Public space in the shadow of COVID-19: placemaking for spatial justice in Geelong’s ‘disadvantaged’ neighbourhoods

ABSTRACT

Drawing on empirical data from a regional Australian city, this paper investigates how public space is implicated in locational disadvantage, how COVID-19 is impacting inequality, and how placemaking can best serve “disadvantaged” communities. To explore public space’s role during COVID-19, we assessed public open space coverage in three “disadvantaged” Geelong suburbs, interviewed local community workers, and analysed survey data from resident input to a local placemaking project. Findings revealed both quantitative and qualitative shortfalls in local public spaces; that COVID-19 amplified existing inequalities; that public space shortfalls compounded pandemic stressors; and that these shortfalls should be remedied via community-driven placemaking. Findings also yielded common themes linking place stigma, inequality, and place attachment, and underscoring how placemaking can reinforce or challenge existing disparities. We developed a holistic Framework illustrating the dynamic interplay of five important factors that emerged across our data: locational disadvantage, public space, place stigma, place attachment, and placemaking. Illuminating how place-makers might harness these dynamics to advance social goods and minimise social harms, our Framework seeks to support more “spatially just” placemaking. Amidst rising inequality, we argue that a renewed focus on the spatial dimensions of justice will strengthen placemaking’s potential to mitigate the locational aspects of disadvantage.

KEYWORDS:

• Public space
• locational disadvantage
• place stigma
• place attachment
• placemaking
• spatial justice

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a renewed critical focus on the role, uses, and quality of public space. Human movement ground to a near-halt in March 2020 as governments closed borders and imposed health measures to contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Around the world, everyday urban geographies have been reconfigured by an evolving pattern of lockdowns, mobility restrictions, and social distancing rules, and by ensuing waves of vaccine rollouts, civil unrest, and new variant outbreaks. Over 2020–2021 many cities became virtual ghost towns, with businesses closed and residents confined to their homes and neighbourhoods. The resulting “hyperlocalisation” of daily experience underlined the importance of local public spaces as a vital fulcrum for quality of life (Grima et al. 2020; Jasiński 2020).

Scholars in urban studies and related fields are exploring COVID-19’s multifaceted socio-spatial implications, including its role in heightening spatial inequalities (Bonomi Bezzo et al. 2021; Campbell et al. 2021); its ramifications for public space (Cabrera-Barona, Gaona, and Carrión 2023; Honey-Rosés et al. 2021), human – place relationships (Bissell 2021; Counted, Cowden, and Ramkissoon 2021), neighbourhood environments, health, and wellbeing (Mouratidis 2021; Poortinga et al. 2021), and housing and planning policy (Swapan et al. 2023); and the use of placemaking as both creative response and policy solution (Edensor and Mundell 2021; Herman and Drozda 2021).

This research centres on three intersecting questions: how public space is implicated in disadvantage, how COVID-19 has amplified inequalities, and how placemaking can best serve the needs of “disadvantaged” communities. It addresses a gap in the literature by tracing some underexplored connections between public space, spatial inequality, and the dynamics of “locational disadvantage,” or the geographic clustering of disadvantage (Cheshire et al. 2014). Our study is empirically and temporally grounded in a global crisis with profound and highly unequal local effects. Characterising COVID-19 as a “transformative stressor”– a rare event with intense and widespread socioeconomic impacts – Matthews (2020) notes how such profound shocks can offer valuable lessons by exposing systemic problems and catalysing new approaches for addressing them. In this spirit, our paper examines the role of public space during the pandemic to draw out some broader lessons about placemaking in “disadvantaged” areas, where poorly conceived interventions can amplify existing socio-spatial inequalities.

Specifically, we employ a multidisciplinary approach to explore the complexities of “spatially just placemaking” in disadvantaged communities. To gain empirical insights, we synthesised data from three connected studies across neighbouring communities in “disadvantaged” suburbs of Geelong, a regional Australian city. We first conducted: 1) a quantitative analysis of public open space coverage locally, which revealed a substantial quantitative under-provision in these suburbs. This finding informed: 2) interviews and a focus group with local community service providers, which revealed how the pandemic exposed qualitative shortfalls in local public spaces, and highlighted how public space is implicated in locational disadvantage. To explore how to best address these shortfalls, we subsequently analysed: 3) survey data from an upcoming placemaking project, which articulated residents’ relationships to a local public space, illuminated the role of place stigma and place attachment, and revealed how placemaking can best serve the community’s needs.

Our findings revealed key themes explicating how place stigma is intertwined with locational disadvantage, and how placemaking approaches – whether driven by corporate/top-down interests, or by genuine community needs – can contribute to or challenge existing inequities. Building on existing theoretical work and a synthesis of our key themes, we develop a new Framework that proposes directional relationships between five key factors, and illuminates how they interact holistically: locational disadvantage, public space, place stigma, place attachment, and placemaking.

Centred on the question of equitable access to high-quality public space, our “Framework for Spatially Just Placemaking” (Figure 2) makes a novel contribution by articulating some underexplored connections between a set of interlinked phenomena that have significant real-world impacts on local communities. Underpinned by the goal of reinforcing social goods and diminishing social harms, our Framework presents a holistic schema to support more equitable, effective, and context-sensitive placemaking. By addressing a gap in existing theoretical models, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the spatial dimensions of justice and sheds new light on placemaking’s potential to mitigate the locational aspects of disadvantage.

Five key concepts: towards a framework linking public space, locational disadvantage, place stigma, place attachment, and placemaking

As a conceptual contribution, this paper draws on literature from urban studies, human geography, environmental psychology, sociology, health and planning to articulate some under-explored connections between five key concepts: public space, locational disadvantage, place stigma, place attachment, and placemaking.

