GP 59: I Just Love Places: with Hilary Satchwell of Tibbalds

Hello and welcome to the Grow Places Podcast, where we explore the virtuous circle of people, growth, and place. Brought to you by Grow Places and hosted by our founder, Tom Larson. Hilary, thanks very much for joining me today on the Grow Places Podcast. It's great to see you here at your Amazing Offices.

And a really interesting conversation I think we're going to have today about your skill set, your varied role, and also the fact that you're operating across the UK in towns and cities. And so really interested to get into it. So to start us off, then why don't you give your take on yourself, what you do, and both yourself and Tybald's. Brilliant.

Okay. Yeah, we'll do. Thank you. So Hilary Sachewell, I'm an architect by background, but I've been an urban designer for a very, very, very long time.

But I urban designer is a very broad field of what that means. So I'm really interested in any part of planning and design and how we make places that we can think about. Often thinking at the very early stages of projects, so how we set up projects well, how we write briefs, how we do strategies, how we plan places, what should be in them, how we make the mix. And from a Tibble's point of view, we always say that our focus is on people-friendly places, but we're trying to think about it.

If you were planning anything and putting people at the heart of it, how would that cause you to do things differently? What would it make you think about? Increasingly, also we have to think about people and planet, but I don't think you can separate the two really, because what's good for the planet is pretty much good for people. Um, although it's not always true that what's good for people is good for the planet.

So we do try to think about both of those things together a lot more specifically than we perhaps used to. Yeah, yeah. And so so building your business, which I think that that has always come across in your culture as a business. So putting the people, the person at the centre, what does that actually mean then in practice for what we do?

I mean, a really good example of that is a project working on at the moment, which is large-scale housing growth on the edge of an a city. Um, we're thinking about um just literally planning the journeys of different people in that city. So, how would they move about, where would they go, what kind of who would live there, how do we try and make sure that we've got a really varied set of people living there? Um, and actually having conversations about specific people really helps you do that.

So you're not thinking about generic everybody, you're thinking, what if this young girl, how would she get to school? How do we make it so her journey feels safe? Um, and that her, frankly, her parents let her do it. Um, how do we think about the older person?

What if someone in her family live nearby? And what how would we need to plan all of that to work? So thinking really specifically about people's needs, not everybody, but as different types of groups of people that we can think about really helps us to get into that and to make sure we don't just have sort of generic anyone conversations that we are thinking specifically about how different people might feel and behave and be able to um to work, live um and to be interested in the place that they spend time.

Yeah, yeah, really, really interesting. And and and how how do you go about that process, maybe maybe internally as well as as externally? Because we we talk in our industry sometimes about whether it's personas or whether it's stakeholder mapping and this kind of language, which is actually really like positive, I think, that people are engaging in that way. But also we don't ever want to kind of stereotype, do we?

We want to kind of get out and understand what the real people in those specific neighbourhoods are doing. So there's kind of the the theoretical and then the the actual. So how do you actually deal with that yourselves? I think that's a really good question.

I think there always has to be a combination of talking to people directly who might live nearby, who might be people who live on or around the site, or people who fit in different kinds of focus or other groups that are are kind of similar. So you you do have to have lots of conversations with people. They don't always agree, they don't always like what you've got to say, but you do have to listen and you have to understand what's motivating people. Sometimes a lot of the concern from those conversations is just is about change and is about growth, and that's something that we need to, as a society, I think, have bigger conversations about.

So there's a combination of that, but also it's really important that we don't. I don't think that my point of view is everyone else's point of view, and how I see things is not how everyone else sees things or feels things. So I really just encourage the team to like, how do you feel, and how do you think this would make other people feel, so that we are not trying to pretend how other people would be, but kind of use conversations we've had and use our understanding of getting out and having having discussions with people to inform that.

And and just, you know, being interested, being curious. I like the phrase about being curious, like, how do I know that? If that's how I think people would be, how do I know? Could I find another example of somewhere that's done something similar?

