Making the Case for Place

Placemaking is a malleable term, open to interpretation. Whether it’s physical design characteristics, land values, job creation, biodiversity, new amenities or simply a sense of well-being, people assign different values to areas. Everyone knows a good place when they’re in one, but there’s no magic ingredient or singular approach. Future of London’s major 2017 programme set out to understand how different stakeholders value the impacts of placemaking and how to foster greater common among their views.

While it is relatively straightforward to assign a numeric value to commercial and economic impacts, qualities that are ‘softer’, such as well-being or social connectivity, can be more difficult. Formal impact frameworks steer practitioners towards this focus, but things are changing. Policy is already nudging practitioners towards more holistic valuation, and practitioners from all sectors are developing their own models and metrics.

Running throughout 2017, the programme brought together over 500 people from the public, private and community sectors, and included a debate, senior roundtables, practitioner workshop, full-day conference and six field trips to places undergoing change across London.

Publications