Places aren't made by government, they're shaped by enterprising, creative people

The places we love (and indeed the places we don't love but which are loved by others) are shaped by hundreds of influences. Most important, of course, it is shaped by what Kipling called "mere uncounted folk, of whose life and death is none report or lamentation". These are the men who built the houses, the carts and horses guided along tracks and by-ways that became our roads, the farmers, cattlemen and shepherds who set the fields and styled our landscapes. And amidst all these are the people who wanted it to look good, who did little things of beauty, planted gardens, erected memorials and raised churches. In our towns those people built little walls and fences, tended allotments, carved their love into features of homes and built the pavements, roads, sewers and bridges.

Our world is shaped by what we do not made by the actions of planners. Yet such people - planners, directors, councillors - persist in believing that places are, in some way, made by their actions: by the instructions of the benign state without which all would be untidy, unsafe, chaotic, crazed. Here, in a modern mash-up of this hubris is Local Government Association along with assorted plan fans:

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), Local Government Association (LGA) and Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) have launched Future Place: a joint, two-phase initiative which will unlock place-making potential at local level through quality in design, future thinking, and knowledge sharing.

The programme has been designed to promote best practice and the potential of innovative delivery, design and funding models, cross-sector collaborations capacity building, and knowledge sharing at a local level.

At the heart of this 'two-phase initiative' is the idea that places are made bu architects, planners, housing officers and town clerks - here is this delusion encapsulated:

...we invite local authorities to put in writing their overarching vision (emerging or finalised) for an area and how they are currently working across their programmes to deliver the wider ambitions of the local authority by creating great places

Here these grand organisations are asking for local councils to peer into the future's mists and craft a magical vision that "Future Place-Makers" can then deliver. We are reminded that planners, architects and government prefer the directed and ordered not the organic and creative. For all that such folk talk about Jane Jacobs or Saul Alinsky, planners and urban designers real love is Baron Haussman who destroyed thousands of homes to allow a straight road into Paris for the government's cannons and horsemen. For sure these days there's a nod to liberty and organic development through the canard of community consultation but governments with their planners and officials still believe they know best.

The problem is that places made by government - council estates, America's 'projects, the worst of France's banlieue and that hideous East European 'Stalinist baroque' - are failures because those planners, architects (like the dreadful Le Corbusier who wanted to knock down France's old towns and replace them with tower blocks) and government officials think they know better then real people what real people want. These are people who don't understand that things are where they are because that's where they are and that moving them somewhere else destroys them however lovingly you craft exciting designs.

The task of planners isn't to lead on place but rather to support the real shapers of places - entrepreneurs, artists, flaneurs, seekers for the new and different. Instead of drawing up visions filled with coloured arrows, creative quarters and anchor institutions, these future place makers should be more modest - present a space for the real creatives, the actual place shapers, to weave the magic once again. Government's job is not to make places but to help people who love where they live to shape those places.

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MIT's 'Places in the Making': I really think this is important...

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...or at least as important as any piece of academic pampleteering:

Public places play a key role in building community and placemaking can empower local communities to create a sense of "belonging" through place. A new report by a DUSP research team, led by Susan Silberberg, examines the interactions between placemaking, community participation, and the expanding ways communities are collaborating to make great public places.

It's not all perfect - there's still too much that suggests grand magicians will wave wands to create great places - but the general thrust is right. As Project for Public Spaces said (OK, gushed):

Places in the Making highlights the importance of people in defining place, a critical aspect that is all too often forgotten by those in architecture, planning, and other related disciplines. “The intense focus on place has caused us to miss the opportunity to discuss community, process, and the act of making,” the paper asserts. “The importance of the Placemaking process itself is a key factor that has often been overlooked in working toward many of these noble goals. As illustrated by the ten cases highlighted here, the most successful Placemaking initiatives transcend the ‘place’ to forefront the ‘making.’”

This is the antithesis of the 'field of dreams' regeneration model beloved of those planners and urban designers - great places are more about the people in them than they are about the architecture, the swishness of the 'shopping experience' or the presence of the great institutions (public funded natch) of art.

I fear that too many people - those regeneration experts and so forth that litter local councils - won't read this or worse will read it and misunderstand. This is what happened in Bradford when we got an anti-development masterplan - instead of going with the idea of removing stuff and making spaces we tried instead to translate it into a 'shiny regeneration' strategy, a grand city plan.

As Bradford pays consultants a few more tens of thousands extracted from the council taxes of local folk to produce another grand 'city plan', perhaps we should hesitate and ask whether we're headed in the wrong direction again. And rather than have lots of great plans to spoil the city again, we should read this research from MIT, take down the Alsop plan that's gathering a thick layer of dust and try again to create of city for people - to remind ourselves that:

...many of the best, most authentic and enduring destinations in a city, the places that keep locals and tourists coming back again and again and that anchor quality, local jobs,  were born out of a series of incremental, locally-based improvements. One by one, these interventions built places that were more than the sum of their parts.

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If you can't be in the place you love, love the place you're in!

This weekend is Cullingworth's scarecrow festival. Not that this is important to you. Or maybe it is, perhaps you 'get' (as Mr Cameron would say) that place matters and how invented tradition is one of the soft things about a place that makes it magic.

And our attachment to a place matters more than you think. It's not simply some sort of pride or defencive reaction to folk who criticise, we're talking about real attachment here - about love:

We not only found out that resident attachment was related to solid economic outcomes for places, but that the things that most drove people to love where they live were not the local economy or even their personal civic engagement in the place (as one might expect), but the “softer sides” of place.

So what is that "softer side of place"?

It appears that what people most want out of a neighborhood is a place that is attractive, engaging, friendly, and welcoming. In every place, every year of the study, these factors were found to be the three most important to tying people to place. Why does this matter? As mentioned above, communities where people love where they live do better economically. The best-loved places were doing better in a measureable way.

This isn't about grand civic marketing campaigns replete with logos, embassies in New York and well-resourced teams of regenerators extolling the virtues of a place. Nor is it that grumpy "you can't criticise, you don't live here, that's our job" attitude we see from defensive residents of struggling cities. We're talking about a desire to love the place we're in - and when we love something it's an active emotion, it drives us to do things. To do the placemaking equivalent of buying our place chocolate and flowers or taking it to the movies.

That's what scarecrow festivals, duck races and reinvented traditions are about. It's us - the people who love a place - showing our love by doing things to make that place smile:

Love of place is great equalizer and mobilizer. In all my years of doing community practice, I’ve never seen a more powerful model for moving communities forward and enabling places to optimize who they are instead of trying to be someplace else. It is this message that frees people to love their place, and hearing that their love of place is a powerful resource is not something many residents (or their leaders) have properly recognized and leveraged. That’s why I think I often see tearful reactions in my audiences and hear heartfelt stories of personal relationship with a place after my talks. The message of attachment—that the softer sides of place matter—resonates deeply.

So, if you want regeneration - even if you're parachuted in from afar to deliver it - you have to fall in love, to remember those words that Steven Stills wrote:

Well there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love, honey
Love the one you're with
You gotta love the one you're with
You gotta love the one you're with
You gotta love the one you're with

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