A Place is more than a Space

Place-making rests on three pillars. Our communities are spaces that contain such useful things as buildings, roads and utilities - our infrastructure or built environment. The second pillar is institutions, our social structures through which we interact. These institutions have a justified concern for housing and economic development, but place-making increasingly reflects important concerns for environmental quality, social justice and sound governance (ESG). The final pillar is superstructure, the beliefs that inform our daily decisions and behaviours.

When these pillars are aligned, the result is a space that embodies ESG. That space evolves into a place when it becomes a map, a guide on the road to embedding a community’s core values in our lives. A place enables people to make the right choices, empowers them to act on those choices and provides the resources for change. It enables them to practice orienteering towards shared cultural values rather than blindly following a satnav.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (www.ie.unc.edu)

University of Cambridge (www.cam.ac.uk)

Director Cambridge Science and Policy Consulting (www.cspconsulting.net)

Community Carbon Reduction project (www.climateriskprojects.net)

If this sounds abstract, it needn’t be. Consider the Future Homes programme (the topic of our CULS article last year). It is ensuring new homes have high levels of environmental performance (the E of ESG). The aim is to improve infrastructure; the means to do that is through structure (here, building regulations) as well as a Home User Guide1 showing residents how to live within those homes (superstructure).

A community built to the Future Homes standard is a great space but not yet a place. How might a community of Future Homes evolve from a space into a place, and come to embody the full meaning of ESG? Here are some signposts, divided roughly between improving the built environment, institutions and behaviour.

1. Reimagine economic vulnerability. ESG and the economy are not at odds. Sustainability has roots in the 18th century idea of Nachhaltigkeit. German industry depended on wood but its forests were being depleted. Enter sustainable forestry. Economies depend on infrastructure and a supply chain. These are vulnerable to a degraded environment. A vibrant place maps out these linkages and ensures threats to the infrastructure, environment and economy are tackled as connected2

2. Embrace the top, bottom and middle. Why has the UK carbon footprint decreased recently? Part of the answer lies in top-down government policies reducing the carbon intensity of the grid. But part lies in people using less energy (the role for Future Homes) and part lies in intermediaries such as estate agents

1You can download this at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-user-guide-template

2You can see a discussion of this in the Unhedgeable Risk publication of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, at https://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/resources/publication-pdfs/unhedgeable-risk.pdf directing people to low carbon properties. Individuals and organisations at these three levels must be rowing in the same direction for ESG to take hold in a place, each nudging the community towards adoption of Future Homes.

3. Mobilise collective action. Sustainability requires collective action where many groups are part of problems and solutions. Future Homes will work only if property owners, suppliers, policy makers, financiers etc are coordinated in their messages and actions to deliver low carbon homes at scale, despite di ering goals and resources3. This requires finding ways to mobilise and engage each on their own terms but all in support of the same programme of place-making.

4. Support diverse values. Multi-criteria analysis helps people understand the reasoning behind a community action. There is a crucial step where the analyst assigns value to each economic, environmental, social and governance attribute being considered. A place helps residents understand how values di er between people, and finds ways to let those values be accommodated while ensuring they are not at cross-purposes.

5. Procure conspicuously. People follow behaviours they see around them. The procurement practices of government, other large institutions and one’s neighbours help the market for low carbon buildings develop to where economies of scale emerge. And then as other community leaders jump on board, public signposts show where these solutions have been procured and nudge others onto the same path4

6. Move beyond care to duty of care. A well designed place takes residents on a journey from caring (I care about Cambridge and want it to be a vibrant place) to executing a duty of care (I incorporate ESG principles into everything

I do in Cambridge). Investing in cultural spaces is an e ective way to stimulate that journey by creating social cohesion. Too often, we design our communities with housing and economic development in mind, while paying little attention to how we express shared cultural values. Self-regulating places where people gather and celebrate shared community visions help them care about those visions and carry out their duty of care.

7. Strip signifiers from the signified. People confuse their real goal (warmth) with how they traditionally meet that goal (turning up the heat). The signifier (thermostat) slips in front of the signified (warmth) without us noticing. A place helps people see this slippage, remove the signifier and replace it with alternative ways to reach the same goal (A Future Home?).

8. Esse Quam Videri: The motto of a successful place is: “To be, rather than to seem” (Cicero). Institutions rarely monitor to see whether their actions have produced the desired e ect. The result: a programme remains on the shelf long past its sell-by date. A place contains robust monitoring systems for each ESG attribute, displays these results publically and follows a process of adaptive management with mid-course corrections as data flow in.

These are just some quick thoughts on how a space such as a development of Future Homes can become a place. We will know if this transition has been successful when everyone in the community (i) understands how that community embodies ESG (and where it is failing), (ii) uses their personal actions to influence the ESG credentials, (iii) nudges others towards taking the best actions and (iv) finds the necessary support and resources to do so.

3The Cambridge Retrofit programme was built on this idea, which you can see at communitycarbonreduction.net, followed by choosing the Cambridge Retrofit link in the navigation

4Consider the Cambridge Climate Map produced by Cambridge Carbon Footprint, found at https:// cambridgecarbonfootprint.org/map