of these, both individually and in their
overall perception, can influence our feelings,
actions, general well-being, and our appraisal of what surrounds us. The perception of the
city can
be separate or partial and combined with other
feelings: the overall image is the union of all stimuli.
Place, unlike space, is described by
objects which transmit specific cultural, historical or
socially meaningful values which are different for
each individual. As mentioned above, the dimension
of a place is related to the way in which people
live it. And the dimension can change following the
measure that derives from the description of the
events that can be played out.
Place in the psychological sense sees an active and
central subject to its environment. The relationships
established between the observer and place
are reciprocal: a place can affect the person, his/her
values and actions in the same way that the
intentions of the person and his/her actions can
attribute meaning to a place.
Extending the concept of place to a broader
context, Castells (1989) refers to the place of flows
as a real or virtual entity, which also includes
electronic interconnections, where many temporalities,
as well as many simultaneities which
become a-temporal are allowed. With new technologies
(Sepe, 2010), space is downsized to zero
and, recreated in a virtual dimension, no longer
constitutes an obstacle. These relationships are
defined by Castells with the term cyberspace or
virtual space, and are described by means of spatial
language such as information highways, sites
and squares.
The increasing loss of meaning of place as a
recipient of social customs, historical memories
and symbolic contents has led to the emergence of

places with provisional uses, linked to a contemporaneity

that cares more about satisfying immediate
consumption than sedimenting traces of
culture (Arefi, 1999). If as Aug (1995, p. 63)
states a place can be defined as relational,
historical and concerned with identity, then a
space which cannot be defined as relational, or
historical, or concerned with identity will be a nonplace.
The word non-place identifies two different
aspects of the reality: spaces created in relation to
sites used for transport, transit, commerce or leisure,
and the relation between people and those
spaces. Non-places are the real measure of our
time; one that could be quantified with the aid of
a few conversions between area, volume and distance
by totalling all the air, rail and motorways
routes, the mobile cabins called means of transport
(aircraft, trains and road vehicles), the airports
and airway stations, hotel chains, leisure
parks, large retail outlets, and finally the complex
skein of cable and wireless networks that mobilize
extraterrestrial space for the purposes of a communication
so peculiar that it often puts the individual
in contact only with another image of himself
(Aug, 1995, p. 64).
Thus
identity is founded both in the individual person
or object and in the culture to which they belong. It
is not static and unchangeable, but varies as
circumstances and attitudes change; and it is not
uniform and undifferentiated, but has several
components and forms.
for us, place identity is the set of
meanings associated with any particular cultural
landscape which any particular person or group of
people draws on in the construction of their own
personal or social identities.
Place identity can also be related
to the concept of authenticity that Southworth and
Ruggeri define as the quality of a place being
unique, distinctive, and rooted in the local. Geographer
Edward Relph describes authentic places as
being generated unselfconsciously and without theoretical
pretense by individuals working alone or in
small community groups over long spans of time.
The end result is places which fit their context and
are in accord with the intentions of those who
created them, yet have a distinct and profound
identity that results from the total involvement of a
unique group of place-makers with a particular
setting (Relph, 1976, p.68). Ancient Italian hill
towns and preindustrial English villages epitomize

these qualities (Southworth and Ruggeri, 2010).

The close link that interrelates place identity
with the history of a place is identified by Lo
Piccolo. Accordingly, the first definition which we
can attribute to urban identity is that related to
physical aspects of the city, making urban identity coincide with historical identity which is
elaborated
through continuous stratifications.
each territorialization
cycle is a cultural event affecting the same inherited
environment, realizing, reifying and structuring
in the territory specific differentiated forms of
settlements in the complex universe of potential
and random outcomes, but always shaping the
process as the result of a symbiosis between
human and natural elements. Place identity is
therefore the product of a continuous evolutionary
process. It is not a static image of its state, but is
rather the result of concrete development over
time. This is due to the fact that identity is the
outcome of the relationships established between
people and their environments. By making their
mark on a regions cultural heritage, they have
made every regional context unique and different.
The uniqueness of places, area identity and the
stratifications of history cannot be represented
without running the risk of abstraction and crystallization,
of the extraneousness of the product with
the space-time context. Area identity can only be
shown and communicated through the history
which has shaped it, requiring continuous interpretative
mediation (Carta, 1999, p. 151).8
In continuity with this assertion, place identity
assumes significance also in relation to its public
meaning which in turn influences and stimulates citizen participation.
As was pointed out by Montgomery (1998,
p. 100), it is possible distinguish between identity,
what a place is actually like, and image, a
combination of the identity with perception of the
place by the individual with their own set of
feelings about, and impressions of, it.
Stabilitas loci is a
necessary condition for human life. How then is
the stability compatible with the dynamics of
change? First of all we may point out that any
place ought to have the capacity of receiving
different contents, naturally within certain limits.
A place which is only fitted for one particular
purpose would soon become useless. Secondly it
is evident that a place may be interpreted in

different ways. To protect and conserve the genius

loci in fact means to concretize its essence in ever
new historical contexts.
According to Lo Piccolo (1995, p. 15), identity
can be interpreted in its relationship between
civitas and urbs, through which the social nature of
the architecture and public spaces, concrete and
symbolic expressions of the city, may be recognized.
In other words, it is the way in which the
city, as a set of citizens, is able to express its own
character through its physical forms, in the present
historical moment, showing the relationship of
mutual belonging between inhabitants and places
within the respective cultural context, both present
and past. ()
p 10 TERITORIALISATION
Indeed, in order for identity
to be captured, it needs to establish a deep
engagement with place and local life in order to affect its natural evolution
Maintaining a gradient of identity is a much more
complex endeavour, as it cannot rely purely on the
maintenance of an original form. It must include
considerations of the social, economic and cultural
processes needed to successfully manage the evolution
of the cities and neighbourhoods we design,
allowing them to change and adapt to future
conditions, while maintaining their essence. Only
this can insure that the place identity resulting
from our designs will be stronger, more imageable,
and ultimately more sustainable (Southworth and
Ruggeri, 2010).
Finally, based on these interpretations, the role
of identity should be understood within the project
of transforming the city, assessing the potential of
design and planning tools as regards urban identity,
and integrating them (Neil, 2004).

Place Attachment and Social Communities

in the Concept of Smart Cities
Territorial identity and place attachment are prominent examples of so called soft
factors in smart cities. They are very fragile mental structures which cannot be bought,
emulated or stealt, but they are significantly contributing to the effectiveness of functioning
of any social system based in certain territory.
Although place attachment and processes of identification with place/territory are
growing up from certain given predispositions, they are dynamic phenomena which
should be effectively fostered and further developed. Every concept of place attachment

requires a precise work within the community, its effective transmission to all the
members as well as to outward environment. Direct participation of the inhabitants in
this process is very important. The inhabitants are key players in this process they are
both creators of the place identity and also are the key target group in the process of its
acceptation and evaluation. In order to ensure the highest quality and effectiveness of
the process, it is necessary to approach the place in an interdisciplinary manner and
with maximum emphasis on mutual functional and value compatibility of individual
participants and the measures proposed. One of the most important conditions is
authenticity of the concept.
A very important category in terms of place identity and place attachment is an
image of the place. Image is an abstract mental construction representing the subject in
minds of audience. Positive image of a place/city means its goodwill, its good reputation
or positive emotion appearing by thinking about the subject. The image is also
the degree of affinity to subject manifested by significant groups of perceivers. Image in
the city with significant presence of urban gardening structures goes far beyond pure
visual appearance of green structures: it encapsulate also the values of solidarity,
fairness, justice and advanced sense for quality of life.