Co-design with Super-diversity: Challenges for Placemaking: the Case of Martim Moniz Square in Lisbon

The challenge of creating places that promote place attachment, a sense of belonging and community identity peaks in places of super-diversity. Super-diversity commonly generates a fragmented society due to variegated cultural backgrounds, language and weak social bonds and civic activities. An increasingly wide and plural scenario is a challenge for place attachment. In such super-diverse places, largely due to immigration, new socio-spatial patterns and identities arise, posing a particular challenge for public space design. Placemaking, as a bottom-up and people-centred process of improving the liveability of cities through collaboration and community participation, could counter these challenges. It ideally creates a virtuous cycle in which the community transforms and reshapes spaces. Community engagement and a holistic focus on a sense of place are key components of placemaking, which in turn bears a great potential for empowerment. Moreover, placemaking approaches can potentially contribute to co-creation of physical and social spaces that bring locals and immigrants to interact with each other and to connect to the environment. This co-creation and engagement in a super-diverse context can be fostered through digital and mobile technologies, such as social media. This chapter discusses some of the challenges and opportunities posed to placemaking and place design in super-diverse urban contexts. The question that arises is: How can placemaking benefit from super-diversity to create place attachment and mutual benefits for the communities? As an inspiring discussion, the chapter considers some of the challenges posed by the current redesigning process of Martim Moniz Square in Lisbon – in a super-diverse context and a focus of social tensions.