ABSTRACT
Environmentalists don’t change cities; developers do. Consequently, place-improvement won’t happen unless it’s profitable. Chapter 16 discusses ways to ensure all parties benefit. Besides new forms of tenure, co-ownership and financing to keep prices affordable and resale profits within the community, parts of every site enjoy advantages others don’t, so price-banding broadens price range. Ethical embodied-values increase community support, boosting projects’ resilience. With communities’ leverage to steer development, these are economic, social, ecological and ethical win-wins.
Related to this, public-realm investment can produce disproportionately large social and land-value benefits. Traditionally, public-space life produced places, generating the surrounding buildings. Whereas building-consciousness considers land as opportunity to site buildings, place-consciousness focuses on space between them and on contextual aspects. Liveability depends on community, security and delight. Essential for pride-in-place – hence value – sustenance for soul, spirit and body links profitability to ethics. This broadens the sustainability debate beyond the material.
