The Placemaking Handbook: Designing for Future Residents
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Six years ago, Local Peoples asked ourselves: how might we use our human-centred design expertise, knowledge of urban development and passion for building resilient communities to help design better places?
The answer was to listen to the voice that’s always missing from place development: the future resident. Since then, we’ve gathered a wealth of research into innovative, empathetic approaches to place design. We’ve helped place creators to find and engage future residents to ensure they deliver people-focused places. Local Peoples envision a world in which all places are purposeful, sustainable and productive. Think of this handbook as a practical guide to building meaningful places the community loves. Our expertise in placemaking and human-centred design is here to help your community, place or project.
A Brief History of Modern Places: Stories of place changemakers
The story of placemaking began in the 1960s. It’s in this past era that placemaking pioneers began to dream of designing places that would be good for people. It sounds simple, but it was a radically different approach to design at the time. As concrete buildings rose and more cars populated the streets, these changemakers advocated for the design of enjoyable, interesting neighbourhoods and spaces that encouraged a healthy public life.
From there, placemaking grew from the bold ideas of the few champions listed below into a discipline practised and applied across the world today.
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) criticised the drawbacks of widespread top-down city planning. She advocated for a people-centred approach to urban planning and design, and for the incorporation of local community expertise into the planning process. She strongly encouraged the creation of mixed-use places, high density neighbourhoods and local economies to foster vibrancy and prosperity. Today, she is considered the mother of placemaking.7
William H. Whyte (1917-1999) studied street life in New York City as part of The Street Life Project, analysing the successes and failures of urban spaces. He suggested that public spaces include places to sit, enjoy the sun and shade, eat and interact with others, to become vibrant with activity. Like Jane, he advocated fora bottom-up approach to design, and believed in the power of observations to provide valuable insights.8
Jan Gehl (born 1936) suggested that public spaces be designed to support both functional and recreational activities, the latter resulting in increased social interaction and dwelling in place. He helped the city of Copenhagen reclaim space for cyclists and pedestrians. Now, high walkability and over 200 miles of bike lanes are key features of the city.9
Fred Kent (born 1942) founded New York-based placemaking company Project for Public Spaces (PPS) in 1975. Central to his beliefs and to the work of PPS is that “the community is the expert” and that “streets are places for public life”. With a realm of important projects under his belt, including the early transformation of Bryant Park (NYC), Kent has made a significant contribution to improving public life.10
PlacemakingToday
Placemaking today is used by many, from municipal councils, to developers, city planners, universities, community development specialists, architects, and us, human-centered designers, to design and activate unique, personal spaces that people find attractive and meaningfully enjoy.
At its core, placemaking designs place for and with people. This requires a deep understanding and willingness to help people, and to foster sustainable, vibrant communities. This is why placemaking needs to consider not only people, but also planet and economy, as these core components matter when it comes to helping people live fulfilling and enjoyable lives.
Placemaking is used to co-create or regenerate residential precincts, brownfields, main streets, green open spaces, commercial and retail precincts and other community spaces. It is all around us! Walking around your neighbourhood, you might have seen placemaking take the shape of:
The Benefits of Placemaking
Places designed with a placemaking approach have supported healthy lifestyles and delivered a range of social, environmental and economic benefits.
Social Benefits
+ Improved physical activity and mental health
The Streets Alive project in Fargo (USA) closes a large street to car traffic every year, transforming the street into a place for temporary activations focused on progressing active living. Streets Alive has attracted up to 8,000 visitors, substantial local business participation, and generated community interest for active transport and sustainable development.
+ Improved social connectedness and cohesion
The town of Kentlands (USA) was designed to foster community connectedness and belonging to place. The initial public consultation process created a strong sense of community ownership around town planning. Today, the town’s design is strongly conducive to social interaction and residents enjoy continuous community activities from happy hours to breakfasts with Santa. People will pay a 12% premium to live in Kentlands, primarily due to its strong sense of community and place identity.
Conducting research and placemaking projects, we also noted social benefits in the following areas:
– Improved safety and reduced crime
– Increased interaction between households
– Improved sense of belonging and connection to place
– Increased used of common and public spaces
– Improved community resilience
–Improved civic participation, volunteerism, and skills building
Environmental Benefits
In Cheonggyecheon River Park in Seoul, an elevated highway was removed to restore a stream and introduce biodiverse wetlands, following an extended series of public consultations. Whereas before, serious pollution aggravated the area’s decline, the urban restoration project brought life back to the area and resulted in a 35% reduction in air pollution.