While previous scholarship has explored how these five factors interrelate in pairs or trios, no existing conceptual model broaches how they might interact more synchronously to elicit real-world outcomes. Collectively, this prior work offers valuable insights to inform more equitable placemaking approaches. However, without a unifying framework bringing all five concepts together into active dialogue, the picture remains incomplete and the potential benefits underexplored.

This study considers these five factors more holistically, asking how they might influence each other to the detriment or benefit of “disadvantaged” communities. The Framework we develop promotes a sharpened focus on these systemic relationships, including the role of place stigma and place attachment.

Public space as mediator: social goods, social harms, and locational disadvantage

Our analysis foregrounds public space as a crucial fulcrum for community wellbeing and an important mediator of locational disadvantage. While “public space” ostensibly describes areas accessible to everyone, this definition is more idealistic than accurate (Carmona 2015). It commonly denotes publicly owned areas such as parks, playgrounds, streets, sports fields, and beaches. However, it can also encompass “quasi-public” (Pratt 2017) or privately owned and managed public spaces (Kayden 2000; Leclercq and Pojani 2023), and other “third spaces” (Oldenberg 1989) of social encounter: shopping malls, gyms, cafes, libraries, schoolyards, community centres, etcetera. We embrace this broader definition.

Public spaces both constitute and cultivate social goods. Access to high-quality public spaces fosters interactions between diverse individuals, strengthening social capital and sense of community (Francis et al. 2012; Talen 2000). “Third places/spaces” support social connection, belonging, and wellbeing (Finlay et al. 2019), while nearby green space is linked to better physical and mental health (Barton and Rogerson 2017), decreased loneliness (Astell-Burt et al. 2022) and lower mortality (Villeneuve et al. 2012).

The flipside of these benefits is evidenced in scholarship examining how public space is entangled with inequality, including recent work focused on COVID-19. While shared outdoor spaces enabled both physical distancing and social connection during lockdowns, the pandemic has also exposed spatial inequities (Bower et al. 2021; Bustamante et al. 2022), including public space shortfalls in “disadvantaged” areas (Mell and Whitten 2021; Reinwald et al. 2021).

Extending this work, our study examines how a several key factors relating to public space may interact dynamically to mitigate or reinforce locational disadvantage. Our focus on locational disadvantage highlights the multifaceted ways in which inequalities are reproduced – discursively, statistically, and spatially. Cheshire et al. (2014) distinguish between two overlapping types of locational disadvantage: 1. “Places where disadvantaged people live” (areas with high unemployment, poverty, etcetera); and 2. “Places that may disadvantage people,” whereby the characteristics of the place itself can disadvantage residents. For example, a suburb with polluted air, insufficient amenities, or inadequate public spaces can inflict social harms through ill health, food insecurity, or social isolation.

A symbiotic trio: locational disadvantage, place stigma, public space

Place stigma ascribes a negative reputation to an area, symbolically discrediting both the place and its inhabitants. Drawing on Goffman’s (1963) and Bourdieu’s (1993) work, Wacquant (2007) coined the concept of “territorial stigmatization” to describe how representations of poor or racialised communities contribute to their marginalisation. Primarily imposed by outsiders, this “spatial taint” (Wacquant, Slater, and Pereira 2014) typically targets neighbourhoods with high rates of poverty, non-white residents, public housing, and/or substandard public spaces (Birdsall-Jones 2012; Keene and Padilla 2014).

In turn, place stigma can harm communities, obscuring their strengths, eroding self-confidence, limiting opportunities, abrading social ties, heightening stress, undermining collective action, catalysing disinvestment, and compounding inequality (Halliday et al. 2020; Pearce 2012; Warr 2005b). Place stigma can also be internalised as shame, guilt, or low self-value (Paton, McCall, and Mooney 2017), or reproduced as “intra-neighbourhood stigma,” fuelling internal divisions (Flanagan, Verdouw, and Habibis 2017). During COVID-19 lockdowns, place stigma also saw some “disadvantaged” communities subjected to disproportionately punitive policy responses (Martino, Mansour, and Bentley 2023, 9).

From this prior work, we can discern a symbiotic relationship between place stigma, inadequate public spaces, and locational disadvantage, each mutually reinforcing the other to the detriment of resident communities.

Inequality and stigmatised places: “corporate” vs. community-driven placemaking

Two relevant strands of work explore the interplay between place (or territorial/spatial) stigma and inequality. The first critiques the co-option of place stigma to legitimise harmful policy interventions; Paton et al. (2017) highlight how neoliberal “urban regeneration” policies leverage place stigma to devalue, control, and displace disadvantaged communities (see also Sisson 2022; Wacquant 2014). The second investigates how communities resist or challenge place stigma – for example by generating digital content (Rogers, Darcy, and Arthurson 2017), counternarratives (Garbin and Millington 2012), or alternate media portrayals (Halliday et al. 2020), or via participatory arts projects (Warr, Taylor, and Jacobs 2021), garden tourism (Hohle 2022), activism (Fabian et al. 2020), or squatters’ movements (Maestri 2019).

Placemaking is implicated in this stigma scholarship, albeit seldom overtly (for a rare intervention targeting place stigma, see (Forester 2022, 191–213). Placemaking approaches can range from “bottom-up”– community-driven, informal, activist, vernacular, or guerrilla practices – to more “top-down” interventions, driven and funded by corporate and/or government interests, with resident communities granted varying input and control. Where placemaking is understood as “a set of social, political and material processes by which people iteratively create and recreate the experienced geographies in which they live” (Pierce, Martin, and Murphy 2011, 54), it implicitly centres resident agency. In contrast, what we might term “corporate placemaking” tends to slyly deprioritise or actively impede resident agency in pursuit of neoliberal goals such as urban branding, tourism, or gentrification. Such approaches have been rightly critiqued as elitist, exclusionary, and punitive, serving to reinforce racialised, socioeconomic, and spatial injustices (Fincher, Pardy, and Shaw 2016; Moran and Berbary 2021).

