The Placemaker's Guide to Building Community

Reviews / Votes

'Essential reading for effectively dealing with the challenges of urban poverty reduction by learning from a wealth of global experience.' - Mohamed El Sioufi, Head of the Shelter Branch, UN-HABITAT

'Nabeel Hamdi is a humane visionary who never forgets that it is the people, not the experts, who must have the loudest voices in the building of communities. This important book distils the work of a lifetime spent making the world a better place.' -Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project, UK

'Hamdi again sets new benchmarks for his simplicity in approach, yet profundity in the underlying principles of participatory planning. Essential reading for anyone who thought they already knew everything about planning with communities.' -Manu Gupta, Director SEEDS, Chairperson, Asian Disaster Reduction & Response Network

'A must read for anyone who has a vested interest in the process of placemaking through participatory planning ... It provides through example the methods and tools for creating partnerships through participatory planning as agents of change.'- Professor Emeritus W. Mike Martin, University of California Berkeley, USA

'Based on Hamdi's extensive fieldwork in India, sir Lanka, Ecuador, Peru, South Africa and Thailand, this book will motivate development planners, Architects, and community organizers to not only learn from but also enjoy the uncertainties of the development process.' -Bish Sanyal, Ford International Professor of Urban Development and Planning and Director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

'Filled with the coherent contradictions we never learned in design studio - 'scaling down to scale up - work backward to move forward'. Hamdi takes the reader on a transit walk through the reality of the bottom billion of the economic pyramid. It is this process of being present and attentive to the vision of the community that enables the best development workers to participate fully in the process of community based design in spite of our experience.' - Steven Weir, VP Global Program Development, Habitat for Humanity International, USA

'Overall, this easy-to-read book with a narrative style provides practical tools for urban designers, planners, architects, and other built-environment specialists. With this book, readers will be well equipped with practical techniques to understand the multifaceted dimensions of placemaking and provided with knowledge of many cases, from both global North and South, where different aspects of urban development and design have been realized worldwide.' -Mohammed Radfar, Northumbria University, Urban Research and Practice

'The Placemaker's Guide is an enjoyable and thought provoking read. It proposes a brave new world where people's problems, needs and aspirations form the framework for design solutions.' - Jane Manning, Urban Design Group Journal

'In a book that is a compilation of his life's work and experiences, Nabeel Hamdi challenges the reader to rethink what constitutes place, who serves as the placemaker, how one creates place, and whether the lessons of the past can enable us to create sustainable and adaptable communities that nurture and are nurtured by the residents who inhabit them.' - Nina P. David, Journalof Planning Education and Research