Place-making (creating public spaces that promote people’s health, happiness, and well-being) is a lost art. Many villages, towns and cities bear witness to successful past strategies, from the legacy of roman towns such as Bath or Lincoln, to world-class university towns, such as Oxford, Cambridge, or Durham. In contrast, the post-war planning model has generally fallen short, allowing itself to be dominated by an obsession with car access, suburban sprawl, and the imposition of modernist and other building fads.
We need to rekindle lost place-making knowhow but reinterpret it for today’s context. It is especially important that a diverse and representative share of a place’s population participates in place-making, via digital consultation tools. We should also have room for trial and error, and an iterative approach. Place-making is complex and emergent, and some of the worst mistakes in place strategies have come from overly confident command and control approaches.
Just as failed transport and housing policies were copied from city to city, so can success breed imitation and further success. We need ‘pioneers’ with the right conditions, interest and capability to demonstrate what a talent magnet is, and what it can achieve. As evidence of success unfolds, we should encourage a host of imitators, and be prepared to scale our strategy as the movement gains momentum. Successful place-based strategies are the missing link in better ageing. Reducing pollutants improves asthma, cancer, heart disease and dementia. Walkable and bikeable places promote higher activity at all ages. Reducing the flow and speed of traffic promotes improved community spirit, driving higher levels of interaction within and between generations. Reinventing place allows each of us to rethink our own purpose and find a way to contribute to the new direction of our own community.
Success in building a string of talent magnets could be followed by turning an entire region of the UK into talent nets. Why not conceive of a Danish-style biking superhighway from coast to coast? How about a rewilding corridor network from town to town, supporting a return to our ancestral biodiversity? Could 1,000 or more places in the UK become a new interpretation of Alfred’s burhs, self-sustaining market cities, 15 miles apart, anchors for their surrounding communities, connected via active travel networks, rewilding corridors, trains, and roads?
The UK is well positioned to gain from the cloud shift. We have a talent-rich workforce, we attract global talent and we are advanced in cloud technology. The UK has a critical mass of villages, boroughs, towns, and cities with the historical, geographical, and human foundations to become talent magnets for cloud workforces, their families, and their service providers. We can, with the right approach, also tackle inequality, pollution, loneliness, and related social challenges.
Our land achieved it once before, during the Industrial Revolution, even if imperfectly. The new revolution would, by design, orient around healthy people and a healthy planet, avoiding the mistakes of the prior wave. It would make this land a better place for ageing, helping both the current old and the future generations that also aim to age well.