Moving the Dial – from Placemaking to Placekeeping
The regeneration industry has spent decades focused on placemaking – the art of creating quality spaces where people want to work, play, and learn. However, language influences action and with increasing prominence around the importance of long-term stewardship, we challenge if ‘placemaking’ is really delivering enough, or whether, as an industry, we should be more focused on placekeeping?
Is placemaking enough?
Placemaking is a ‘must-have’ within the industry, with residents, commercial tenants and visitors increasingly making decisions based on how a place looks, feels and activates.
However, there is criticism that the terminology, as well as the realities of delivery can be a step removed from the communities who live and work in these neighbourhoods. Often placemaking is top down in nature and can be a driver for displacement, with an over focus on consumption. Critics also argue that calling it ‘placemaking’ implies the area was not already a place, erasing shared history, heritage and existing cultures, sometimes leading to sanitised public spaces which lack authenticity.
And so, inclusive placemaking has become an important distinguisher of high quality, sustainable regeneration. With a focus on collaborative planning and a community-driven process, inclusive placemaking puts community voice at the centre of the design and development process, ensuring spaces reflect their priorities and needs. Schemes like Camley Street, being brought forward by Camden Council, Ballymore and Lateral, are using innovative and creative techniques to meaningfully embed community voice, such as the Young Researchers in Residence programme delivered by Social Place and In Her Place.
Should we instead turn out focus to placekeeping?
With recent announcements for a new generation of New Towns, the resurgence of Garden Villages across the UK and the growth of impact-aligned place-based investment, it is particularly timely to consider how impact can be driven through the long-term management of spaces and places, continuing the legacy of benefits delivered through inclusive placemaking. There is also a national crisis of loneliness and disconnection, materialising in a decade long decline in feelings of community belonging, with only 62% of people now feeling like they belong to their neighbourhood (Community Life Survey, 2024/25). Put simply, placekeeping is an imperative that cannot be ignored if, as an industry, we are truly committed to delivering sustainable and resilient places.
Importantly, good placekeeping is not simply about activation; it is the long-term, community-driven management and preservation of spaces, often with a focus on nurturing cultural identity, memory and heritage, alongside physical maintenance and the nurturing of thriving natural systems. It is often aligned with caring and preserving for existing places and is stewardship-oriented.
As momentum grows around the concept of regenerative places, where ecosystem-led, equitable renewal is cultivated so that natural and social systems can thrive together, the role of placekeeping becomes foundational.
However placemaking is not simple…
As explored by Muse’s Phil Mayall in a recent article exploring ‘what does good regeneration look like’, long-term commitment is necessary to support the continued evolution of new spaces and places long after technical completion, to sustain both long-term impact but also more resilient commercial returns.
Yet there are a series of significant challenges that need to be considered and tackled in order to deliver successful long-term stewardship:
- Short-term capital – many investors and developers operate on a “build and flip” model with value-add and opportunistic strategies inherently short term. Put simply, if the same players are not present post completion, then how can a legacy of long-term placekeeping be safeguarded?
- Fragmented ownership – contiguous land ownership is a rare luxury in development and regeneration activities, making models of long-term stewardship across multiple stakeholders challenging to design and implement.
- Evolving communities – although community stewardship models are a powerful tool in successful placemaking, community churn, conflicting agendas and volunteer fatigue can make long-term community models challenging.
So how can we navigate these barriers and bridge the gap between inclusive placemaking and long-term placekeeping?
The continuing rise of and interest in place-based investment demonstrates that investors increasingly recognise how anchoring capital in specific communities unlocks sustainable, long-term economic value and resilient returns. The presence of long-term commitment and patient capital is key to making placekeeping more realistic, with ongoing high quality asset management crucial to continuing the legacy of impact created through inclusive place-making.
More broadly, we can consider diverse and multi-stakeholder governance models that can survive an investor exit. As explored by the Town and Country Planning Association as part of its Long-term Stewardship in New Communities Toolkit, this could include Community Land Trusts, charitable trusts or resident-owned management companies, which allow the community to hold a stake in the long-term success of their neighbourhood. Securing diverse income sources is fundamental for the long-term resilience and success of such governance models. For example, at Graylingwell Park in Chichester, the Community Development Trust uses both a resident levy and profits from community assets to reinvest into community events and activities.
And more holistically, we can measure what matters most and share what good looks like. Using longitudinal measurement techniques, such as the Flourishing Index at Brent Cross Town or IPUT’s approach to long-term monitoring at Wilton Park in Dublin, we can understand if, how and why places continue to thrive and use these lessons in future projects.