How did that work? So really trying to dig into to where things have worked well elsewhere, not just thinking that we've got some groundbreaking answer that just no one's ever thought of before. Yeah, yeah. And are there any examples maybe that come to mind from your experience about where maybe you've Yeah, maybe that that has enriched your process in sort of some senses where you've gone out and you've spoken to people and you've kind of maybe maybe not changed what you've you initially thought, but you've kind of validated it or you've sort of moved the project on in slightly different directions.

There's any examples of it. Always change, actually. Conversations I think always lead to change, and if they're not, then you're not really listening, you're not really um engaging, you're just kind of pretending to. Um sometimes it's about the stage or the time is different.

There's an example I talk about, I probably talk about it quite a lot, where we worked on a project in Camden a long time ago now, probably like 14-15 years ago. It was a state regen project, and um the brief was we had to work out where some additional blocks would be. We'd work we had to run a competition for architects and landscape architects. Um, really great solution.

We had to keep this bull court, and because the residents really, really wanted a bull court, and the problem was it was leading the blocks and the development to be in slightly the wrong place, and actually a resident came up with a really good idea, which is that they said um actually the blocks would be much better over there. And then we had a conversation with other residents where they said we don't necessarily want that bull court, we just want there to always be a bull court, and those two conversations really freed up the idea to say what we need is continuous provision of some kind of bull court so we can move it around, and then we can put the blocks in the places where they really need to be.

So following what seemed to be the brief was leading us to an outcome that sort of didn't really work for everyone, so we had to question it. That whole conversation came at quite a tricky stage with the project because we were quite a long way through, and we all had to look at each other and say, Can we really change this much at that point? And we all agreed that we could, and the client agreed that as well, which was brilliant, and it actually led to a much better project, um, a very award-winning project as well, which is very exciting.

That's great, and it's um yeah, it's a really really good example of that, and um something which else which I picked up on your your website just before this, you've touched on already, you know, creating people-friendly places, but you talked about this notion of being between planning and urban design, and actually that's a really good example we've just given there, isn't it? Where you are so it's it's a fluid process, and um so can you talk a little bit about that? Sort of how you see your role as specialists, you know, what what are you specialists?

Are you generalists? How how do you define that? Um, and then the different strands to your work and and and why the sum is greater than the parts, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah.

It's a really interesting question because we are planners and urban designers, but we're also kind of design um leaders, and we work in both strategic planning, detailed planning applications, outlines, all sorts of things. I think Tibbles has always been a place where good design is indivisible from good planning, which is an old thing that used to be in a bit of planning policy millions of years ago, and you almost can't have a conversation about good planning without understanding the implications of that in terms of place.

So you can't separate the two. And it's really hard. I mean, I don't think we I don't think I can even see the two as being unrelated to each other. Um, so we we will sometimes we're master planners on a project, sometimes we're urban designers, sometimes we are um leading the design team.

But whichever that is, we're always thinking about place and we're always thinking what are the processes that need to happen to do that. Um sometimes we're doing all of those roles, so we're not precious about that. Um, we've got specialists who do all of those different things, and then there's um quite a few of us who kind of work across those areas um quite a bit. So I I just don't see them as divisible from each other.

I d I've I've been at Tibbs a very long time, 29 years, which is a very long time. But I maybe am institutionalized in terms of that's the only way I can see it. Um so I I have to feel optimistic that that we can solve both of them together. And that is the approach that we take.

Yeah. And and do you think that the the environment is conducive to that way of working then in the UK when you think about the um the process of a project, you know, whether it's the way that clients will instruct you or whether it's the way that local authorities will look at um pre-application material or even an application material, you know, how do you see that? Does it does it feel like a really good fit in terms of this this holistic approach, or do you feel like you could get more out of the way that you work if there was sort of slightly different environment to work within?

