Prelims

Half Title Page

Placemaking

Title Page

Placemaking: People, Properties, Planning

Edited by

David Higgins

Higgins Research, UK

And

Peter J. Larkham

Birmingham City University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2025

Editorial matter and selection © 2025 David Higgins and Peter J. Larkham.

Individual chapters © 2025 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83753-131-8 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83753-130-1 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83753-132-5 (Epub)

List of Figures and Tables

About the Editors

Peter J. Larkham is a Professor of Planning at Birmingham City University. He is an urban geographer by background, with degrees from the Universities of Manchester and Birmingham. He has published extensively on how towns and cities change over time, focusing particularly on the changes after the destruction of the Second World War and on aspects of urban conservation.

David Higgins was Professor of Real Estate at Birmingham City University, and he is now a Real Estate Consultant, has founded Higgins Research, and is a Visiting Academic at several universities. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and his research interests include property marketing, the role of space and place in the future of the office, property forecasting, and extreme risk events and their impact on real estate markets.

About the Contributors

Alex Albans is a Research Fellow at Birmingham City University's West Midlands National Park Lab. He has a background in historical geography, landscape architecture, and conflict mediation. Alex's research interests include site interpretation and analysis in design process pedagogy, and an emerging enquiry into reconciliation as an approach to addressing global landscape challenges.

Chris Berry is a Lecturer in Real Estate, teaching on the undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the Birmingham City University. He has a background in public sector real estate consultancy, and his research interests focus on local authority investment and operational property portfolios and bringing about regeneration through public funding initiatives.

Claudia E Carter is a Professor in Environmental Governance and Planning at Birmingham City University and a Chartered Town Planner. Her research concerns the links between climate, ecological, and social-technological changes and what sustainable development actually means. Claudia's main research interests are the opportunities and barriers to low-impact living and the emergence of transition initiatives and economic–political transformation propositions to facilitate a low-carbon, sufficiency-oriented economy and society that enables ecological recovery.

Mike Grace is a Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham City University and a Chartered Town Planner. He has extensive experience in land use planning and placemaking from working in UK local authorities and national government agencies. He was formerly the Head of Planning Services at Carlisle City Council and the Head of Profession for Sustainable Land Use at Natural England. Mike's research interests include smart sustainable and green cities including the development of national standards for urban green infrastructure for England.

Silvia Gullino is a Professor in City Making at Birmingham City University. Her research relates to policies and practices of city and community development, with a focus on networks and self-organized groups, through digital technologies to make cities more inclusive and sustainable.

Miguel Hincapié Triviño is a Lecturer in Urban Planning and Sustainability at Birmingham City University. He has a PhD in Urban Planning from University College London. His research interests include community and social actors' participation in city planning, the conservation of cultural landscapes, and the role of public institutions in urban design quality.

Vahid Javidroozi is an Associate Professor in Smart City Systems at Birmingham City University, working on various research projects in the field of information systems engineering, smart city development, digital transformation, artificial intelligence (AI), process modeling, ERP, and supply chain management.

Emma Love is a Senior Lecturer at Birmingham City University and teaches on the Building Surveying courses. Her research explores the sociocultural aspects of graffiti, exploring its role as a dynamic and often controversial component of urban environments. Emma's academic journey is marked by a passion for understanding how graffiti both reflects and influences the identity of urban spaces, exploring the intersection of this subculture and public discourse.

Kathryn Moore is a Professor of Landscape Architecture at Birmingham City University and a Past President of the International Federation of Landscape Architects. She has published extensively on design quality, theory, education, and practice. Her ideas for a West Midlands National Park are receiving widespread support in the region and nationally. She was the Chair of the pilot HS2 rail link landscape specification guidelines and served as a member of the UK Government HS2 Design Review Panel from 2015 to 2024.

Amanda Mundell is a Senior Lecturer teaching Planning and Property Law at Birmingham City University. Having spent her early career in a commercial property law department, her research interest relates to the application of planning law and policy in land use decision-making, with a particular focus on community and individual interaction with the planning system. Most recently, she has developed an interest in the use of nose-work dogs in the identification of endangered species on proposed development sites.

Hazel Nash is a Consultant in planning law, formerly a Senior Lecturer in Planning and Property Law at Birmingham City University. With a background in professional practice, her research interests sit within the application of law and policy in land use planning and real estate management. In particular, Hazel's interests lie in permitted development rights and use classes, farm diversification, and the role of environmental certification in the assessment and conditioning of nonresidential development proposals.

Débora Picorelli Zukeran is an Urban Planner who has practiced in Brazil, Germany, and South Africa. She is currently a Doctoral Researcher at Birmingham City University, researching community-led public spaces. Her research interests include participatory planning, public spaces, placemaking, and informal urbanism.

Heidi Seetzen is an Artist and a Lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University. Her artistic practice is predominantly sculptural ‒ using everyday materials (such as fencing wire) to explore human experience and emotion. Her academic research focuses on urban change, creative practices and placemaking, as well as barriers to social inclusion and forms of community participation.

Peter Wood was a Senior Lecturer in Real Estate at Birmingham City University, and he is now part of the real estate team at Oxford Brookes University. Peter remains embedded in industry with his research focus on hybrid real estate portfolios and delivering alpha + returns in a risk-adjusted manner, bringing this knowledge both into the classroom and back to industry.

Preface

In recent years, anyone with a professional interest in the built environment will have become aware of the idea of “placemaking” – particularly in town planning, urban design, or property development. It has become prominent in planning education and academic research, where it has also spread into other disciplines. So, when the “property, planning and policies” academic team at Birmingham City University was considering how to reposition our work to engage interest ‒ with colleagues at BCU and other universities, with practitioners, and with current and prospective students ‒ placemaking became a useful focus on which most of us could agree most of the time. We initially collected our thoughts, drawing on our interests and knowledge, and produced a short illustrated booklet aimed at a professional readership. This has been the nucleus of the current book: much extended and updated, with an interdisciplinary focus, seeking to extend placemaking ideas ‒ but still the product of the BCU team.

David Higgins

Peter J. Larkham

Stratford on Avon, 2024