The power of placemaking - how to integrate placemaking into impactful urban design schemes

In a competitive market, companies often adopt zeitgeist phrases and buzzwords in order to appear relevant. While this may not sound unreasonable, the concern is that key disciplines can become mere tick-box exercises or fads, and their true value never realised. 

In a world grappling with diverse crises (economic, climatic, social, geopolitical), there’s an urgent need for a more considered form of urbanism. An urbanism which takes into account the journey from design to delivery, and the shifting parameters along the way. An urbanism focused on those it seeks to serve. 

This urbanism is best achieved through placemaking, which is the practice of designing, developing and delivering places around the needs and wishes of local communities. Putting the end-user at the heart of all design and delivery, placemaking is preoccupied with leveraging the public realm and ground floor uses and interface to improve human health and happiness. It points the way to a more inclusive, responsive and relevant urban landscape. 

But how do we ensure placemaking becomes a core component of development, rather than just another concept that’s often referenced but seldom implemented? 

When it comes to effective placemaking, context is everything. And context is located at the intersection of people, purpose and process. 

Before any work can begin, we need to consider the people at the centre of the places we’re trying to create. Who are they? What are their needs and ambitions? What do they want from the buildings and spaces they will inhabit? Next, what is the purpose of the place we’re developing and the wider project we’re engaged in? How will it serve its residents and end-users? And in turn, what are the processes that will enable successful project delivery? 

These are some of the questions we need to ask in order to formulate the designs that support thriving and vibrant urban environments. Only through this knowledge can we understand the DNA of a place and conceive impactful, context-relevant solutions that deliver maximum social value. 

To fully understand context, we need to listen to what the data is telling us. Through research, end-user engagement and data analysis, we can build the contextual knowledge we need to achieve quality placemaking. 

Dialogue with key project stakeholders (tenants, residents, retailers, consumers) helps to establish feedback loops, ensuring we’re designing assets fit for their intended audience. Wider stakeholder engagement is also critical, enabling teams to navigate the multiple dimensions of project development, such as decision-making, investment, regulatory approval and more. 

Data analysis then provides the granular detail that further informs and enhances our designs. How many people are moving through these spaces? What’s the average footfall, dwell-time and spend? How well are different uses working together? Collaborating with our sister company, Pragma, at Benoy we focus on converting data-driven insights into successful placemaking strategies, unlocking value on multiple levels. 

Gone, it would seem, are the days of ​‘build it and they will come’. Gone, the single vision and the fixed pathway to it. Urban development today involves a journey that’s forever evolving. During the multiple stages of design and development, external conditions and market forces are continually shifting, redefining project parameters. And this means it’s essential we design for agility and allow for substantive changes along the way. 

Placemaking is not about a final product, but a process that’s delivered iteratively and organically. Designers therefore need to have the agility to pivot as required to achieve their ambitions. Remember, a project vision is not a straightjacket but a futureproofed framework. Indeed, given that urban development can take many years to complete, we need flexibility within a scheme to accommodate shifts in consumer trends and behaviours. But these changes needn’t be negative; designing for serendipity throughout a project lifecycle means we’re open to change in ways that can be positive, optimistic and creative. 

Architectural firms need to break down silos and operate as interdisciplinary teams. And within the placemaking process, masterplanning is the glue that binds diverse services together. Successful placemaking requires a holistic and collaborative approach, one which unites different perspectives, agendas and skillsets. It therefore relies on the convening qualities of masterplanning, which when executed correctly and focused on the user experience, automatically brings together architecture, wayfinding, landscape and digital into a cohesive and coherent whole. 

Placemaking is a co-creative process; it cannot be conducted by individuals working in isolation from one another. Often, architectural practices purport to be integrated because they have multiple departments under one roof. But unless those departments work together and operate in an interdisciplinary way, they won’t achieve the holistic understanding and vision that’s vital to the placemaking process. We create the symphony, we conduct the orchestra, then we enjoy the sweet music of our collective endeavour. 

Placemaking is centred on the human experience. The top-down approach to urban development focuses on numbers and commercial viability. The bottom-up approach focuses more on the experiential dimensions of place. Good placemaking should incorporate both of these approaches, but lean heavily towards facilitating the experiences that bring the urban environment to life. Only in this way can we create places that inspire, delight, surprise and engage, and immeasurably enhance people’s standards of living. 

Image credit: Sila Cakir, Urban Designer, London Studio: Sketches setting out ​“a day in the life” on a project in development