Um I think that is just generally how we work. You've obviously got to find the right um other design teams, um, other consultants to work with, people who understand that we're all there to be collaborative and to get the best outcome. If people are very protective of like, well, I get to say this and you get to say that, and we can't do this, then maybe that isn't necessarily the ideal situation. Um but I think we've all got to be focused on like what's the outcome here.

The outcome isn't, oh, here's a lovely planning document, or here's a design and access statement, or even here's a planning permission. The outcome is what that place feels like when it's delivered and how well it works. And if everyone, and by that I mean planning officers, architects, design teams, um, clients, if everyone feels that that's the aim, that we're that's what we're here for, then I think that approach fits quite well, fits well with that. I mean, you sometimes sometimes it takes people a while to work out like, why is that planner having an opinion on my design?

Who let them do that? Or why is that master planner having a having a say on this? But actually, if the objective is to get to the best outcome and we are all respectful of each other, um I I think it I think it can work well. I I'm I I have good experience of it.

Yeah, no, I can I completely agree personally from our approach at Grow Places, that's absolutely the case. It's that everyone around the table has an equal voice, and you all try to to input into that and you create one team, whether it's a number of designers or whether it's socioeconomic consultants or or other things. And I think the fact that you're kind of honing that offer within yourselves as well is is really really powerful. And um and I assume because you you do work in you know across the UK, don't you?

And you you're not you're not only within kind of core major cities, you're operating in towns and you're operating on the edge of settlements and and in those kind of environments. And so so do you do you see that that kind of weighed Tibald way, if you want to call it that, applies in all those different types of scenarios in my sound? I really love learning from just like the idea of working in kind of a on the edge of a small town or city versus then working in kind of central London.

You learn so much from working at different scales, at different densities, in different places, and those things support and feed each other. I find that the richness of variety really interesting. Maybe I'm not one of those people who can kind of like repeatedly do the same things. Some people are very good at that.

Um, but bringing experience of one place and one process and the people you work with to other things for me is what makes the work really interesting. So keeping learning, but I I just like places, I like um, you know, small towns, I like villages, I like cities, I just like places. I sort of I I couldn't choose between them. Where do you live yourself then?

What's I live in South East London, which I really like. Very green south east London, um, very accessible. Buses at the bottom of my road, train five minutes away. Um I yeah, just I I spent a long time um working out quite where um bits of trying different bits of London, and then 20 years ago found a particular bit of south east London that I love.

And I'm not going anywhere any anytime soon. Did you grow up in London as well? Or no, I grew up on the south coast in an island called Hailing Island, okay, which um has a bridge to the mainland and is sort of like a suburb on sea. Okay, cool.

So that must have felt that must have been quite an adventure then, because you're sort of leaving the island, so to speak, when you were 16 or 17, whatever. Whenever you leave, you you know you've gone somewhere because you're going over a bridge to go off. And in fact, lots of my family still live there, and they're always like saying, Oh, they they are home when they go back over the bridge. I'm happy that I'm leaving when I go over the bridge.

It's a lovely place, but it's like some I just wanted somewhere with more going on um and a bit more kind of richness. And I didn't ever think I would live in London. I think I thought London's too big, too busy, too much. But actually, when I moved here, I was like, right, I love it.

Yeah. It's a very different place to to live versus being a visitor, and I think it's hard to appreciate that about big cities. When I I'd never lived in a big city until I went to university, um, so I had no idea really what it was like, but um yeah, just the range of things going on just really worked. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's also it probably quite telling in the work you're doing as well that you you have that interest and that sensibility for different settlements like you just described there. You know, I'm the same, I didn't grow up in London, I grew up um in Norfolk, kind of on the edge of Norwich, and so um yeah, I've always had uh an interest actually in those different types of of places, different types of locations, and um I think as you say, there's a there's a huge amount of um opportunity in those kind of settings as well as in kind of traditional dense metropolitan areas, I think.

