Written by:
Sophia de Sousa
Our April Chat asked, Does practice make perfect in place? We were keen to look back over the past decade or so and explore what has changed in the practice of placemaking, and to look forward at how we might do things differently and better in the future. We asked whether taking more time to reflect and learn from our collective experience, might help us make more consistent and steady improvement to how we do things. Our Chat participants from around the UK and with local, national and international experience, were keen to sink their teeth into the state of placemaking and how the notion of practice sits within it.
Key Themes
The conversation began with exploring the current state of affairs in placemaking, what has led to where we are, and moved onto how we can shift placemaking practice in the future. It was a rich and complex conversation, but some key themes and recommendations emerged. The first was that we have fallen into patterns that are not necessarily conducive to creating great places, and that need challenging. We also spoke about the financial side of placemaking, both in terms of the economic drivers and of both where and how money is spent. This led us to a conversation about the importance of long-term strategic thinking and investment, and the importance of collective action and learning.
Practice Makes Permanent
There was a general feeling in the room that we have fallen into systems and processes in the UK that have become the accepted way of doing things, but that are not necessarily working for the common good. As one of our participants put it, “We are reaping the rewards of decades of individualistic culture.” Another added that land ownership is the “dirty secret” in this country, stressing that we have lost the notion of the commons, of places being in shared ownership, and of shared responsibility. The privatisation of public space and the power yielded by those who own property, along with the British obsession with home ownership, means that we are constantly looking at the elements of our places as assets, rather than as spaces we share.
Local authorities have a role to play in this. As the stewards of our local land and physical assets, they are under enormous pressure to look after these assets, produce new ones (housing in particular), and to deliver a range of services alongside these. Many councils are selling off physical assets to fund services, and while asset transfer to community ownership does happen, it often involves buildings and spaces that the council has found difficult to manage and maintain. As citizens, we have become increasingly either passive recipients or vociferous objectors, rather than collaborators. The third sector has increasingly been expected to fill gaps in the provision of social infrastructure and services, yet is neither sufficiently recognised nor funded for their contribution.
We noted that a lot didn’t seem to be working, and were keen to explore through our conversation how the systems and processes in place have influenced this as well as what it might take to shift culture and practice.
Think About Investment, Not Cost
Our conversation identified that one of the key problems in the way placemaking happens is that the market says that a built solution is the way forward. Large-scale investment by central government in regeneration and development is predominantly in the form of capital funding. As one participant put it, we need to invest in “not just delivering the containers, but how they will be used.”
We also talked about the role of funders more broadly, and the challenges faced by community and voluntary sector organisations doing so much of the community development and social infrastructuring on the ground within places. Not only are these groups constantly competing with each other for limited funding, but they are generally funded for short-term projects rather than core activities and services or the revenue costs required to support staff and overheads. One of our participants working within a community benefit society (CBS) stressed that we as a sector need more “revenue funding with no strings attached”.
There was also much discussion of the importance of investing in the social infrastructure that helps make places where people want to live and where communities can thrive. Schools, libraries, community centers, youth clubs, sports facilities, health and wellbeing services, have systematically been cut over the past decade and more, and as one contributor put it, “We have got into a spiral of scarcity.” We need more investment in not just housing and the physical spaces within our towns and cities, but also the provision of activities and services linked to our social infrastructure.
Think Collectively & Strategically with a Long-term View
We also kept coming back to the importance of a long-term, collective and strategic vision for our places and for placemaking in general. Political and funding cycles, party politics and both professional and community champions moving from one role or one place to another, means that it is difficult to maintain continuity or a shared sense of purpose. While we all felt that collectivism and collective action is the way forward, we recognised that this can only happen if we can create a shared sense of purpose and a long-term strategy that can endure changes to government, cross traditional funding cycles and accommodate members of the group moving on. One participant gave the example of a cross-party vision for Leeds that had served as a useful strategic approach to local placemaking. They stressed that while it was not perfect, it created a sense of continuity around shared goals that was helpful to those working to shape the city and the activities and services within it.
We also spoke of the importance of a community of practice that can bring together collective knowledge and experience. We are all so busy working in our corners, that we are not learning from our collective experience and building a community of practice, and of care for our places. We should be doing more to support collective learning as well as collective action.
Wrapping Up
When winding up the Chat, we tried to pull together the threads of our conversation and came back to two key reminders to us all. The first is that place is made by people and that process is far more important than the built outcomes. We also felt certain that just because we do things the way that we do, and they are accepted as normal practice, does not mean that they are necessarily the right way to do them. We should not be afraid to look at systemic change at scale, which can start with small, local action. It is clear that placemaking is far more than the physical regeneration and development of our towns and cities, and our placemaking practice should reflect and support that.