These debates have kindled growing critical consensus for more equitable placemaking approaches that are genuinely community-driven, sustainable, attuned to structural inequalities, and committed to prioritising residents’ agency and empowerment, along with cogent work exploring how best to achieve these goals (see Courage 2020; Forester 2022; Ghavampour and Vale 2019; Toolis 2017).

Place attachment: an overlooked placemaking tool?

Given that placemaking emphasises the goal of “strengthening the connection between people and the places they share” (Project for Public Spaces 2016), the salient concept of place attachment remains surprisingly underexplored in the attendant literature, with notable exceptions (see below). Originating in environmental psychology, place attachment describes the multifaceted bonds that people form with places over time (Mihaylov and Perkins 2014). Positive place attachment is strongly implicated in multiple social goods, including belonging, social cohesion, neighbourhood ties, resilience, quality of life, social capital, civic engagement, and collective action (Javier 2020; Manzo and Perkins 2006; Mihaylov and Perkins 2014).

Recent place attachment scholarship includes work framing COVID-19 as a source of potentially enduring “place attachment disruptions” and considering how to restore these fragmented bonds (Counted, Cowden, and Ramkissoon 2021). To date, placemaking’s potential to rebuild these damaged place attachments remains little explored.

Mapping systemic forces: joining the dots on five key concepts

These complex socio-spatial phenomena – public space, locational disadvantage, place stigma, place attachment, and placemaking – have clearly amassed their own rich scholarly literatures, including valuable work exploring the interplay between various pairings (see Kirkness and Tijé-Dra 2017; Manzo and Devine-Wright 2021; Moulay et al. 2018; Severcan 2015; Teder 2018; Toolis 2017). But as noted, no conceptual framework has yet explored how they might interact in concert.

Our study targets this gap. Extending prior scholarship and mobilising insights from our empirical work, we develop a holistic Framework (see Figure 2) that proposes some directional relationships between these five interlinked factors and considers how they might interact holistically to produce divergent real-world effects.

Our focus on “disadvantaged” areas carries a cautionary note. While “disadvantaged” is an objective descriptor, it also functions as a pejorative label that discursively reproduces what it seeks to describe. Demographic statistics can also perpetrate what Sisson (2021) elegantly terms “denigration by numbers,” stigmatising neighbourhoods while obscuring the culpability of markets and the neoliberal state in producing inequalities. Some “disadvantaged” communities reject the label outright as patronising, harmful, or inaccurate (Pyett 2002). Alternate terms – “deprived,” “underprivileged,” “disenfranchised” – are likewise framed around deficiency. Applied definitively, these terms can perpetuate inequalities (Cheshire et al. 2014). Noting that viewing communities through a deficit mindset has a distorting effect (Taylor, Buckley, and Hennessy 2017), and that “disadvantaged” communities often harbour significant social capital and community pride (Warr 2005a), we use the term reservedly.

Study context: Geelong’s most “disadvantaged” suburbs during COVID-19

Our study setting provides an expository lens on the pandemic’s unequal impacts. For our focal communities, COVID-19 imposed a barrage of new stressors – prolonged lockdowns, mobility limits, gathering bans, and anxieties around contagion – onto a background of entrenched locational disadvantage.

Corio, Norlane, and Whittington are suburbs of Geelong, a regional Australian city of some quarter-million residents located 75 kilometres from Melbourne, Victoria’s State capital. Respective population and suburb sizes are: Corio 15,500 (19 km²), Norlane 9000 (5 km²), Whittington 4000 (1.5 km²) (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021). All three suburbs have well-established community networks and social assets, including playgroups, schools, youth groups, sports clubs, senior citizens’ clubs, community gardens, churches, and community centres. Corio is home to cultural associations serving Geelong’s Austrian, Croatian, Serbian communities, while Norlane has Maori, Sikh, Filipino, German, and Spanish clubs, a library, Men’s Shed, and urban farm.

Viewed through a deficit lens, these areas have long scored consistently high on official disadvantage measures. The Dropping Off the Edge report ranks Corio–Norlane amongst Australia’s most disadvantaged areas, exhibiting “persistent” and “multilayered” disadvantage (Tanton et al. 2021), while SEIFA (Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas) ranks all three suburbs in the top percentile of Victoria’s most disadvantaged areas (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016). Household incomes, education levels, and digital inclusion in these suburbs are notably below national averages, while poverty, disability, health problems, housing stress, unemployment, and family violence are notably higher. Public transport is limited and vehicle ownership low.

Persistent place stigma surrounds all three suburbs. In a 2000 survey, residents reported that outsiders saw Corio–Norlane as the “Bronx of Geelong” – a ghetto (Warr 2005a, 299). Resident populations skew towards low-paid service sector workers, First Nations residents, single parents, renters, and public housing tenants. Public housing comprises between 21% and 34% of dwellings across these suburbs; the national average is under 3% (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021). Much of this housing is old, run down and overcrowded.

Geelong’s COVID-19 restrictions largely mirrored the stringent public health protections imposed in Melbourne. Extended lockdowns over 2020–2021 saw schools and “non-essential” businesses and services closed, with social distancing and strict stay-at-home orders, and visitors and gatherings banned. All community facilities closed for extended periods. Vaccines were not widely available until July 2021, after data collection concluded.