Um and so you you know, one piece of work that you've done recently, which I know you've just launched this is kind of a piece of study around mid-rise development, haven't you? And maybe that's quite a nice segue onto that, really, because these types of locations that we're talking about and um what is needed, both on a if you look at a macro kind of nationwide level, and whether it's number of homes or new towns or some of these big objectives, um, how those then translate to a a local regional level in terms of the planning policy, and then down to what the people who actually live and work in those places actually want, and how how do you kind of bring forward something which meets all of those objectives that that is dense enough to meet the numbers that we need, that provides the services that the local people need, um, and also meets people's requirements for how they live, which may be stereotyping, but often are actually slightly more conservative than maybe we would like to think about when we're thinking of visioning of these places.

People like their cars, they like other things. So they do. But how do you see how do you see all of that in in those sort of places where you're working around this mid-rise study? Very simply, I think we've we've kind of moved to mostly in cities delivering pretty dense, quite tall stuff, and out of cities um to be delivering quite low, undensed stuff.

And the undensed stuff finds it really difficult to support public transport, transport choice, even facilities and services, and the really dense stuff struggles to fit it all in because it's trying to like just make itself work. Um, but we need stuff in between, and for quite a long time, the models for the in-between, the mid-density, so mid-density typically defined as between three and seven stories. It can be houses, it can be apartments, um, it can be a whole range of things.

Um, it's described as the missing middle. It is happening in some places, but it's not typically part of large-scale housing growth outside of cities. Um, big cities, because of the numbers of homes they need to deliver, it's generally, or not always, but pushing out that kind of mid-density. But it's a scale and density people often are comfortable living at.

If you think about the heart of most of our historic cities, are are at that scale. Most towns, even, are kind of at that scale. But it's very difficult for us to build now because it's kind of gets caught in, it's got both the accessibility rules it's got to follow, it's um expensive, you've got lots of overlooking, you've got to provide um external space, you've got lots of things it's got to do. Um, it can be quite difficult to make it work, even just the fire eggs and the number of fire doors you have internally to make it all work.

It's it's very complex, but it really adds something to our cities. So, this piece of research that we've just um published, it was undertaken a little while ago, but it starts to look at what the barriers are to delivering medium density. Um, and it's not to say that the people who are delivering what they're delivering are wrong, but particularly one of the things is that there aren't enough people in the market delivering those medium density things because we're not prioritising it enough.

We make a lot of planning rules that make it really difficult because it's not so easy to set the rules for. Um, so often planners find it harder to know is this an okay one or a terrible one or not one I should be thinking about. Um we don't often ask the market what they're looking for. We just say, well, the house builder said that they sell this, so therefore that's enough.

But okay, that works for them, but that doesn't mean it's all of the market. I think we've also got to particularly be thinking, what do younger generations need? What do younger people need? And quite often, something that's um, you know, what where might you want to live when you rent somewhere, where might you want to live um when you want to first buy somewhere, you don't necessarily want a house with a garden at that point, although some people might, but it's the reason they want that because of sort of obscure rules we've set up around leasehold or um just people feeling secure because their family tells them that it's not safe to buy a flat.

So we've we've got all of these unintended consequences that make it really hard to do the thing that actually gives us rich, vibrant, interesting, and varied cities and and towns. So the report gives us a number of ways through and the things we need to think about to try and make that work better. Yeah, no, no, it's fascinating. It's an area of development that we're personally really interested in as well, because I think, as you say, there is a there is a huge opportunity and need for us to to densify those types of places.

Um, you know, greenfield, sprawl, if you want to call it that, is is is okay in certain places, but there's a lot of opportunity to densify as well. Um, and with that walkability and all those other benefits that kind of come with that. And that and I agree with you that um you know it it it's not revolutionary in a lot of respects. There's a lot of stuff that's sort of been done in the past, you know.

