Placemaking and the United Kingdom's largest housebuilders

• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Author: Peter Jones,Daphne Comfort
• Date: 01 May 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2458

COMMENTARY

Placemaking and the United Kingdom's largest housebuilders

Peter Jones | Daphne Comfort

School of Business, University of

Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

Correspondence

Peter Jones, School of Business, University of

Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

GL50 2RH, UK.

Email: pjones@glos.ac.uk

The concept of placemaking has attracted growing attention as part of possible solu-

tions to the shortage of new housing development in the United Kingdom and in the

recent White Paper on the future of the planning system, the United Kingdom Gov-

ernment called for more attention to be given to placemaking. At the same time,

placemaking has become an increasingly common element in the lexicon of the

United Kingdom's largest housebuilders. This commentary paper outlines some of

the characteristics of placemaking, reviews how some of the United Kingdom's larg-

est housebuilders are addressing placemaking and offers some reflections on

placemaking and the creation of new housing developments and communities.

1|INTRODUCTION

Within recent years the concept of placemaking has attracted attention

as part of possible solutions to the shortage of new housing develop-

ment within the United Kingdom. In drawing attention to the “sustained

criticism of the quality and quantity of new housing,”the Royal Institution

for Chartered Surveyors (2016), for example, argued “placemaking has

never been more important in creating thriving, sustainable communities

where people genuinely want to live, work and play.”More recently, in the

“Introduction”to the “Planning for the Future”White Paper (Ministry of

Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2020) in suggesting that

the planning system was central to “tackling head on the shortage of beau-

tiful, high quality homes and places where people want to live and work,”

the Government called for “a greater focus on placemaking.”At the same

time, placemaking has become an increasingly common element in the

lexicon of the United Kingdom's largest housebuilders. Barratt Develop-

ments (2020), currently the United Kingdom's largest housebuilder, for

example, claimed “we continue to invest in design and placemaking to

ensure all our developments become communities that are socially, environ-

mentally and economically viable.”With these thoughts in mind, this com-

mentary paper, outlines some of the characteristics of placemaking,

reviews how some of the United Kingdom's largest housebuilders are

addressing placemaking, and offers some reflectionson placemaking and

the creation of new housing developments and communities.

2|PLACEMAKING

In many ways, people have been making places, for themselves and

for others, in which to live, work, play and worship, for example, since

the earliest human times, but formal expressions of the thinking

behind placemaking date from the 1960s onwards. Strydom, Puren,

and Drewes (2018), for example, traced the origins of the concept of

placemaking to the work of Jane Jacobs, William Whyte, and George

Andrews in the 1960s and 1970s. Project for Public Spaces (2018a),

for example, claimed “the placemaking movement was born over forty

years ago, when pioneers like Jane Jacobs and William H Whyte publi-

shed their groundbreaking ideas about Americans and the urban experi-

ence”and “back then there was no name for that way of thinking—they

simply showed us that cities should be designed for people, with walkable

streets, welcoming public spaces, and lively neighbourhoods.”

In the years since then, the concept of placemaking has become a

wide church, it has attracted attention in policy and practice arenas

and in a range of academic disciplines, and it has a range of definitions

and meanings. One of the simplest definitions is “placemaking is the

process of creating quality places where people want to live, work, play,

shop, learn, and visit”(Wyckoff, Neumann, Pape, & Schindler, 2015),

while for CBRE (2017), the global real estate company, “place making

happens when buildings are transformed into vibrant urban spaces that

offer wellbeing, pleasure and inspiration.”Pierce, Martin, and Mur-

phy (2010) defined placemaking as “the set of social, political and mate-

rial processes by which people iteratively create and recreate the

experienced geographies in which they live.”

For some commentators and organisations, placemaking is about

public space. Project for Public Spaces (2018b), for example, “inspires

people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces at the heart of

every community.”CBRE (2017) argued “placemaking has many aspects,

of which changes to the public realm are the most fundamental.”At the

same time, CBRE (2017) outlined how placemaking in the public realm

can create, or enhance real estate value, for example, by altering the

Received: 1 September 2020 Accepted: 1 September 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2458

J Public Affairs. 2021;21:e2458. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1of5

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2458