Recently, I came across a quote from Walt Disney where he said: “You can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” It made me think about the connection between people and spaces – how a building can be beautiful and well designed, but it means nothing if it isn’t somewhere people choose to spend their time.
When the pandemic forced people apart, there was a reconsideration about buildings, spaces and how they are being used. Across central London, office attendance has settled below pre-pandemic levels at around 60-70% meaning that the presence of workers is no longer guaranteed in the way it used to be, however, conversely, footfall is concentrating in a small number of locations in the capital – the West End, major transport hubs, and large mixed-use developments – which are seen as destinations and places where people are spending significant time rather than simply passing through. This idea of spaces as places is known as placemaking.
“It’s important to create and curate a place that people want to come and spend time, whether it’s students, families, tourists or workers.” – Leo Shapland, CEO of King’s Cross
Placemaking is often discussed as a matter of design, but, in reality, it’s more about how a place functions over time – who comes, when they come, how long they stay and whether they return. With over 70% of retail sales in the UK still taking place in physical stores despite the growth of e-commerce, the performance of these environments remains closely tied to how people choose to use them. That extends beyond architecture into the mix of uses, the way space is organised, and the activity layered on top. Offices, retail, leisure and residential are brought together, supported by public space that is designed to be used, not simply passed through. In many large-scale developments, that can account for 30-40% of the total site, reflecting its role as a core part of the proposition. Unlike a traditional real estate model, which delivers a finished asset, placemaking creates an environment that continues to evolve once construction is complete.
It is here that it splits most clearly from conventional real estate thinking. Historically, success has been measured through occupancy, rent and yield: metrics rooted in B2B transactions between landlord and tenant. Placemaking operates against a different set of measures like footfall, frequency of visits and dwell time, because these indicate whether space is actually being used. In consumer-facing settings some metrics indicate that even a 1% increase in dwell time can translate directly into higher spend, indicating how valuable the user-experience is in how these spaces are presented, marketed and managed.
King’s Cross is one of the clearest examples of how this plays out in practice. The 67-acre redevelopment has been designed as a mixed-use environment rather than a collection of individual assets, bringing together offices, retail, residential, education and hospitality within a network of streets, squares and canal side spaces. Around 40% of the site is dedicated to the public realm with the space acting as the organising principle rather than the individual sites. Workers, students, residents and visitors use the area at different points across the day, with activity extending well beyond traditional office hours. Granary Square alone attracts millions of visitors each year, with touches such as the outdoor cinema on the canal giving visitors a reason beyond shopping to make the trip. As Leo Shapland, CEO of Kings Cross told me: “It’s important to create and curate a place that people want to come and spend time, whether it’s students, families, tourists or workers.”
In New York, Bryant Park has been transformed from an underused space into one of the most active urban environments in the city, attracting around 12 million visitors each year through a combination of programming, flexible design and active management. The space is continually reworked – film screenings, seasonal markets, an ice rink in winter – ensuring that there is always a reason to return. In Singapore, Jewel Changi applies the same principle at a different scale, combining retail, dining and leisure within an airport setting to create a destination in its own right, with footfall reaching tens of millions annually. Data from retail analytics firms suggests that footfall has become increasingly concentrated in a smaller number of higher-performing locations, with prime destinations outperforming secondary areas reinforcing how these types of environments are pulling disproportionate levels of attention.
What sits behind these examples is a fundamentally different operating model. In more traditional approaches, a building can become relatively static once it is complete – tenants are secured, leases are held and management focuses on maintenance and cost control. Placemaking requires something much more active. Spaces are curated, programmed and adjusted over time in response to how people are using them, whilst tenant mix evolves, events and activations are introduced to drive activity at different times of day, and public areas are managed more like venues than shared spaces. In that sense, value is now created through ongoing intervention.
“It’s the rational story that opens the conversation, but the emotional story opens wallets.” – Leo Shapland, CEO of King’s Cross
The influence of this type of thinking can already be seen in the office sector. While not placemaking in the urban sense, the rise of flexible workspace models such as WeWork, shifted expectations of what an office should offer. The focus moved away from square footage and lease terms towards experience – design amenities, flexibility and a sense of community. More importantly, it coincided with a broader change in behaviour. Offices are no longer competing solely with other offices, but also with option of not coming in at all. Hybrid working has introduced a level of choice that did not previously exist, meaning the office needed to become somewhere people might choose to spend time, which has become increasingly essential in the post-pandemic world.
What follows is the reweighting of where value sits within the organisation running these spaces, and this is where placemaking begins to borrow more directly from the consumer sectors. In retail, hospitality and leisure, success has always depended on how a proposition is positioned, curated and refreshed to keep people coming back. The same logic is now being applied to places which are beginning to adopt characteristics of these sectors – curation from retail, experience from hospitality, and increasingly, storytelling and attention management from media. The role of marketing moves much closer to the centre, shaping how a development is understood, experienced and revisited over time, actively creating demand rather than just promotion. As Leo tells me: “As the saying goes, it’s the rational story that opens the conversation, but the emotional story opens wallets. Everything needs to be more than functional; it needs to be experiential.”
In many ways, Disney’s observation feels more relevant now than ever. It is no longer enough to simply design and deliver a building or complex; the people need to be there to bring it to life. As consumer expectations for architecturally beautiful, safe and accessible places to live, play and work grow, these multipurpose spaces will continue to grow with them, creating places consumers both need – and want.
