Framing place creation: exploring professional roles and practices in inclusive urban transformation contexts

Abstract

Urban transformation increasingly involves collaboration among professionals working across different institutional and community-oriented sectors. This article explores how professional role frames shape inclusive place creation, understood as an umbrella concept encompassing the diverse disciplines and practices involved in transforming urban environments. Drawing on role theory and reflective practice, the study conceptualizes roles frames as situated and dynamic orientations through which professionals interpret responsibilities, frame problems, and identify appropriate forms of action. The study adopts a qualitative approach based on two complementary empirical contexts. The first explores a municipal place-design process in Sweden through workshops and semi-structured interviews, while the second draws on semi-structured interviews with community-oriented practitioners from Belgium, Greece, Finland, Sweden, and Portugal. Rather than treating these contexts as equivalent cases, they are compared analytically to explore professional role framing under different institutional and practice conditions. Actor analysis and thematic analysis, informed by a role-frame model developed in the study, were used to explore how norms and values, motivations, training and experience, institutional expectations, and behavioral repertoires contribute to professional role framing. The findings identify seven interconnected role frames. Three frames–director-organizer, explainer-clarifier, and protector-advocate–were particularly prominent in the municipal context, while four– connector-mediator, event planner-host, activator-prototyper, and social entrepreneur-innovator–emerged from the community-oriented practitioners accounts. These frames are not understood as fixed professional or sectoral types, but as situated orientations that may overlap, shift, and become prominent depending on institutional conditions and practice situations. Their juxtaposition reveals potential complementarities between spatial condition, accountability, participation, mediation, and experimentation in place creation. The study contributes a dynamic role-frame perspective and an analytical model for exploring how professional orientations shape problem framing and action, while providing a basis for reflecting on how different role frames may be negotiated and combined in collaborative urban transformation. Seven recurring role frames illuminate professional orientations in place creation. Role frames are situated and dynamic rather than fixed professional or sectoral types. Different role frames become salient under different institutional and practice conditions. Role frames reveal potential complementarities between spatial, regulatory, relational, and experimental practices. The role-frame model links professional orientations to problem framing and action in urban transformation. Seven recurring role frames illuminate professional orientations in place creation. Role frames are situated and dynamic rather than fixed professional or sectoral types. Different role frames become salient under different institutional and practice conditions. Role frames reveal potential complementarities between spatial, regulatory, relational, and experimental practices. The role-frame model links professional orientations to problem framing and action in urban transformation.