By: Erik van ’t Klooster for www.placebrandz.com

In the third episode of our blog series on inspiring places I would like to draw attention to the environmental factors of a place. We all know places where we would rather not reside or where we don’t feel at home. Maybe it is because we don’t like the architecture. Maybe because it is filthy and messy. Maybe because it is not vibrant with people or it has a negative atmosphere. Often the dynamics of such places take the form of a downward spiral.

It doesn’t seem difficult to mention ingredients that makes us want to avoid certain places. However, it is more challenging to identify environmental ingredients which make a place “inspiring”. To start gaining insight in the environmental factors that make a place more vibrant I would like to recommend the book “The death and life of great American cities” by Jane Jacobs. This book can help place branding professionals to look beyond traditional place marketing campaigns and start developing innovative solutions.

In her book, Jane Jacobs examines the role and design of environmental factors such as parks, streetlights, sidewalks, business, and pedestrian streets. For each factor (or combination of factors) she explains how it has an impact on the vibrancy, safety and prosperity of a particular neighborhood. In particular, she stresses the importance of diversity. This diversity doesn’t address merely ethnic compositions but more importantly the value of different buildings, different residences, different businesses, and different numbers of people in an area at different times.

Whether you are a government official dealing with a neighborhood or a manager of an public space, I believe this book can help you to find a new perspective on “what makes your community tick?”. Taking the position of an office manager this triggers several questions, such as: where are the meeting spaces in my office located? How vibrant are these places during the day? How are my visitors welcomed and what is their first impression of my place? How can we change some of the environmental factors to make our place a better experience?

As an example, look at the picture below. It is a university building of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, where I resided on exchange in fall 2002.



In the front you see the lounge area with blue couches, positioned next to a main passage way of the campus area. On the left is the library study area, and on the right there are some cafeteria and shops. The diversity of these four functions make it a vibrant place all day long where it is easy to meet many people and develop new activities. I find examples like this very interesting as they can show us how to design more inspiring places.

Of course, we are very interested in your favorite inspiring place! You can comment on this post, make a new blogpost or join our discussion in the placebrandz circle. Please read `How to use this website´ and contact us in order to join the circle.