Currently, placemaking reflects bigger ambitions. It’s not restricted to local areas. The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) has been campaigning for the government to build a new generation of garden cities to address Britain's chronic shortage of affordable housing.
The idea behind garden cities is to look beyond simply meeting housing needs to create beautiful and inclusive places where people can live and thrive.
The idea behind garden cities is to look beyond simply meeting housing needs to create beautiful and inclusive places where people can live and thrive.
Garden city principles include community ownership of land, mixed tenure and genuinely affordable homes, developments to enhance the natural environment and amenities and transport infrastructure to sustain healthy communities.
Contemporary approaches to placemaking flip top-down planning to focus on bottom-up principles where a belief in genuine collaboration takes precedence. However, this may be more of an aspiration than a reality. We can identify tensions between public need and private value – the privatisation of public space marks a subtle but profound shift, for example.
Also, reconciling the needs of shareholders with those of end-users is something developers cannot dodge if they’re serious about placemaking.
The current funding model for regeneration is complex and confusing. The Centre for Cities identifies major problems with the current system, such as fragmented funding streams and short-termism.
Plus, funding tends to pull in two contradictory directions at once. It reflects the lack of a national strategy but at the same time centralises decision-making.
