What is Placemaking, Anyway?
See you at Place Summit and Pack Rat Pint Night 2025
So, what is placemaking?
At its heart, placemaking is a collaborative, people-centered approach to shaping the spaces we live and work in. It’s about design, infrastructure and mobility; it’s also about fostering connections, civic pride, and a true sense of belonging. By bringing community voices into the process, placemaking turns ordinary spaces into destinations that are vibrant, sustainable, accessible, and memorable. These are the places you want to live, work, and enjoy in your free time!
The Ramble in Fayetteville has an outdoor classroom leading down to the creek that serves that purpose most of the time, and during floods serves as a mechanism for floodplain protection. It even has WiFi!
Here in Northwest Arkansas, we are at a crossroads. We have the chance to choose what we prioritize-- and to shape a future that honors our love of place, protects our water, and builds communities that are strong, connected, and resilient.
The Ramble in Fayetteville along the Razorback Greenway.
Every day, land use professionals and planners in Northwest Arkansas are shaping our future. The same geology that makes the Ozarks magical-- karst fractures beneath our feet, underground rivers and caves, spring-fed creeks-- also leaves our soils vulnerable to erosion and flooding. As growth accelerates, each decision about where and how we build carries lasting consequences.
The most successful landscapes don’t force a choice between concrete and nature-based solutions. They weave the two together-- balancing engineered systems with native plants and ecological design. That balance creates communities that are not only resilient, but also deeply human: places with diverse textures and soundscapes, cool spots to rest and play, lively spaces to work, and reasons to interact with our neighbors. These connections build love and trust, making it easier to talk through challenges, share struggles, and support one another when times are tough.
That is the spirit of Place Summit.
It’s our chance to spotlight what’s working, talk about what isn’t, and share across disciplines to create better places. Conversations will center on housing, transportation, art, technology, and resilience. IRWP is proud to co-chair the Summit alongside our partners at the Urban Land Institute of Northwest Arkansas.
At Place Summit, land use professionals, elected officials, planners, designers, conservationists, and community leaders come together to ask the big questions: How do we provide housing while also building wastewater infrastructure and protecting downstream neighbors from flooding? How do we design in ways that connect people to workplaces, to nature, and to each other? How do we integrate artists and weave culture enthusiasts and ecologists into the process of creating great places?
This year’s program brings those questions to life.
Build a cohort at a workshop with the Environmental Law Institute, Ozark Underground Lab, and Watershed Conservation Resource Center as we explore the “social and physical landscapes” of nature-based solutions with a case-study driven workshop. Step outside for a floodplain tour at The River Commons, a protected site where resilient planning is already at work.
Sessions dig into planning for growth, housing, transportation, stormwater, and wastewater. We’ll open with a panel on Placemaking for Quality of Life, which will highlight our Conservation-Based Recreation Master Plan. You’ll hear from the U.S. Green Building Council on real estate investment and resilience, and take part in a hands-on design charrette downtown, tracing the path of water through Fayetteville and imagining solutions in real time, or learn more about active transportation on a bike tour. Additional workshops, including one focused on wastewater, round out the program.
And because placemaking is also about culture, community, and celebration, your ticket to Place Summit includes entry to Pack Rat Pint Night on November 12, a gathering that channels some of Fayetteville’s best placemaking energy while supporting IRWP!
At its core, Place Summit is also about stewardship.
IRWP Community Tree Giveaway
Places only come alive through the people who inhabit them-- and people choose to settle here because of the beauty and clean water that define the Ozarks. As management chair, IRWP is proud to partner with ULI Northwest Arkansas to lift up the people and projects shaping our shared future.
So close your eyes and picture the place you go to connect with nature: maybe a quiet creek crossing, a trail shaded by oaks, or a hillside where you can see for miles. Now, think about the last time you drove through a city like Los Angeles or Houston. Those places have their own vibrancy, but they also reveal the costs of rapid growth: flood-prone pavement, endless subdivisions, and roadways that keep people apart. We imagine somewhere in the middle is where we need to be.
By Morgan Keeling, morgan@irwp.org
https://placesummit.uli.org/
For those not attending Place Summit… https://packratoc.com/products/pint-night-4-november-12
Monarch Butterfly at Turnbow Park in Downtown Springdale.
