Shaping the city of the future: the importance of place to a city

Space and place are often used interchangeably, as a means of referring to a physical location. However, whilst space is more synonymous with location (where something is); place focuses on what it is like to be there.
The concept of place is important to a city as it foregrounds the link between social and spatial urban fabric. Place has a role within wider societal processes such as capitalism and globalisation because it allows us to re-think traditional perceptions of what a city can be.

The real vitality of a city lies in its diversity, architectural variety, street life and human scale, a view shared by Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. However, existing research often interprets the urban as ‘static’ or ‘empty’ even though such places are heavily influenced by people’s activities and agency. Through such static and reactionary considerations of place, a challenge becomes apparent in the traditional process of urbanisation which is that it tends to produce spatial structures prioritising the recreation of capital through the separation of social exchanges from the economic activity - leaving ordinary urban dwellers powerless in the face of mobile capital.

The city of the future will depend less on buildings and space and more on the reorganisation of ‘place’ as spatial conditions in which social and economic exchanges happen without time-space separation. Sustainability lies in the social value of place within the city to which it belongs.

Place and place-making is not a solution to structural determinants but as concepts they offer a powerful lens through which we can start to re-think the process of urbanisation.