What is it?
This Must Be The Place is a resource for placemakers seeking opportunity in between and adjacent to easily defined fields like city planning, architecture, and urban design.
It is a bi-monthly newsletter sharing opportunities for placemaking professionals. Opportunities can include, but aren’t limited to, jobs, internships, fellowships, calls for art and publication, and grants. The hope is that it helps everyone from students to emerging and mid-career professionals, as well as experienced leaders to connect with others, strengthen relationships and further legitimize the field of placemaking.
Who is it for?
The newsletter is for people seeking opportunities in fields at the intersection of place management, city planning, architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, geography, community economic development, public policy, arts and cultural resource management, historic preservation, public health, social and environmental justice and sustainability.
It's for people with diverse educational and professional backgrounds who bring a lot to the table, but whose skills are not easily distilled into search terms on traditional job boards. Importantly, it’s also for people who want to hire those people.
How does it work?
The newsletter shares listings from the public domain and direct submission, including those for employment, internships, fellowships, calls for art, and RFP/Qs. Read more about submitting a listing here.
Some thoughts on the term placemaking
My relationship to the term placemaking is constantly evolving. I’m using it here for the sake of a (relatively) common understanding of the term in reference to the creation and management of public space. I believe that placemaking goes beyond branding and beautification and includes all types of place-based work from mutual aid and restorative justice to trauma-informed planning and community development.
To some, placemaking connotes gentrification (displacement), white washing and the privatization of public space. If the collective of people working in and around this industry agree on a more inclusive term, I’m happy to evolve with the field.
For now, Project for Public Spaces’ definition of placemaking as a participatory process for shaping public space that harnesses the ideas and assets of the people who use it, is a good starting point. Roberto Bedoya coined the terms place-keeping and place-knowing, both of which deepened my understanding of place-based community work.