Belonging as Sense of Place: An Introduction to Placemaking

Places People Change explores neighborhood belonging through three lenses: social cohesion (our trust in neighbors), collective efficacy (our belief that we can shape our future together), and sense of place — our connection to the neighborhood itself. Over the next two episodes, we dig into that final piece, also known as place attachment: the emotional bond and sense of identity that ties people to a place's history, culture, and everyday rhythms. It's about belonging to the neighborhood itself, not just the neighbors in it.Our guest, Ethan Kent, has spent 25 years building that kind of belonging through placemaking — a global, community-driven movement (born from the 1970s Project for Public Spaces) that designs parks, main streets, and public spaces around how people actually want to gather and connect. As executive director of PlacemakingX, which he founded in 2019, Ethan has worked in over a thousand cities across sixty-five countries and helped launch more than thirty regional placemaking networks. Listen in as we talk about designing places for belonging — and making our neighborhoods not just livable, but lovable.