Methodology

Our analysis draws upon three data sets collected during the “transformative stressor” of COVID-19 (Matthews 2020), when most of Victoria was in lockdown. To assess relative public space provision in our focal suburbs, we first undertook a comparative quantitative analysis of public open space (POS) coverage in Corio, Norlane, and Whittington. Our primary (qualitative) data was gathered through interviews and a focus group with community service staff who work closely with residents in these suburbs. While we planned to interview residents, pandemic restrictions and low digital inclusion rates precluded this. To access residents’ perspectives, we subsequently drew on unpublished survey data from an emergent placemaking project to compile a case study exploring people’s relationships to a local public space.

Together, these three data sets provided a multifaceted lens on the dynamics of locational disadvantage and the role of public spaces in community life during the pandemic’s most intense phase. Drawing on their in-depth knowledge of resident communities, interviewees contributed valuable first-hand observations, historical background, and systemic insights. Gathered by a resident-run organisation shortly after our own data collection concluded, the raw survey data provided invaluable access to residents’ voices and their connections to a local public space.

For a first-pass analysis of each qualitative data set, we used a mix of in vivo coding to discern broad themes and nuances in community members’ voices, concept coding to identify key constructs (e.g. belonging, place stigma, social isolation), and emotion coding (e.g. “scary,” “vibrant”) to capture people’s feelings. We then used pattern coding to distil seven major themes from these two data sets (Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña 2020, 64–83). Synthesising these themes with insights from prior theoretical work, we develop a conceptual Framework to support more “spatially just” placemaking (see Discussion).

Spatial analysis: Public Open Space coverage

To assess relative Public Open Space provision in our focal suburbs, we downloaded Public Open Space (POS) shapefiles from Australian Open Government Data (DELWP VIC 2019), and merged them to the suburbs’ geographical boundary shapefiles from a municipal dataset (City of Greater Geelong 2019). We then calculated areas and coverages for each type of POS in our focal suburbs, surrounding suburbs, and City of Greater Geelong.

Interviews/Focus group: locational disadvantage and public space during COVID

In January 2021 the City of Greater Geelong (CoGG) engaged the researchers to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on communities in Corio, Norlane, and Whittington. In March 2021 we conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews (n = 12) and a subsequent focus group (n = 6) with local community service staff who work closely with residents. Participants included staff from local community centres; health, disability, youth, and employment services; schools; and a church. Recruitment was through email invitation, with interviews conducted by telephone or video, and the focus group convened via video.

Interviews explored residents’ pandemic experiences over the preceding 12-month period (March 2020–March 2021), including factors that supported or impeded community wellbeing. While our discussions were wide-ranging, this paper focuses on findings relevant to locational disadvantage, public space, and placemaking. Data was transcribed and manually coded, with participants de-identified. Following initial analysis, all informants were invited to participate in a subsequent focus group, where the six attendees “member-checked” (Doyle 2007) key interview findings and shared ideas for interventions to address unmet community needs. To ensure direct quotes cannot be linked to individuals, participant numbering has been omitted.

Case study: community connections to Labuan Square

To explore residents’ perspectives on public space, we analysed a second set of qualitative data collected one month later. Made available by CoGG, this unpublished raw data from an emergent placemaking project enabled us to compile a case study exploring residents’ connections to a local public space.

Labuan Square is a neighbourhood shopping centre comprising 20 shopfronts flanking a rectangular public courtyard, with paving, grass, seating, and mature trees. Opened in 1954, Labuan Square thrived until 1973, when a large-scale shopping mall opened nearby, precipitating its decline. By 2020, half the shops were vacant.

In May 2021, CoGG commissioned Norlane Community Initiatives (NCI) to run community consultations to inform a placemaking project (AU$250,000) to revive Labuan Square. A resident-run group with strong neighbourhood links and credibility, NCI has overseen a successful network of local placemaking projects. Spanning 28 days, consultations explored people’s feelings about the square and visions for improving it. Data was collected through online and hard-copy surveys, social media (Facebook and Twitter), and two web forums. Alongside preference-ranking questions, surveys invited free-text responses (“What would encourage you to visit [Labuan Square] more often?” and “Describe your vision for a redeveloped Labuan Square”). NCI (2021) drew on survey responses to produce a report informing the site’s concept design. We conducted a separate analysis of the raw unpublished data, focused primarily on free-text responses.

Study findings: empirical insights captured in seven themes

Spatial analysis: less Public Open Space in disadvantaged suburbs

Figure 1 (below) shows comparative coverage of Public Open Space (POS) in our three focal suburbs. Table 1 (below) presents POS areas by size, type, and percentage of total suburb area for the three suburbs, surrounding suburbs of similar density, and the City of Greater Geelong. While our ensuing findings highlight quality shortfalls in local public spaces, this data reveals a substantial quantitative under-provision of Public Open Space in Corio, Norlane, and Whittington.

Figure 1. Public Open Space (map): Focal suburbs and City of Greater Geelong.

Table 1. Public Open Space provision.

Public Open Space (POS) Types	Focal Suburbs		Surrounding Suburbs (similar density)		City of Greater Geelong
	POS Area (sqm)	POS Coverage (% of suburb)	POS Area (sqm)	POS Coverage (% of suburb)	POS Area (sqm)	POS Coverage (% of suburb)
Conservation, Habitat, Heritage	541,637	2.05%	15,909,932	14.73%	114,202,142	9.99%
Crown Land	45,502	0.17%	5868	0.01%	4,814,783	0.42%
Foreshore, Beach, Ocean	31,4911	1.19%	241,024	0.22%	24,093,582	2.11%
Informal Parks	42,9199	1.62%	1,354,815	1.25%	3,160,395	0.28%
Landscape and Amenity	0	0.00%	123,392	0.11%	218,042	0.02%
Linear and Linkage	29,0133	1.10%	3,165,638	2.93%	4,466,791	0.39%
Possible Future Use	0	0.00%	294,059	0.27%	1,558,480	0.14%
Sport	1,036,971	3.92%	5,233,730	4.85%	15,533,399	1.36%
Undeveloped	0	0.00%	1,016,791	0.94%	1,642,316	0.14%
Utilities and Services	630,638	2.38%	894,223	0.83%	3,228,317	0.28%
Waterway and Lake	517,215	1.95%	954,249	0.88%	6,071,420	0.53%
Total POS	3,806,205	14.38%	29,193,720	27.03%	178,989,667	15.66%
Suburb Area Size	26,475,241		108,020,000		1,142,860,000

Our analysis yielded seven major themes across our two qualitative data sets. Below we present these themes in relation to the methods that brought them to light. This data contributed to the evolution of our Framework by illuminating some important dynamics and directional relationships. Below each theme, we summarise the key insights that informed our Framework (see Figure 2, Discussion section).

