Why real estate makes places better

This article was written for EG’s Starting Out in Real Estate supplement, click here to view the digital edition >> COMMENT If you think about your favourite places that you visit, what makes them special to you? The places you go with your friends. Favourite parks you visit. The shops you go to. The places you eat and drink. The route you walk your dog. Your home and the neighbourhood you grew up in. What exactly is it that makes you love those places? Do they have the right balance of things to do, like shops, gyms and cafés? Or convenient transport links and cycle routes? Do they have lots of places to meet friends, and plenty of green space? Do they feel safe to walk around, whether it is during the day or at night? Among the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life, you may not have given this a great deal of thought, but it’s what fuels us every day in the work we do – everything from creating beautiful green spaces and designing modern workspaces to getting the right mix of brands in a shopping centre or on the high street. Community first Putting these components in the right place requires careful planning, balancing the needs of today with those of future generations, listening to local people, considering the needs of businesses and evaluating the environmental impact. We see our role in society as contributing to the long-term wellbeing and success of towns and cities, working with local people to learn how we can enhance what is working and to help improve what isn’t. To create amazing places that bring joy and opportunity for future generations. A project I’m involved in is Mayfield in Manchester. It is a 24-acre forgotten part of Manchester that had been closed off to the city for decades. The very first thing we wanted to do was bring the community back in to reconnect with this place, so we opened Europe’s biggest electronic music venue. It’s called the Depot – you may even have visited it and been one of the 2m guests who have enjoyed that space. The reason we welcomed the community in first was to bring back an emotional connection to this important part of Manchester. We then created a beautiful park in the middle of the site, with 140 trees and hundreds of thousands of plants. We opened it with the help of local schoolchildren from across the region – a huge moment for us and the community, as Manchester had not had a new public park of this kind for more than a century. Making local voices heard Across the UK, we are busy imagining how we can reconnect places that will be brilliant long into the future, but we cannot do it alone. It is vital to bring the community in right from the start. In Lewisham in south-east London, for example, our project team has assembled a stakeholder group called the Design Champions. The members all live locally, and our project teams meet with them regularly to show them the emerging plans and get their views on the new places that we are creating. So next time you visit your favourite place, ask yourself this – what makes this place great, and what could I do differently to help shape the successful places of tomorrow? Laura Percy is senior development director at Landsec U+I Image © Mark Waugh