Written by;
Carole-Anne Davies,
Chief Executive,
Design Commission for Wales
Never has the need to think and plan for the future of our places been so relevant.
The way we plan, design and build our communities and infrastructure for the future is critical in addressing long-term challenges and ensuring well-being.
The introduction of Planning Policy Wales 10 and the emerging National Development Framework mean that placemaking is now quite rightly at the heart of planning policy in Wales. There is definitely a greater understanding and acceptance of the relationship between the way we plan and design places and health and wellbeing but as the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales recently wrote in her report, there is much to do to make Wales a better place. The place we want it to be.
Placemaking is such a broad ranging subject, encapsulating small-scale local community action through to large scale strategic planning. Here at the Design Commission for Wales, we are interested in and inspired by the way that we can design places to ensure a positive outcome for people and long term public value. Good placemaking means helping communities to thrive and tackle problems such as loneliness, community cohesion, and equality. These are important matters for future generations.
However, people are too often not at the centre of the design and decision making that really shapes places.
We need to put people back at the centre – real people with their basic needs, their desires and what we know is best for healthy, happy and sustainable lifestyles.
Recent, acclaimed examples of residential developments in the UK such as Marmalade Lane in Cambridge and Goldsmith Street in Norwich demonstrate what can be achieved with carefully considered home design alongside landscape design, tenant participation and vital leadsership from the client side. The results are high quality places to live, built at a higher density with an active public realm. But they don’t hold all of the answers and we need to look at a range of ideas and approaches that match the range of needs and opportunities in our cities, town and villages in Wales.
That’s why we’re now inviting entries for a new publication that follows on from our Places for Life conference that was held in 2016. The event explored the connection between the places where we live and our health, well-being, relationships, access to work, social life, and impact on the environment. We brought together a multi-disciplinary group of built environment professionals to engage with the subject and challenge the status quo.
Anyone with an interest in what makes a great place to live and the difference that where we live makes to health, happiness and wellbeing can submit an abstract for our second Places for Life publication.
We are really hoping that submissions will stimulate and contribute to the debate around good placemaking. There are some great examples of high-quality, well- designed, buildings and places in Wales. Let’s celebrate the economic, social, cultural and environmental difference that they make to this great country of ours because putting people at the heart of our thinking about placemaking will make Wales a better place.
Further information about Places for Life II is available here: https://dcfw.org/call-for-entries-places-for-life-ii/
