ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three interconnected place themes that should work harmoniously but are disconnected in practice. First, strategic thinking on the built environment; second, urban development; and third, urban living. This chapter aims to explain the relevance of this disconnect on placemaking and impact on people and communities. Written from a professional built environment perspective, it reflects on the fitness of UK urban planning to deliver effective placemaking. Rapid global urbanisation during the nineteenth century created immense public health concerns. However, the UK’s new professions of public health and urban planning found themselves travelling separate paths, one concerned with population wellbeing, the other economic growth. Concurrently, the sciences of evolutionary and environmental psychology were also developing. While insights from these fields have synergy with public health, they have had little influence on urban planning. Entering the twenty-first century, we are witnessing failure of our existing urban models, especially in terms of population health. In this context, the author argues that the time has come for urban planning to be underpinned by the social sciences so that strategic thinking and placemaking is nuanced with an understanding of our intrinsic needs, responses to place, sustainable behaviours, and life choices.
