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The built environment shapes communities and plays a major part in community wellbeing, but the challenges associated with creating the communities people want are complex.

Creating Communities Together was formed by a group of built environment professionals to look at ways of thinking and working differently, to deliver desirable and resilient community-centred outcomes.

It’s ‘when’ as much as ‘what’

It’s ‘when’ as much as ‘what’

It’s fantastic that we hear so much about the effort and investment channelled into energy efficiency, renewables and large-scale generation capacity, but what we don’t hear so much about is the timing of our energy demand. And it begs the question – when we look at decarbonisation and energy resilience, should we be focusing more on ‘when’, as opposed to ‘what’? The cost and carbon intensity of our electricity varies significantly - often spectacularly - yet we...

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WTF is ESG?

WTF is ESG?

For a decade or more, investment decisions in financial markets have been informed by environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) criteria. The clever people who help make such decisions have long understood that ESG credentials correlate with long term financial performance. An active disclosure culture helps keep organisations ‘honest’. Multiple corporate scandals which resulted in eye watering drops in valuation we’re predicted by ESG screening. The net...

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Rediscovering Local High Streets: A Review of Societal and Lifestyle Trends

Rediscovering Local High Streets: A Review of Societal and Lifestyle Trends

Changing Retail Habits In May 2007 internet sales accounted for 3.1% of all retail sales, in May 2020 they accounted for 32.8 % . Whilst this has dropped back slightly in the months after the first  lockdown eased, internet sales still account for close to a third of all retail sales in the UK. In addition, we know that since 2015 there has also been an overall decline in high street...

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Making new connections

Property development is often separated from local, social and economic considerations at all but the most superficial level.
What if needs and challenges were shaped by in-depth discussions between different sectors? 

Embedded engagement

The engagement process is typically linear and frequently confrontational, with suspicion about motives on both sides.
What if round table discussions were an integral part of an integrated process?

Living Systems

The natural world and the living systems that fundamentally affect community resilience are often overlooked in the design process.
What if living systems were included as an integral consideration from the outset?

Reconceptualising value

Community value and investment value are often viewed as opposing forces, with one sacrificed to satisfy the other.
What types of financial solutions might be available if assumptions and parameters were revisited?

Complex problems have no easy answers. Solutions emerge from open and iterative experimentation, something that is particularly hard to achieve with built environment projects. To make it easier to explore new ways of working together and new solutions, the Creating Communities Together Team is working in partnership with Councils and local organisations to explore possibilities in a series of case studies. If you would like to know more, please do get in touch.