Written by:
Louise Dennison
In this month’s Chat, Is Our View of Places Too Shortsighted?, we explored the tensions between long-term vision and short-term delivery in placemaking. The conversation explored how time frames, targets, and political cycles shape, and sometimes limit, the evolution of our places. Drawing on examples from across the UK, from grassroots initiatives to large scale regional development schemes, participants shared frustrations, insights, and some hopeful examples. The Chat was a rich seam of discussion about how places evolve and how we might rethink the ways we plan, support, and celebrate placemaking and placeshaping efforts.
Key Themes
A central thread of the discussion was tension: between short-term targets and long-term impact, between creativity and delivery, and between what is valued by systems vs what is valued by people. Participants reflected on how strategies and projects often have fixed endpoints, whereas organic place-shaping is continuous and messy. There was concern that our political and institutional structures are not designed to support that kind of organic and continuous evolution.
Several themes emerged:
- Tension between vision and targets – What happens when the pace of policy doesn’t match the pace of people?
- Creativity vs. Delivery – Are we allowing enough space for creative processes to shape places meaningfully?
- What we choose to celebrate – How do award schemes and recognition systems shape what ‘success’ looks like in placemaking?
These themes surfaced across a wide-ranging conversation, and our participants shared real examples and expressed a collective desire to think more strategically, more collaboratively, and more creatively about place.
Vision vs Targets
One of the strongest threads of this conversation was the tension between short-term delivery pressures of developers and local/national authorities targets and the long-term, organic nature of placemaking. Participants expressed concern that political cycles, both local and national, often set tight timelines and targets which negatively affect meaningful community engagement and long-term impact.
As one participant put it, changes to place are continuous, but projects and strategies have end dates and are vulnerable to changes in leadership. We heard several anecdotes about initiatives being launched with promise, only to be cut short when political leadership changed or funding streams ended. From the dismantling of regional development agencies to the interruption of long-term urban renewal programmes mid-way through, the group noted how fragile progress can be when it isn’t backed by sustained political or financial support.
One participant shared an example from Scotland, the Scottish Parliament’s Scotland 2020 – 2030 programme, an initiative that imagined the country’s future beyond electoral cycles and across party lines. While its focus has since shifted, the concept offered a hopeful model for how we might plan across decades, not departments and political terms.
There was a strong consensus that time for meaningful engagement should be considered an essential investment in placemaking. Taking time to build relationships and support inclusive processes need not equal delay; it’s the very condition for trust, collaboration, and meaningful participation that might make a project more efficient and successful. Too often, though, engagement is framed as a tick box or hurdle rather than a core ingredient in shaping places that people value.
The pace of change on the ground rarely aligns with the expectations of top-down policy. This disconnect creates a constant tension, between the speed of development and the rhythm of communities.
This theme also returned to questions of power and time. Creative processes need space to evolve. They don’t always fit with delivery plans, but when given the time and trust, they can meaningfully reshape not just places, but forge strong and trusting relationships with the local community.
Creativity vs Delivery
The second major theme was the creative nature of placemaking, and how this frequently clashes with the demand for delivery, outcomes, and targets. Many shared experiences of how artist-led regeneration or community-based interventions had led to vibrant transformations, only for those spaces and people to be pushed out once large-scale public and/or private sector redevelopment began. One example given was where artists had brought life to derelict buildings, and in turn to the local area, only to be displaced when the city decided to ‘regenerate’ those very spaces.
The group agreed that creativity in placemaking must be nurtured and protected. As one participant noted, artistic and community activity often lays the groundwork for more significant regeneration, but without safeguards, the very people who initiate change are excluded from its outcomes.
There was also discussion about the use of language in this space. Some felt that the term ‘placemaking’ has become institutionalised, often interpreted as a top-down, design-led process. ‘Placeshaping’, by contrast, was seen as more inclusive and ongoing, better suited to describing the fluid, evolving nature of community-led change. Whether you call it placemaking or place-shaping, participants agreed that both are creative processes, iterative, experimental, and unpredictable. And therein lies the tension.
What we choose to celebrate in placemaking.
The final theme explored how success in placemaking is measured and recognised, or not. Award schemes, government strategies, and institutional metrics often celebrate projects only after completion of built outcomes. However, participants noted that placemaking is never really finished, organic placemaking changes and evolves places and spaces, continuously.
Participants discussed how most awards value tangible delivery, over the process of collaborative design and the creation of more community centred projects. This emphasis on “finished” projects risks overlooking the long-term value of experimentation, community ownership, and adaptive reuse.
We heard inspiring examples about community-driven projects across the UK that transform disused buildings and set up services which are currently lacking within their locations, however our group noted that such projects are rarely the ones highlighted in mainstream industry awards.
Several participants reflected on the politics of who nominates and who judges. Too often, recognition circulates among professionals congratulating each other. By contrast, initiatives like Scotland’s SURF Awards or the Civic Voice Design Awards invited community nominations, a refreshing approach that celebrated not just design quality, but social impact.
The group noted that long-term thinking doesn’t just apply to strategy and delivery, it also matters in how we share stories, document learning, and build institutional memory. As more community centred placemaking initiatives, websites, archives and awards schemes disappear, we risk losing not just recognition, but the history and wisdom of what has come before.
Wrapping Up
This Chat highlighted that placemaking often suffers from short sightedness. It is shaped more by short-term targets and delivery pressures than by the slow work of building trust, connection to create meaningful change. Participants reflected on the tension between structured targets and strategies within placemaking and how it is at odds with the time it takes for places to grow organically with the people who live there.
If we want better places, we need better processes. These should prioritise long-term thinking, value creativity and be about the lived experience of communities. That means shifting away from rigid timelines and targets and moving towards an approach that embraces uncertainty, experimentation and care.
A recurring theme throughout the conversation was the power of stories. Stories of places, of people, and of projects that evolved from the local community and their needs and ideas for change. Yet many of these stories are lost, overlooked or under-celebrated because they do not fit neatly into the formats of funding rounds, political terms or award schemes.
Rather than rushing to complete or placemaking, perhaps we need to keep listening, adapting, and recognising value beyond what is considered a finished place. Change takes time, and stories, not just strategies, are what help us create and shape sustainable and happy places to live, work and play.