Generating Social Sustainability Through Placemaking: A Study of Everyday Lived Space in Basha Miao Settlement

This paper explores the role of placemaking in the process of creating social sustainability through the everyday practice of minority ethnic communities in Guizhou. With the rapid development in recent decades, the physical and cultural landscape of traditional communities in Guizhou faces homogenisation and fragmentation problems. From the perspective of everyday life, resonating with Bruno Latour and Henri Lefebvre, this paper examines how social sustainability is generated through the relationships among locals, their practices and the living environment. This study will take the Basha Miao settlement as the case study, investigate the changes in physical spaces and social lives in the village, examine various ways of placemaking and its process, by mapping the practices, the sites and the social networks in the process of placemaking. This study shows how peoples’ everyday life practices (re)produce, (trans)form and (re)configure their public space in Basha, with methods of literature review, fieldwork, spatial analysing, and interviews. Through creating space in everyday life practice, multiple participants integrate local knowledge-like culture and collective memories and needs into shared places.