The New York City Playground Program co-designed 186 playgrounds with local communities. The Roberto Clemente school playground alone captures 400,000 gallons of stormwater each year, improves the health of its nearby river, and connects students with nature through hands-on environmental education activities at the playground.
Conducting research and placemaking projects, we also noted environmental benefits in these areas:
– Improved participation in green activities
– Reduced water consumption
– Reduced urban heat island effect
– Improved resilience to drought and floods
– Improved shade and quality of vegetation
– Improved air quality
Economic Benefits
Increase in surrounding property values
In Place du Marché Saint-Honoré, Paris, a multi-storey car park was transformed into a beautiful mixed-use transparent building and a series of walkways. This placemaking intervention led to a 166% increase in neighbouring retail property values and a 53% increase in neighbouring residential property values
Improved local economy
Before the inauguration of Federation Square, Melbourne lacked a central public space. The creation of Federation Square succeeded in bringing people together in the heart of the city, creating a lively hub for its 10 million yearly visitors. The surrounding area saw an increase of 450% in the number of sidewalk cafés.
Walking
If walking connectivity within the Hoddle Grid in Melbourne was increased by 10%, the value of its local economy would increase significantly.
Conducting research and placemaking projects, we also noted economic benefits in the following areas:
– Improved local business and employment
– Reduced transportation costs
– Improved tourism
– Increase in investment in surrounding infrastructure
– Increased property value and investment with decreased risk
Designing for Future Residents: Applying Human-Centred Design to Place
Lesson 1: Design with People
At the heart of good design and placemaking is consideration and empathy for people, which is why we believe in designing not only for, but with the current and future users of a place. This can lead to lower development risk by taking the speculation and guessing out of future needs and wants.
Lesson 2: Continuously Engage
Although difficult to pull off, ongoing creative consultation allows deep understanding of evolving community aspirations. Rather than making assumptions, we ask. This creates a strong sense of connection to place and a high degree of product / market fit by helping clarify who the future residents and place users will be.
Lesson 3: Prototype Solutions
Bringing ideas to life with prototypes ensures that what we believe will work actually does. People interacting with short-term prototypes – such as inexpensive pop-up activations, meetups and events – helps us further refine longer-term place offerings. This creates community connection and ownership to place, and de-risks key decisions.
Lesson 4: Desirable, Viable and Feasible Solutions
Delivering solutions that are desirable, viable and feasible requires engagement with relevant stakeholders and community members. We believe that it is at the intersection of these three that good innovation lies.
Our Placemaking Research
Intergenerational Living
As populations age and cities become more crowded, forward-thinkers in Europe are designing places and programs that create community, safety and belonging for people of all generations.
We are just now beginning to explore the positive practical outcomes of intergenerational design. It can minimise segregation, stress and feelings of isolation while encouraging social connection and wellbeing. From flexible housing models to community skillshare programs to fully accessible facilities, intergenerational design is exploring new ways of living together and creating community. Here are three changemakers in Denmark and broader Europe whose projects are shaping the future of design and lifestyle.
Generationernes Hus (Denmark)
Is a proposed intergenerational apartment complex in Aarhus which will consist of dwellings designed for people of different ages and abilities, as well as communal areas to encourage social interaction. These will include youth housing units, family homes, disability housing, a daycare centre, nursing homes and housing for the elderly. The project aims to facilitate people of all ages living together easily and in harmony.
Improving Environmental Sustainability with Placemaking
Spending time in nature has been shown to reduce the risk of conditions like heart and autoimmune diseases, diabetes and obesity. And exposure to nature affects more than just our physical health: a wealth of research shows that spending time in leafy outdoor spaces can mitigate stress, anxiety and depression.
But do the places we live in encourage connection to nature? As cities become denser and urban sprawls creep outwards, it is estimated that today’s population is less exposed to nature than ever before. We are just now seeing the effects of “nature deficit disorder”, a term describing the set of health and behavioural problems that arise when we spend most of our lives indoors and in poorly designed, artificial spaces. Nature deficit disorder is in part caused by increasingly busy lifestyles, but is made worse by underplanned, overdeveloped public spaces and an unstable climate. Alarmingly, some of the factors contributing to nature deficit disorder can snowball. Poorly designed precincts combined with surges in energy consumption can push up temperatures and cause an urban heat island effect, making people less inclined to spend time outside.
