Community and place

Work and community have long been intertwined. Centuries ago, people worked in the communities in which they lived, and in many cultures and countries, they still do. Mixed-use city centres formed bustling ecosystems, anchored by cultural-enhancing and community-connecting venues such as churches, town halls, marketplaces and public houses.

However, with globalisation, these ecosystems have been supplanted. Workers commuted into cities to work and then went home to the suburbs; Businesses sought customers overseas, rather than on their doorstep; and  communities previously constructed around multi-dimensional interactions became dormitory suburbs and mono-cultural CBDs. 

The pandemic pushed a mass adoption of hybrid working and forced a reevaluation of the role of community. The basis for human connection is rooted in our biology and our evolutionary need to be together; to be included within the tribe. There is an abundance of academic research that links a lack of social connection to mental health disorders and poor quality of life. Community is at the heart of civilisation and central to happiness and survival. 

‘Place’ contextualises community. The scale of place informs the nature of communities that develop there. People in small, isolated settlements tend to develop deep community ties with a small number of people, whereas people who live in large cities tend to create looser connections with a larger number of people and ‘familiar strangers’.

Physical attributes also shape communities. Amenities such as parks and leisure venues, football pitches and coffee shops provide the vehicles in which social identification and community collisions develop. Their structures confer symbolism and shape community, as workplaces do. 

As hybrid working has multiplied the possibilities of work, so the communities in which workers interact have become more varied. Reworking the Workplace proposes four modern work communities:

Social Communities – The boundaries of the workplace and its surrounding amenity have become porous. Workers thrive from deliberate engagement with external communities. People used to come into offices because they had to. Now people come into town to work, but also to engage in the broader spectrum of activities that city centres offer. In this context external amenity and places to build meaningful communities with others becomes an important component of the office worker’s value proposition.

Entrepreneurial Communities – The strength of a business comes through a connected ecosystem of suppliers, customers and competitors. Agglomerations add value to place and tend to be formed as communities of mutual interest.  Particularly this is the case of entrepreneurial communities which focus on small or start up, creative, technology and science-based occupiers.  In contrast to more mature agglomerations, entrepreneurial communities feature fast growth, fast fail and restart businesses. This dynamic environment relies on a high volume of shared information, transferable labour and mutual support. Entrepreneurial Communities rely not only on purposeful placemaking but also on creative programming and community outreach.

Temporal Communities – Not all communities need to be enduring. Experience or project specific communities can drive value as a catalyst for innovation or regeneration. Large-scale development projects can take a decade to plan and deliver. In the meantime, the affected city quarters can be left to stymie. Modern placemaking strategies address this through the creation of ‘meanwhile uses, pop-ups’ and other activation activities.  This helps to give a sense of place, providing hints to the future brand of the location, and to provide a social nexus for local communities to engage in otherwise forgotten and excluded spaces.

A balance needs to be found between creating new opportunities and retaining that which makes a place special. Temporal Communities, help to avoid ‘wiped clean’ gentrification.

The communities that form around these meanwhile uses may transition into both permanent work and social communities over time. Some act as a bridge to the future. 

Regenerative Communities – As uses shift and places take on new purposes, the galvanisation and custodianship of new communities generate both economic and social benefits.

As the work model shifts and sustainability standards increase, the rate of obsolescence in yesterday’s office stock is anticipated to rise significantly; in fact 76% of assets in EMEA risk obsolescence by 2030 with new energy certification compliance requirements. In previous industrial shifts, economic obsolescence has created challenges for both communities and the physical fabric of cities. In the same way that factories of the industrial era gave way to the lofts of the service economy, so new uses will be found for outdated offices. 

This transformation is already underway in the retail sector where we see high quality, well located high streets and shopping centers pivot from transactional to experience retail. Meanwhile many secondary retail assets are being repurposed for residential uses.  Retailers such as the John Lewis Partnership, are finding new uses for underutilised upper retail floors, such as residential and flex offices. 

The bigger challenge for both society and the real estate sector is to establish, manage and curate the new communities that emerge from the ashes. Increasingly as master developers take longer term custodianship roles with ongoing responsibility for the sites they deliver, and as they are judged by their own stakeholders on ESG criteria, well considered investments in placemaking and community creation are critical.