Interviews/Focus group: public space and locational disadvantage during COVID

Three key themes emerged from our primary data: COVID-19 exposed a dearth of quality public spaces and a need for local placemaking projects; the pandemic compounded locational disadvantage; and residents must be respected, empowered, and resourced to lead future placemaking initiatives.

Theme 1: “We need gathering spaces:” COVID-19 exposed public space deficits

COVID-19 exposed significant local public space deficits. Lack of foot traffic revealed the dilapidated state of some areas and made already-inhospitable ones more foreboding. Local shopping strips were singled out:

Every second shop is closed or boarded up.

They are covered in graffiti and have boarded-up, shuttered shops.

Informants identified a need for more high-quality, inclusive public places where residents can safely socialise, relax, exercise, and shop:

Create spaces where people can connect and gather.

We need more local facilities … You have to go outside the area to get anything decent, and that is not right.

Suggestions included upgrading green spaces, creating new playgrounds, beautifying streetscapes, and fixing problematic sites:

There are pockets of public space … They could be fenced, have play equipment put in, and be designed as parks.

[Improve] all the environmental areas as much as possible or [find] new ones … Make spaces beautiful and green.

We have a beautiful circular space … It’s public land… That could be upgraded to be a really vibrant community space [with] live music, food and drink, a community market …

Specific groups were identified as spatially underserved:

Key places are needed, especially for youth.

Local Muslims do not have a place… We need to sponsor … groups that don’t have a home.

Beyond aesthetic changes, participants saw public space improvements as an opportunity to strengthen community pride and potentially counteract place stigma:

Investing in the community gives a sense of pride … Change the narrative of the place from being run-down and bereft to give it a better sense of self.

This theme illustrates the mutually reinforcing effects of inadequate public spaces, locational disadvantage, and place stigma. It also shows that our informants valued placemaking as a potential remedy for public space shortfalls.

Theme 2: “What was wrong got wronger:” COVID amplified locational disadvantage

COVID-19 both exposed and amplified locational disadvantage in these communities. As one informant said, “Every pre-existing issue was exacerbated.” For example, barriers to accessing fresh food – limited public transport, few local shops, low vehicle ownership – were compounded by the pandemic:

There are no proper supermarkets in Norlane.

Food, groceries… Just getting all these things within five kilometres was [difficult], especially with no car … People ate poorly.

For some residents, lockdowns highlighted the value of existing green spaces and fostered people–place bonds:

Local parks were really important to mental health.

People reported meeting others in their neighbourhood, so there was more of a connection to place.

However, informants reported significant increases in social isolation, loneliness, stress, and domestic violence. With many valued public spaces closed, the lack of alternatives exacerbated these harms:

Social isolation increased exponentially.

Meeting at the skate park, the local shops, that all shut down … [Young people] were tremendously isolated as they could not see their mates and gather where they usually do.

The pokies [slot machine venues] closing … meant some people got their lives back. But these were also some of the few safe spaces. [available for people]

[Community centre closures] had a real impact … For people experiencing domestic violence, [they] were a safe place to go.

Different inequities reinforced each other. For example, lack of welcoming public spaces amplified lockdown tensions for some public housing tenants:

Homes around here have poor heating and cooling, poor insulation, thin walls. With everyone stuck at home, there was increased capacity for conflict with neighbours.

This theme highlights the self-reinforcing nature of locational disadvantage, whereby existing inequalities fuel destructive feedback loops that elicit further harms; COVID-19 exposed inadequate public spaces as a fulcrum for this compounding effect.

Theme 3: “We’ll fix it!” placemaking projects must empower communities to lead

Informants reported that these communities feel stigmatised, over-consulted, and disempowered, and harbour often-overlooked strengths. They strongly emphasised that residents must be respected, listened to, resourced to generate solutions from within, and granted genuine agency to shape future placemaking initiatives:

We’ll fix it! Everything’s there already. The ideas are there. The people are there. The passion’s there. The only thing missing is the money and the resources.

[We need] more inclusive, citizen-led initiatives…solutions that are inspired at the local level.

Listen to locals, fund them to lead it.

Five neighbours sitting around a barbeque would come up with better ideas than [me], because they know each other, they know the area, what their kids [and] their elderly parents need, what they need themselves.

Participants recalled previous failed attempts to “address disadvantage” locally, including repeated consultations by outsiders that proved problematic, ineffective, or fruitless. This pattern of engagement left a disempowering legacy:

10 years ago there had been 80 consultation processes that all led nowhere.

People are really sick of talking and not being heard … There has to be a real outcome. There’s been a lot of money spent on do-gooders and not a lot to show for it.

Others noted previously successful approaches:

[Residents] became recognised and treated as valued members. Locals were being listened to … [They] were empowered.

We work together. It’s like a dance. Sometimes the community leads and we follow. Sometimes we lead a little bit and they follow … If it takes two months longer because it’s done with [and] alongside the community … the results are incredibly richer and deeper and affect long-term change.

