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Placemaking and the Importance of Vibrant Places

Caio Esteves has written the chapter ‘Placemaking and the Importance of Vibrant Public Places’ in the *Elgar Encyclopedia of City and Place Branding*, published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2025 and edited by Eduardo Oliveira, Efe Sevin and Emma Björner.

There is a reductive version of placemaking that equates it with well-designed public space. Urban infrastructure, new paving, trees. The chapter authored by Caio Esteves in the Elgar Encyclopedia of City and Place Branding rejects this version from the very first line.

The central argument is that a vibrant place is not a beautiful place. It is a place where the three dimensions that constitute it—the hardware (physical and geographical), the software (activities and programming), and the peopleware (identity and culture)—are in productive tension. When these layers align, what the chapter terms ‘vibrancy’ occurs: the quality that makes a space a place, and a place a point of reference.

The post-pandemic era as an accelerator of an age-old issue

The chapter examines the pandemic’s impact on the concept of place, not as an unprecedented rupture, but as an accelerator of two processes already underway: deterritorialisation and dematerialisation. When the streets emptied and public space lost its function as a meeting place, it became clearer just how much the vibrancy of places depends on those who use them, not those who design them. This reversal lies at the heart of the argument.

A global reference encyclopaedia

The Elgar Encyclopedia of City and Place Branding is published by Edward Elgar Publishing, one of the UK’s leading academic publishers in the social sciences. Edited by Eduardo Oliveira (Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, Belgium), Efe Sevin (Towson University, USA) and Emma Björner (University of Gothenburg, Sweden), it brings together contributions from internationally renowned researchers and practitioners in the field of place branding.

Caio Esteves’s inclusion in this volume, as one of the few authors from the Global South, consolidates his position in the international academic debate on strategic placemaking and place branding.

Book details

Chapter title: Placemaking and the Importance of Vibrant Public Places
Author: Caio Esteves
Publication: Elgar Encyclopedia of City and Place Branding
Editors: Eduardo Oliveira, Efe Sevin, Emma Björner
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK / Northampton, MA, USA
Series: Elgar Encyclopedias in the Social Sciences
Year: 2025
ISBN (hardback): 978 1 0353 1963 3
ISBN (e-book): 978 1 0353 1964 0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035319640

composição da marca lugares futuros FAQ

Yes. Caio Esteves has authored the chapter ‘Placemaking and the Importance of Vibrant Public Places’ in the Elgar Encyclopedia of City and Place Branding, published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2025 and edited by Eduardo Oliveira, Efe Sevin and Emma Björner.

The chapter argues that vibrant places are not defined by the quality of physical design, but by the interplay between hardware (physical and geographical characteristics), software (activities and programming) and peopleware (the identity and culture of those who use the place). The text also examines how the pandemic has accelerated processes of deterritorialisation and dematerialisation, making the question even more urgent: what makes a space become a place?

The DOI for the complete volume is https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035319640. The Elgar Encyclopedia of City and Place Branding was published in 2025, with ISBN 978 1 0353 1963 3 (hardback) and 978 1 0353 1964 0 (e-book).

The encyclopaedia was edited by Eduardo Oliveira (Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, Belgium), Efe Sevin (Towson University, USA) and Emma Björner (University of Gothenburg, Sweden), and published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2025.