Community initiated placemaking provides benefits for both communities and planning practice, however, barriers challenging the projects still exist. This research investigates the barriers, how they impact projects, and considers how they can be overcome. Assisting in filling a gap in the current field of study, this research is based in a London context, investigating a range of project types and exploring barriers from both the placemakers and local planning authority perspectives. Using a qualitative research strategy, semistructured interviews collected data from three community placemakers and one council officer. The data was thematically analysed generating four themes and nine sub-themes and developed into a framework synthesising the barriers. The framework demonstrates that common barriers involve resources, systems and processes, project team or people networks. These barriers have a multitude of negative impacts on the community placemaking projects and participants, threatening the projects' longevity and sustainability. Therefore, there are areas for improvement in planning and placemaking practice upon which recommendations have been made. The framework developed from this research can guide placemakers to understand the barriers they may encounter and can be adapted for future research.

Hong Kong, along with other neoliberal, capitalist cities around the world, is experiencing a growing trend towards commercialisation in heritage revitalisation. On the other hand, there is advocacy for democratising urban planning where placemaking that aimed to foster a sense of place and community cohesion have arisen. In the dominant literature, there is a prevalent division on top-down and bottom-up approaches of placemaking. Contrary to the original intent of placemaking, the former is interpreted as an entrepreneurial strategy that employs heritage revitalisation as a branding tool and primarily seeks economic growth. The latter establishes place identity and heritage value. Critiquing on the binary concept of placemaking, this paper analyses how an in-between form of collaborative placemaking is used to facilitate the delivery of community values in a seemingly top-down revitalization initiated by the government and the Urban Renewal Authority (URA). This study focuses on the case of Central Market (CM) revitalisation project. It addresses the gap of collaborative placemaking by examining the power dynamics and participation of actors involved, the three manifestations of placemaking (tangible, intangible and mixed), and cross-evaluating the social and economic dimensions. While the case demonstrates an effort to deliver community value through authentic place attachment and cultural memories, which distinguishes it from previous URA-led revitalisation projects, it is concluded that the case study is not unique. This form of placemaking is found to be transferrable across large-scale revitalisation projects in Hong Kong as organisational intervention sets the scene by providing necessary landscapes and builtscapes, that should be combined with mindscapes and storyscapes to serve people. It is argued that recurring efforts and appropriate partnership are essential to deliver a sustainable outcome oriented towards genuine benefits for the public.