The issues of ‘place’ and ‘placemaking’ are central to the reform of the Scottish Planning System. Place and infrastructure form a key element of the recently published Scottish Government Economic Strategy. Thinking about place and delivering better places is challenging. The recent Delivering Better Places research suggests to deliver better places in Scotland, better integration of the processes of ‘marketmaking’ and ‘placemaking’ are important. Central to all of this is a simple question: what kind of places are we trying to create?

Since 2009, the Urbanism team at A+DS have been working with five planning authorities and communities across Scotland to explore what visionary and ambitious plans are, and how they can be achieved. This work took the form of partnership working on place visioning, using a variety of participatory techniques. The results of these exercises have been written up by Andrew Guest to share learning as a series of short reports.

To read more about the reports and the case studies, please visit the A+DS website.