Finally, informants asserted that any future interventions must take a holistic approach, build on existing community strengths, provide local employment opportunities, and be resourced for long-term sustainability:

Long-term planning needs to be more of a priority … something that’s actually sustainable, something that can last and build.

Give people who are disconnected from work a chance to breathe life into those areas and build [their] skills up over the years with a longer-term strategy.

This theme underscores the dangers of “top-down” placemaking, the vital importance of centring resident agency, and the need for holistic approaches.

Case study: re-imagining connections to Labuan Square in the shadow of COVID-19

This case study draws on community input to an emergent placemaking project at Labuan Square, Norlane. We analysed raw data from 179 completed surveys and 381 online comments to explore residents’ connections to, and visions for improving, this local public space. Collected during lockdowns via relatively COVID-safe channels (outdoors/postal/online), this data afforded us valuable access to residents’ perspectives.

From this data set, four key themes emerged: Labuan Square today provoked mixed but predominantly negative feelings; once-strong place attachments had faded as the Square itself declined, coinciding with the emergence of place stigma; residents saw placemaking as a tool to strengthen bonds with place and community; and the community harbours abundant creative ideas, resourcefulness, and a desire to actively participate in placemaking.

Theme 4: loved or unloved? mixed feelings on place

Place attachment was evident in positive feelings expressed about the neighbourhood, local community, and Labuan Square itself:

This area has a lot of potential, I love it here...

...our beautifully diverse community.

I really prefer to shop there, it’s local, easy to park and shopkeepers friendly.

Labuan Square has such a fantastic and loved history that needs to be remembered and celebrated.

However, positive sentiments about Labuan Square were outnumbered by negative impressions, suggesting a dearth of place attachment:

This is a public open space – but presently without a soul.

Washed out and unloved

It doesn’t feel very welcoming. Very cold and grey and industrial.

There’s nothing there and it’s not safe.

Depressing, scary and a place to avoid …

Scummy and abandoned

Bulldozer and start again

This theme highlights the emotional impact of living with substandard public spaces. The mixed responses also signal the mutability of place attachment, and its potential to persist despite perceived shortfalls.

Theme 5: from welcoming to menacing: place decline, broken bonds, and stigma

The loss of previously robust place-bonds emerged strongly, with several respondents expressing sadness over Labuan Square’s corresponding decline:

Its transition into its current state breaks my heart … it was once such a thriving shopping centre that’s been neglected for far too long.

I have no reason or desire to go there anymore… It makes me sad to see that it’s gone this way.

Historically positive sentiments about Labuan Square (fantastic, loved, thriving, safe, friendly, buzzing, bustling, welcoming, fond) contrasted sharply with negative contemporary impressions (unsafe, uninviting, sad, depressing, neglected, scary, menacing, dangerous). For some, loss of place attachment overlapped with awareness of increased place stigma:

My mum grew up in Norlane and has fond memories. It’s not like that anymore …

Labuan Square has a bad reputation and until that’s changed, no one will want to set

up their business [there]

It has become a scary no-man’s-land with few people around and a menacing atmosphere, not the safe and buzzing community heart it was 40 years ago.

It’s a ghetto.

Signs of intra-neighbourhood stigma also emerged, particularly around alcohol use:

It’s a disgrace … people drinking in public, and just loitering around.

It is disgusting filled with junkies and scum.

A dangerous place full of unemployed people looking for trouble.

This theme points to temporal and emotional links between the decline of public spaces, the emergence of place stigma, and eroded place attachment. These findings also signal the compounding harms of place stigma, including social division, diminished belonging, and disinvestment.

Theme 6: cultivating belonging: rebuilding shared bonds with place

A desire to strengthen bonds with place and community was prominent in people’s visions for Labuan Square:

A safe and enjoyable place to connect with the community.

Covid has led to loneliness all over the world, it would be nice to have somewhere to bond with other locals at low to no cost.

I grew up in Norlane in the 90s. “Labbo” was a great place to ride your bike and hang out with friends … It felt safe and had plenty of stores. This sense of security needs to be re-established.

A place of deep connection between people and place. Neighbours do all their shopping there and bump into each other regularly. Kids play in the gardens and pick fruit from the orchard …

Socially inclusive spaces emerged as a strong preference:

A safe and inclusive space for our diverse community.

[Hold] regular community events that are vibrant and inclusive.

Norlane [has] highly educated people, middle class families, Indigenous families, single people, European and Asian migrants, Sikhs and Christians. The space needs to appeal to all residents.

Respondents suggested ideas to foster community pride and belonging, suggesting potential to address place stigma:

With new excited small business owners occupying all the currently vacant and run-down shops, they would take pride in the area and encourage locals [to visit].

A community hub to give teens and families a safe place to be. By making people feel like part of a community they won’t graffiti or dump rubbish.

Bring it back to life. Show the people of Corio and Norlane they can have nice things.

This theme reveals strong community faith in placemaking’s potential to cultivate social goods (belonging, social connection, community spirit, place attachment) and mitigate social harms (place stigma, isolation, exclusion, loneliness).

Theme 7: creative ownership: harnessing local talent, culture, and history

Along with practical suggestions – upgrading amenities, expanding retail options, improving disability access – respondents proposed ideas to enliven the space and bring people together, including Indigenous artworks, heritage installations, native plantings, children’s play areas, live music, outdoor cafes, markets, swap-meets, pet-friendly facilities, and community noticeboards:

A focus on the history [with plaques] dedicated to a local resident who spent their life in Norlane and made it what it was in the 1960s–1990s … An art wall that allows anyone [to] draw …

… an open-age craft group so the young and old can get to know each other.

