All great places are memorable. They are the ones you never want to leave and yearn to return to.

When we look at memorable places, most often it is not the physical design of the place alone that makes them a great place to stop and spend time. Instead, we see successful places as being those that have a strong focus on the human experience of place.

Social connection is a fundamental human need.

Development of ties with family, friends and the community are strongly correlated with happiness, security, support, and a sense of purpose.

Our local main streets are the places of shared memory where people still come together to meet and support local small businesses. Our regional main streets reflect our local image, our community pride, and our economic prosperity. They are the cultural, social and economic heart of our Regional Towns.

So what's the problem?

In Australia, the nationwide trend in retail decline is seeing our traditional main streets and activity centres struggle, while our suburbs burst with population growth. Signs and indicators of decline are clear to see across our local centres and often include:

–  declining footfall
–  underutilised public spaces
–  struggling traders
–  increased vacancies
–  sub-optimal tenancy mixes

These trends negatively affect the desire for private investment and further reduce the incentive for locals and visitors to come and linger.

Where have we gone wrong?

When we see the tell tail signs of our urban centres and Main Streets in a cycle of decline, we need to break the downward cycle, so we can see our local centres thriving again.

Despite the clear community preference toward user ‘experience’, the industry continues to rely almost exclusively on the physical infrastructure when revitalising places. Often, developers or local authorities take on a misguided approach to the solution, throwing expensive capital expenditure works at projects “starchitecture”, which incorporates functional design but fails to design for the community it’s created on behalf of. It is time to take a different approach.

Rebuilding social capital

Researchers and planners have long emphasised the importance of enhancing social capital amongst the community to improve quality of life, and in this post-COVID world, the need to responsively rebuild is more important than ever.

Our public spaces in our cities and towns have always contributed to the quality of our lives. A large part of our social and economic life occurs in our public streets, squares and gathering spaces. This places people at the centre of any great town. Creating great spaces and specifically great “Main Streets” for people to come, to meet, to live, to share, is at the core of what makes great regional towns work.

Our local Main Streets tell us who we are and how the past has shaped us. They are the places of shared memory where people still come together to meet and support local small businesses.

The Third Place

Community infrastructure (places and spaces) where people ‘go’ to experience that social connection are known as ‘third places’. This is the community-building term for those external social spaces we use which are not ‘home’ and not ‘work’. When we shop, we want convenience. When we want more than that, we seek a third place to connect with family, friends, and the community.

The complex layering of experiences within our centres is fundamental to creating and maintaining active, safe and healthy communities. When done well, these places can effectively:

–  build social capital
–  promote social equity
–  celebrate local talents and interests
–  increase feelings of inclusiveness and belonging
–  encourage people to linger after they have arrived
–  bolster local economic drivers
–  strengthen community ties
–  increase creative interactions

Place-led approach to reflect local communities

True activation of our centres will require a multi-layered approach that considers quick wins as well as long-term shifts, undertaken hand in hand with community. Through the process of testing and trialling ideas, and bringing people into the journey of revitalisation, you build trust with the local community.

By employing tools and methods which balance physical infrastructure and amenity with social infrastructure and experience, a holistic and sustainable eco-system emerges; a creative, business and community network supported by processes and council leaders who enable these groups to collaborate and problem-solve at the local level.

Fourfold Studio and Vee design have designed a unique place-led approach to legacy-building regional revitalisation.

Build it and they will come

The shift towards domestic tourism offers great opportunities for regional towns to prosper. This potential to bolster economic drivers within regional towns by increasing “visitability” provides shifting local pride in the rich histories and cultures of our regional places.

A place-led approach in close collaboration with the community to test and trial concepts provides not only a cost-effective solution to test design ideas, but provides localised data, which builds confidence for developers and Council, and builds both trust and long-term buy-in from residents.

The time to act is now, given the current State and Federal Government support and investment focus in these regional centres with a variety of grant funding available.