Jane Carpenter is Planning Director for Redrow in South Wales believes good placemaking makes for great communities

The way places are planned, designed, developed and managed has the potential to positively shape where and how people will live, work, socialise, move about and engage. That’s why good placemaking is so important; it’s about the development of high-quality places that are robust and resilient, with lasting benefits for health, wellbeing, carbon reduction and wider environmental sustainability.

At Redrow our aim is to build high quality homes, but also to create places where people really want to live. We pride ourselves on building sustainable, vibrant communities that enrich and enhance the lives of residents. We achieve this by helping people connect to one another in the community, creating wildlife habitats, promoting health and wellbeing and honouring the local area in the design of our developments.

For nearly 50 years, we have been creating high quality homes and communities for our customers and it is our innovative placemaking framework that underpins all that we do as part of our commitment to designing a better way to live.

The Redrow 8 sets out eight design principles that define how we achieve sustainable development on all of our sites. Setting a new standard for all of our future developments in Wales, our eight design principles are aligned with the latest planning policies and Welsh Government legislation.

They include:

• Listen to learn; presenting the vision and design concept for the proposals to the local planning authority and others in advance of developing a detailed design then holding community consultation to present the proposals, discuss potential revisions and gather feedback. We also involve the local community in design and placemaking opportunities.
• Keeping it local; looking at specific opportunities offered by the site and the local context, considering improvements to or the creation of new connections to the local area and developing a vision and concept for the development informed by the opportunities offered locally while looking for opportunities to connect to local areas of open spaces to encourage walking, cycling and relaxation.
• Easy to get around; encouraging and providing realistic and attractive options for “active travel”; providing clear, direct and attractive routes for pedestrians and cyclists.
• Places to go and things to do; considering connections to local employment and other facilities creating locally tailored, interconnected community spaces and facilities, within walking distance of home, providing opportunities for people to interact and socialise.
• Nature for people; retaining significant natural assets such as mature trees, ecologically important hedgerows and water courses while creating new wildlife habitats as part of the landscape strategy through sustainable urban drainage and new tree planting and other landscape provision.
• Streets for life; using our homes to create attractive ‘street pictures’ and using a mix of house types built with a simple, coordinated palette of materials to create varied and harmonious street scenes.
• Homes for all; providing a range of home types and sizes to meet the specific needs of the local community and sensitively integrate privately owned and affordable homes to create cohesive communities.
• Built to impress; creating a ‘sense of arrival’ with carefully designed spaces and places, distinctive street types and attractive homes that are built to last.

The last year has taught us all about the importance of community. The well-being of future generations is dependent on getting placemaking right now by developing communities that are happy and healthy places to live.

We’re certainly proud to be building a better way to live.