Uh I live in a uh span developments, for example, from the 60s, you know, it's kind of you know that that sort of sensibility, um, but it does feel very, very difficult on a number of levels that you've outlined to sort of deliver these things. And you know, there are there are interesting SMEs out there, whether it's Town or Igloo or you know, a number of others who are who are doing things. So, what would you say are like the key findings then you think? Or how do we if that's the problem identified, how how do we kind of go about solving some of this?

I think so. Some of the things we talk about are to do with really understanding the market, thinking about who we need in that market to operate differently. So finding where the where the gap is and finding ways to support people who might be able to be developers and fill that gap. Um, some of them um findings are around kind of planning rules, for example, overlooking distances can be comp can be very difficult.

Um, parking requirements can be a real challenge in delivering medium density. Um, but if you need really high parking requirements, you're medium density, you possibly don't have very well-located development if everyone feels they always need to drive everywhere. So maybe the location of the development is one of the kind of keys as well. Um we need variety in the places that we make.

We if we if we think about our existing towns and cities, they're really varied, and we need this just so that we're not delivering homogenous everywhere, all being the same. Um it just gives places more exciting and interesting. Um and we just we just need to really think about these things, it doesn't come out intentionally, no one says, ah, we're making medium density really hard. No one has set that out as a policy or a strategy, but it's all these little rules and all these little um it ways that the market works and way planning works that just make it really difficult.

We know, and it's been much published, that the number of SME developers has massively reduced over the past 20, 25 years, and that I've seen a whole series of strategies to try and bring them back in through planning or through different routes, but it's still very difficult. The cost of bringing things through planning, particularly for SMEs, particularly for medium density, is very high. Um we've just got to decide actually is our priority that we get this variety, we get this missing middle, we get this mix, or is our priority that we don't?

And I we just I think we've got to recognise we have choices and therefore we can think about what we want to make, what we want, what we want to happen. Yeah, yeah. That's very very well said. And but so so where where do you think we are then on those choices at the moment?

Which way are we are we going? Well, there's some interesting stuff in the new um planning practice. Guidance document, which the government is recently consulting on alongside the draft MPPF, which does talk about the benefits of increasing densities and more, we're almost more back to the kind of compact city, compact town approach. Not high density, but medium densities.

So we're definitely seeing publications and other documents supporting the benefits of increasing densities, but we've got to release those other levers that make that very hard to happen. So I think there is a change. I think that's what has been happening and that hasn't left us with very varied um places. Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree, and I do think we are completely stifled, to be honest, at the moment, in terms of delivering some of these really, really people-centred, optimistic, you know, models which which aren't actually revolutionary, as we've said, but in a positive sense, they're not, you know, they're proven, but they really do improve people's quality of life and they improve social fabric and community.

And um and and you know, you mentioned a couple of things there, like you know, the overlooking thing is uh is an obvious one. You know, you you walk around places in London and you just have to look out the window today, and you couldn't build these places today, and they are some of the best places. I always use like seven dials as an example of that. It's it's one of the most magical places in London, you couldn't build it because of of the way the regulations work.

And then equally, you know, w when we obviously do um a lot of core high density locations as well, and um you're getting a perverse scenario at the moment where because of the the fire regs, people are actually building under density. Yeah. So people are building six stories, 18 metres, when actually in planning and townscape terms and infrastructure terms, you probably should build 20. Um and that's because they can't, you know, you can't make the economics work to go over the six stories because of of the regulatory burden.

So um, yeah, it does feel like we need to sort of row back a little bit, to be honest, on some of those things without obviously compromising safety and and uh on some of those things. We could have it so that people were able to make a judgment, but that means we've got to invest in skills and resources so that planning officers, design um advisers feel confident in kind of making a judgment. Then actually, this is a good scheme. This does do things slightly differently, but on balance we think it it's it's doing a good thing.

Um I think there is some flexibility that we could we could bring in, um, but we've got to be clear what the objective is. And if the objective is to bring some of that richness, the um slightly high density back to places, then let's just be clear that that's a priority. Yeah, yeah, totally. And and and obviously housing is a core priority, uh if not the core priority, I think, for anyone working in our sector, but it's not just about homes, is it?