Community members take ownership for the culture of this place, managing a vibrant community noticeboard of events across Norlane. Buskers queue up to play at this humming venue.

Invite ethnic communities to populate the square with open air stalls … introduce vibrant street markets … develop a community spirit into this historic space.

Respondents pointed to local skills and talents, and expressed eagerness to get involved:

There are lots of artistic, crafty residents and urban farmers that have something to share.

Geelong has some of the best [graffiti] artists!

I would love to help organise the art side of things.

I would love to share and be involved in this.

As this theme illustrates, this “disadvantaged” community harbours significant creativity, agency, social capital, and civic engagement. It also shows that residents want to actively contribute to placemaking.

Discussion

This research addresses three interlinked questions: how public space is implicated in disadvantage, how COVID-19 has amplified inequalities, and how placemaking can best serve the needs of “disadvantaged” communities. As our primary data shows, the “transformative stressor” of the pandemic has revealed how public space deficits and other inequalities (social isolation, place stigma, inadequate housing, substandard amenities) can mutually reinforce each other, compounding locational disadvantage. The survey data afforded deep insights into residents’ evolving place attachments, their placemaking visions, the implications of place stigma, and the role of local public spaces in community life during the pandemic and beyond.

COVID-19’s unequal impacts have prompted a “build back better/fairer” rhetoric, with placemaking recruited to the cause (see Active Oxfordshire 2021; Stott 2021). Here, we reiterate the warnings of both our study participants and fellow scholars about placemaking approaches that fail to centre resident agency. At best, they yield paternalistic, ineffective, hollow results, devoid of the local talent, insight, passion, and creativity that emerged so strongly in our qualitative data. At worst, they provide a smokescreen for neoliberal “placewashing” or “place-masking” (Fincher, Pardy, and Shaw 2016), enabling exclusionary interventions that disrespect, disempower, devalue, and potentially displace local communities. Such approaches will only accelerate pandemic-fuelled inequalities. So how can we avoid “building back worse”?

In response to this challenge, we present a holistic Framework that seeks to support more equitable, inclusive, effective, and context-sensitive placemaking approaches. Centred on the goal of equitable access to quality public space, our Framework for Spatially Just Placemaking (Figure 2, below) recognises both the complexity of factors that play into locational disadvantage, and the imperative to grant “disadvantaged” communities agency in developing solutions. It also responds to recent calls for place-makers to prioritise “intersectional racial, social, and economic justice” (Courage et al. 2020). While neighbourhood-level interventions cannot remedy the structural drivers of disadvantage (Taylor, Buckley, and Hennessy 2017), we argue that adopting a spatial justice lens can support more equitable placemaking, reveal opportunities to tackle the locational aspects of inequality, and help avoid approaches that impose further social harms.

Underpinned by both empirical insights and prior scholarship, the Framework asserts that placemaking should support equitable access to high-quality public spaces. Informed by key themes that emerged from our data, it synthesises disparate theoretical work on five key concepts – public space, locational disadvantage, place stigma, place attachment, and placemaking – considering how they might interact in toto to reinforce or inhibit more equitable outcomes for local communities. We argue that placemaking would benefit from a sharpened focus on these directional relationships, including the oft-overlooked role of place stigma and place attachment. As discussed below, Erin Toolis’ (2017) critical placemaking provides a sound starting point to target more equitable outcomes. To further this goal, we contend that placemaking should be guided by spatial justice principles (see below), particularly where “disadvantaged” communities are involved.

By distributing resources more equitably and empowering residents to co-create public spaces that meet their community’s needs, “spatially just placemaking” actively aspires to mobilise social goods, including sense of belonging, place attachment, health and wellbeing, social connection, and social capital. It also seeks to counteract some of the social harms associated with locational disadvantage – by reducing place stigma and social isolation, for example.

Our Framework (Figure 2) conceives public space as the fulcrum through which these dynamics play out. Placemaking is the lever that can tilt community outcomes either way – toward social goods, or social harms. Critical placemaking, which emphasises resident agency and power relations, modulates which actors control the lever, and to what extent – local communities, place-making practitioners, policymakers, or commercial entities. And spatial justice is a guiding force to nudge that lever in the right direction.

Figure 2. Framework for Spatially Just Placemaking.

Locational dynamics: reinforcing social goods, reducing social harms

Our findings reveal how COVID-19 exposed a dearth of high-quality local public spaces in our “disadvantaged” focal suburbs (Theme 1); in turn, these spatial deficits contributed to multiple social harms (Theme 2), including isolation, mental health issues, food insecurity, conflict, and family violence.

The data also affirms the need to support residents to lead placemaking initiatives, and the capacity of “disadvantaged” communities to generate solutions from within (Themes 3, 7). In addition, findings revealed a multifaceted community understanding of placemaking as a potential tool to mitigate certain social harms (social isolation, inequality, place stigma) and advance social goods (belonging, wellbeing, social connection).

This resonates with Toolis’ (2017) theorisation of “critical placemaking” – an inclusive, plural, and participatory approach that seeks to attend to inequalities, resist oppressive systems, empower residents, transform community narratives, foster dialogue, promote agency and belonging, build social capital, and advance social justice. This study provides empirical support for a more granular take on Toolis’ theorisation. Our Framework (Figure 2) spotlights finer mechanisms by which a more holistic, “spatially just” approach to placemaking can help mitigate locational disadvantage and reinforce various social goods. Conversely, it also helps illustrate how “corporate” or “top-down” placemaking approaches – rooted in neoliberal agendas that suppress resident agency – can reinforce inequality and perpetrate further social harms.

