These 20 captivating photos represent some of the places Mashable readers love most in the world.
For our placemaking Instagram contest, we challenged you to share a photo of a public place that is special to you. This place could be anywhere from a cheerful public park that hosts weekly yoga sessions to a waterfront market purveying fresh produce.
One of the key elements of placemaking is transforming or revitalizing a site to create open, public spaces in which community thrives. From Chicago's Cloud Gate (Millennium Park's "Bean") to a pianist in the middle of Central Park, your stunning photos captured immense appreciation and enthusiasm for these public spaces. We were so excited to get more than 750 entries for this contest! (See all the entries here.)
Congratulations to Flo McAfee and dcambaxp, who were selected as our grand prize winners. They will both get to fly to New York City to attend the 2013 Social Good Summit, courtesy of Southwest Airlines. At the Social Good Summit, Susan Silberberg, a lecturer at MIT, will be giving a speech on the concept of placemaking in a talk entitled, "What's Your Place in the World? Building Community in Every City."