At thisBetter Places North roundtable, we focused on Better Places North - a campaign driven by the Northern Place and Culture Partnership and the NP11.
NP11 comprises 11 North of England Local Enterprise Partnerships, representing business voices across the North.
28 March 2024
The Northern Place and Culture Partnership leads on the delivery of the NP11’ Place Strategy for the North, bringing together funders, arms-length bodies and partnerships around place, culture, the creative industries, nature, heritage, the visitor economy and inclusive growth.
Better Places North's aim is to support regional growth and resilience by promoting improved and sustainable use of existing assets in the built environment.
Our 2024 roundtables are bringing together place leaders - across business, local government and community - to understand the greatest needs and desires around better placemaking.
Better Places North events, workshops and publications will then be shaped to suit.
Lost Buildings and Missed Opportunities
The transition from an industrial to a post-industrial society isn't done and dusted. In many areas, it's ongoing, extended and painful. The disused buildings and derelict spaces dotting the northern landscape represent this seismic change's physical legacy.
Whether they're old mills, disused cinemas, empty retail units, industrial heritage sites or other spaces, large numbers of structures across the North lie empty.
As far back as 2017, Historic England estimated the unused floor space of disused textile mills in Greater Manchester to be the equivalent of 25,000 new homes.
Since then, more of these spaces have been adapted for commercial or residential use. But many more will have been demolished. These losses will occur mainly in areas that are already run down.
But these unused buildings represent missed opportunities. They could be re-purposed, housing families or providing much-needed business and community regeneration in local areas.
Better Places North believes intervening earlier will save more buildings from becoming lost and open many more opportunities for regeneration and recovery. It also stitches the buildings of a place’s past into the imaginings of its future - deepening investment in buildings that define a place’s heritage and landscape, protecting the embodied carbon in their fabric and enhancing a collective sense of pride in place and possibility.
This will depend on sound building management and maintenance and meeting environmental and sustainability challenges. It could also be made simpler and more cost effective if re-considered from policy perspectives.
Better Places North aims to lead these pan-Northern conversations and messages to devolved and central government in the year of elections to come.
Selling sustainability
Sustainability has become a commonplace word. But this is part of the problem. Its overuse threatens to obscure its meaning.
For the built environment and placemaking, sustainability isn’t restricted to the environment. It applies to how we live and work and how communities can continue to survive and thrive.
Consequently, storytelling is critical for giving clarity and making sustainability relatable to everyday life.
Raising expectations
Storytelling and sustainability are transforming the culture of the built environment. Increasingly, there's a demand for schemes to present a broader narrative that includes architecture and landscape design.
This visual storytelling has become an essential element at key stages in the project lifecycle.
And sustainability narratives continue to extend their reach, from attracting foreign investment to gaining local government approval.
There’s now an expectation that sustainability will be central to any proposed scheme.
The triple bottom line… plus one
The triple bottom line is a sustainable business strategy. It looks at three main elements of any sustainable proposal:
Business case
Impact on people’s wellbeing
Environmental impact.
From a placemaking perspective, we can add a fourth:
Meaning.