So what can we do about it? Thankfully, a fresh approach to design thinking takes human wellbeing into account. Placemaking focuses on creating spaces that serve community needs.
What’s more, placemaking can ensure spaces are futureproofed and adaptable to environmental changes. Placemaking interventions that encourage the plantation of vegetation in the form of trees, green roofs, green walls, or the creation of community gardens, can help filter the air, reduce urban heat, provide shade, and cut energy consumption. Prioritising water-sensitive urban design in places can also revolutionise how we store and manage water, providing resilience to droughts and floods.
Since the goal of placemaking is to create liveable, resilient, and lively spaces, it makes sense that interventions focus on sustainability.
Placemaking projects have already made streets car-free, reducing air pollution, or added greenery to underutilised places like sidewalks, empty plots and public strips. Place activations focused on sustainability have helped connect people emotionally to place by involving them in landscaping projects, where they can learn about nature and cherish it more.
The New York City’s Playground Program, for example, co-designed 186 playgrounds with local communities. Roberto Clemente school playground captures 400,000 gallons of stormwater each year, improves the health of its nearby river, and connects students with nature through hands-on environmental education activities. This project has not only delivered a lively playground, it has implemented green infrastructure, reinvigorated the surrounding natural environment, and build local capacity to carry these effects into the long-term.
When looking to regenerate the environmental health of a place, consider the following:
– Incorporate environmental sustainability in your project’s vision statement to ensure it is considered throughout the project’s lifespan.
– Assess the place’s natural environment before starting to retrofit a place to understand where improvements can be made.
– Find local organisations and community members who are passionate about sustainability and collaborate with them to assess a place’s ecological context, enhance its health, to better engage with the broader community.
– Make your place interventions as net positive as possible. Can you use solar panels instead of polluting energy? Can you create compost from food waste? Can you collect and store water for neighbours?
In the face of climate change, we believe it is imperative to use placemaking to improve the resilience of places we call home.
Activating Places: Placemaking for the Future
It’s not easy creating places with purpose, and that are valued by the community. Temporary place activations can help us foresee potential risks, as well as encourage the public to engage with the space. How do we build a sense of place? How do we ensure people engage with that space so that it flourishes with activity?
A landscape architect might spend years in a studio designing the “perfect” park, only to build it and find it empty. Without a deep understanding of the site’s spatial and social contexts, it can be hard to create places that “work”. Placemaking can help do just that, it is an urban design approach that invests trust in the local community, and in turn builds places the community trusts. A vital component of placemaking is creating temporary place activations to ensure all stakeholders—especially the local community — feel connected to the place. Place activations also allow to test the use of places, de-risking key planning decisions. They fall under the umbrella of tactical urbanism, a discipline focused on implementing short-term, low-cost, and citizen-led changes to urban spaces. Tactical urbanism and place activations can take many forms, from pop-up gardens to local markets to greening projects.
Place activations can de-risk key planning decisions, which is vital considering the major financial and time investments that go into planning places. They help gather valuable feedback while building community sentiments of love and belonging to a place. Developing these feelings early on in a project ensures places will flourish long after project implementation.
Activations in Practice: Neighbourhood Gardening
If you’re planning a new development and wondering whether to include community gardens, activations could be a great problem-solver. What kind of vegetation would residents love most? What demographic would be likely to use the garden? Activations like pop-up gardens, are a fun, effective way to build community and gather early feedback around project ideas.
Place activations can provide multiple benefits for developers, including:
– A deep understanding of place users
– Testing development assumptions and de-risking key decisions
– Helping foster community support for projects
– Trialing place design and use with minimal capital expenditure
– Testing partnerships in low risk ways
– Attracting business investments
– Offering competitive advantage through the creation of places with unique personality
Place activations also benefit government-led tactical urbanism, including:
– More effective conversations with citizens
– Proof of concept before committing major resources to a project
– Stronger communities and social capitalRapid revitalisation of depressed areas
We can use placemaking as an effective tool to improve the sustainability and resilience of places we call home.