Sustainable placemaking through the creative industries
As an urban designer, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington PhD candidate Sepideh Afsari understands that creative industries can inspire designers of built environments to incorporate local creative works into buildings and places.
This has the benefit of showcasing local talent and creating focal points for economic investment, tourism, and enhancement of community’s quality of life. However, many creative urban developments have failed to maintain a balance between the needs of creative classes and communities.
“A common justification for creative urban development is that ‘jobs follow people’ and cities need to install infrastructure and amenities that attract and retain creative class workers, such as access to talent, physical premises, and financial structures,” Sepideh says. “However, in practice this kind of development has the potential to displace existing residents and can lead to social and economic exclusion. It is extremely important to find out how creative developments can work with pre-existing characteristics of place and its different dimensions”.
Sepideh is using Wellington’s Te Aro and Miramar suburbs as case studies to examine the impact of creative placemaking on local residents. Te Aro offers organic creative fashion, food, art, and other communities along Cuba Street and in nearby renovated industrial buildings, while Miramar offers the business-orientated film industry hub made famous by Wētā Workshop.
“What is particularly interesting for me is how these creative developments can embrace placemaking approaches that both support creative industries and the quality of life of existing residents.”
As part of her research, Sepideh will undertake stakeholder interviews in these precincts to understand their local arts and narratives, as well as engage with other stakeholders Wellington City Council, Creative New Zealand, mana whenua and Māori creatives, and industry organisations. She stresses that these interviews will span all operations, rather than being confined to cultural or economic departments.
“I am contacting a diverse range of stakeholders. The goal of this is to actively address the concerns of gentrification and social inequity that has been known to permeate creative industry-placemaking research.”
She encourages creative industry stakeholders who operate within the Te Aro or Miramar areas to email her to organise an interview where they can share their insights about their communities and sectors.
Wellington City Council’s new Aho Tini 2030—Arts, Culture & Creativity Strategy is of particular interest to Sepideh in her research. The council adopted the strategy in August 2021, and it defines the council’s role as a funder, partner, facilitator, advocate, and regulator of the creative sector. Through these roles, Sepideh anticipates that the council will play a significant role in creative placemaking, and her research will examine how this role for the council materialises through urban design.
Sepideh’s research is significant as only a handful of academic studies have investigated how creative industries impact Aotearoa New Zealand’s urban development. These previous studies have primarily focused on architectural design and advertising, and not on placemaking or the industries in Te Aro and Miramar or the social impacts that their resident communities experience. Sepideh hopes that her findings will assist stakeholders, policymakers, urban planners, and designers to better encapsulate the needs of existing communities and places while implementing creative city policies.
Sepideh Afsari Bajestani is a PhD candidate in the Wellington Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation under the supervision of Dr Victoria Chanse and Dr Polly Stupples and honorary supervisor Dr. Rebecca Kiddle.
Contact Sepideh to hear more about this research on sepideh.afsaribajestani@vuw.ac.nz.