Place making for innovation and knowledge-intensive activities: the Australian experience

Making space and place for innovation and knowledge-intensive activities has been an important task for urban administrators in order to foster, attract and retain talent and investment in the age of global knowledge economy. The paper sets out to derive the efficient approaches for practical integration of place making as a multidimensional strategy for the successful and sustainable generation and dissemination of knowledge in contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces. This research embraces a multidimensional conceptual framework to carry out the investigation in three case studies from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane (Australia). As the methodological approach an interview-based qualitative analysis method, by involving a range of key stakeholders, is adopted. The study finds that, considering the challenges these locations are exposed to, the role of place making extends from merely physical aspects to holistic economic, social, cultural, spatial and organisational outcomes. This paper makes a contribution to the literature by generating insights from the Australian knowledge and innovation space context with the application of an innovative multifaceted approach for fruitful place making.