Harnessing place attachment, countering place stigma

This research illuminates how public space is enmeshed with place attachment (generally a social good) and place stigma (typically a social harm) – two phenomena that remain underexplored within placemaking discourse. Our Framework highlights the value of attending more closely to these factors, and how they might mediate locational disadvantage. Our data illustrates how loss of place attachment can elicit or accompany social harms, including place stigma (Themes 4, 5), and how placemaking might be deployed to help repair these rifts. Indeed, respondents understood placemaking as a tool for countering place stigma, mending lost place attachments and fostering new ones, strengthening community ties, and promoting social inclusion (Themes 2, 6, 7).

On this latter goal, Teder (2018) highlights an oft-overlooked consideration: while place attachment can strengthen social bonds, it can also be mobilised to exclude. Drawing on Relph’s (1976) work, Teder advocates that place-makers target the sweet spot between “empathetic insideness” (emotional engagement with place), and “existential insideness” (sense of ownership over it); while both can elicit belonging, ownership can also foment exclusion. This “delicate balance” must be safeguarded, she argues, “in order for public space to remain public” (Teder 2018, 32). This is especially pertinent in “disadvantaged” neighbourhoods, where place stigma can fuel internal divisions (Theme 5).

While place stigma and place attachment can counteract each other, the relationship is not straightforward, as the dotted line connecting them suggests (see Figure 2). Two playfully named Labuan Square businesses – “Ghetto Hair” salon, and tattoo shop “It’s Notorious!” – hint at how place attachment can endure despite place stigma (Kirkness and Tijé-Dra 2017, 4).

Equitable placemaking: applying a spatial justice lens

Our data underlines the imperative to grant residents genuine agency in shaping their public spaces, and the perils of “top-down” placemaking approaches (Theme 3). It also affirms the community’s capacity to generate solutions, evidencing significant local creativity, resourcefulness, social capital, and civic engagement (Theme 7).

Access to quality public space is an issue of spatial justice, defined by Soja (2009) as the fair and equitable geographic distribution of socially valued resources, and opportunities to use them. Our analysis reveals how the public space shortfalls exposed by COVID-19 can reinforce other inequalities, compounding locational disadvantage (Themes 1, 2).

We argue that adopting a spatial justice lens can support placemaking practices that are better attuned to the dynamics of locational disadvantage, including how “places [can] disadvantage people” (Cheshire et al. 2014, 24). Our framing of resident agency as a spatial justice concern echoes practitioners’ insights on challenging place stigma. As Forester (2022, 282–283) argues, placemaking projects that “actively engage residents in shaping local action” enable communities to “construct and voice their own narratives about where they live … challenging the negative discourses that typically dominate portrayals of ‘disadvantaged’ neighbourhoods.” Conversely, elitist and exclusionary approaches that pay mere lip-service to participation create a legacy of disrespect, humiliation, and mistrust.

Conclusion

Employing a multidisciplinary lens, this study proposes a “spatially just” approach for placemaking projects in disadvantaged communities. Empirical insights were gleaned from three interconnected studies conducted across neighbouring communities during the “transformative stressor” of the COVID-19 pandemic: 1) quantitative analysis revealed a significant under-provision of public open space locally; 2) interviews and a focus group with local service providers highlighted the role of public space in locational disadvantage, qualitative shortfalls in local public space provision, and need for resident-driven placemaking projects to remedy this; and 3) survey data from a placemaking project captured residents’ relationships with a local public space, highlighting the role of place attachment and place stigma, and informing how placemaking can best serve their community.

Key findings reveal the entwinement of place stigma with inequality, placemaking’s overlooked capacity to restore place attachments and counteract place stigma, and placemaking’s potential to either reinforce or challenge existing disparities. These insights informed the development of a new Framework proposing directional relationships between locational disadvantage, public space, place stigma, place attachment, and placemaking. The study addresses gaps in existing theoretical models, contributing to a nuanced understanding of spatial justice and seeking to advance placemaking’s capacity to counteract social harms, promote social goods, and mitigate locational inequities for residents of “disadvantaged” communities.

Our findings highlight that while COVID-19’s unequal impacts continue to manifest, place-makers need to consider factors that can mitigate or magnify inequalities. As Cara Courage (2020, 8) argues, “this is the time for placemaking to evolve into a truly equitable practice.” Responding to this rally cry, our model takes inspiration from Toolis’ (2017, 190) vision of communities harnessing placemaking to reclaim public space, and Forester’s (2022, 13) practitioner-focused vision for creating “places of respect and reciprocity, safety and dignity, justice, compassion, and wonder.”

To further these goals, we argue that a renewed focus on the spatial dimensions of justice will strengthen placemaking’s potential to mitigate the locational aspects of disadvantage. Informed by critiques of deficit-based perspectives and animated by the “shock” of COVID-19, our Framework for Spatially Just Placemaking (Figure 2) represents a tool to support more equitable, effective, and context-attuned approaches. Connecting disparate prior scholarship with empirical insights, the Framework clarifies the dynamic interplay of five key factors, casting new light on how place-makers and the communities they collaborate with might harness these dynamics to advance social goods and minimise social harms.

Our main study limitation is that pandemic restrictions prevented us from interviewing residents directly. While our community informants and residents’ survey responses contributed valuable insights, this remains an empirical shortfall. Foregrounding residents’ lived experiences and viewpoints is essential to future research. Our Framework is intended to be broadly applicable, but remains a propositional and partial model, informed by empirical work conducted in a specific milieu. Future research could test its relevance and application in different sociocultural, geographic, and international contexts, assess its potential policy and practice implications, and explore the directional relationships we sketch in greater depth.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the community informants and residents whose generous insights and ideas informed this study; CoGG and NCI for sharing the Labuan Square data; Andreas Pekarek for insightful feedback on drafts; and our three anonymous reviewers for providing valuable suggestions to strengthen this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the City of Greater Geelong [CoGG RM39559].