Community By Design

Supporting community engagement in designing places that work for people

Human-centred placemaking and social value strategy for developers and regeneration projects.

This people first model brings together over 30 years’ experience in community engagement, positive psychology, behaviour change and social care helping to shape inclusive, meaningful, and sustainable developments.

Turning developments into thriving communities

I bring a range of approaches that honour the existing character, culture, and communities in regeneration projects. Supporting best practice in placekeeping (protecting what matters most), place strengthening (building on community assets), place reimagining (co-creating new futures), or place belonging (fostering emotional connection and safety), working alongside developers, councils, and local residents to ensure that people are at the heart of every decision.

Strengthening places through inclusive, trauma-informed, community engagement that recognises the people and stories already rooted there.

Every place has a story — and people already living it

Placekeeping

• Supporting, enhancing, and sustaining the qualities of a place that already exist.
• You want to centre stewardship, continuity, and care.
• Not making a place, but keeping it — with care and intention.
  • Dr. Beth Perry & colleagues, Sheffield Hallam University
    

Place Strengthening

• Recognising existing assets and working with communities to amplify what’s already working.
• You want to highlight growth without implying erasure.
• Positive, strengths-based.
  • ABCD Asset Based Community Development

Place Reimagining

• Co-creating new possibilities with residents rooted in what the place already means to them.
• There’s a need for change, but respect for heritage is vital.
• Visionary, participatory.

Place Belonging

• Prioritising emotional connection and identity with a place.
• You’re focused on psychological safety, inclusion, and social fabric.
• Human-centred, co-production.