Placemaking At One Central

About the project

Imagine six inner city blocks full of diverse activities, social enterprise experiments, public amenities – all exploring different ways we can grow community now, and sustain it in the future residential development to come. This was Placemaking At One Central, a partnership between Gap Filler and Fletcher Living to help create great central city residential communities.

This was the first time in New Zealand that a major developer partnered with community and social innovators to design and run a programme of community-building activities at the pre-development stage.

Many of the large central city sites would not be developed on for four years or more. This programme grew community and built identity on these sites awaiting future development, always with a view to how the social outcomes could be maintained in the future development to come.

My role

As CEO of the delivery agency I led the design of a placemaking strategy and indicative programme for Fletcher Living in July-October 2016, which included spatial analysis, activity monitoring, community engagement, area asset mapping, branding and marketing strategy, gaining consensus on the programme aims & outcomes, long-term integration strategies, and 30 creative concepts for projects and partnerships that could be delivered as part of this placemaking strategy.

In May 2017 I began to oversee delivery of this strategy: to progress many of the creative concepts through developed design, detailed design and delivery; to maintain all the sites and assets delivered; and to continue generating new creative concepts to deliver as the context of the city and the development sites and timeline evolves.

A key driver was to involve as many existing businesses, community groups and organisations as possible as project partners and leaders; my role was often to create the framework for others to deliver projects of their own that aligned with the programme values and strategy.