It's about daily life, it's about places, it's about community infrastructure, social infrastructure, places to work, you know, everything that supports modern life in in a locale. So how do you see that in in your work? So we you know, I guess the terminology would be kind of residential led, but it's kind of about the place, isn't it? Yeah, I think it it can't be housing at all costs.

I really I do agree that we've got to think about how we're providing housing and that you know people have a right to live somewhere, but it's so complicated, you know, the whole housing affordability crisis is is a real challenge. Um, but we've got to think how do we make places that have got more in it? Who who are the the small-scale specialists, the smaller developers that we need to be delivering centres? Um, it's not necessarily kind of a house builder's job or expertise to be building things that are not housing, that are mixed uses.

Um, there are some good examples, but there's plenty where they just find it really difficult to make work. So let's make space for those specialists who can create a market, who can think about meanwhile activities and bring in different things. So I'm I want us to be clearer alongside housing, maybe the housing targets that everyone has, there should also be kind of like culture or social interaction or sociability targets as well. So we're not just saying, oh, it's housing, and if the other stuff comes as a bonus, it can't be a bonus.

It's got to be part of what we want to deliver. Um, and I think that prioritization of what we want um has got to be a bigger discotion, something that we're all talking about more, so that we aren't left in a position where it's possible to deliver housing and someone says, Oh, well, sorry, I just couldn't make that work. Yeah. Yeah, and it does feel like, you know, we we we should really be in a position now where this is front and centre and it is getting attention.

Um we've talked quite a lot about your work at at Tibbard's and the research pieces you're doing, but I know you're also, you know, you're a mayor's design advocate, you're you're involved in some of these bigger um advisory roles and and discussion. So so is there anything that you can share from from those forums about how I I wouldn't go as far as lobbying, but you know, how how this kind of sort of um story is filtering up the chain, so to speak. Yeah, there I mean there's been a really interesting debate and discussion recently on the back of the MPPF draft being published around, for example, who places are for, um, generally around kind of inclusion or planning for different groups, um, and it's there's a whole discussion.

So, children really are mentioned for the first time in this document. Um, on the back of a couple of years' work by a number of really interesting people, um, lots of good discussion, and actually, children are now mentioned, and play is valued. Hurrah. But now, who else is missing from this list?

Um, there's been quite a bit of criticism, there's no there's no direct discussion about say violence against women and girls, it's a national strategy, but it's not mentioned in our national planning document. Um, and this is really thinking about safety, but it's also thinking about inclusion. Um, one of the other things I do, I'm involved in a group called Part W where we advocate for um really just gender equity, but starting to get people to think a little bit differently about why some things work and why some things don't work.

And our current campaign is called Built Barriers, where we're trying to understand what the barriers are to women feeling that they are part of the world and that the world is for them. This could be applied to lots of different groups. That just happens to be the particular lens we're looking at. And it's not absolutely not in an exclusionary way, because what we're finding is that if you really think and focus on the needs of one particular group, in this case, um women, then what it tells you is things that are useful for lots of other groups.

Um, our built barriers campaigns, particularly looked at safety, is the thing that comes out most key. Lighting, what it feels like to go running in a park, um, should you be there? Does everyone tell you not to be there? Some of the things you might feel okay about, but society tells you, oh no, no, you can't do that, that's not safe.

So the way places influence our behaviours, but society influences our behaviours on kind of in a roundabout way, getting back to the point. Um, but I think we need to be pushing for us designing places and thinking specifically about the needs of particular groups rather than just generic everybody. It it turns out generic everybody does not really work. Generic everybody does not lead to places that work for very many people at all.

It's too easy to just make things that kind of actually aren't specific enough to meet either children's needs, older people's needs, young adults' needs, women's needs. Actually, almost everyone can be thought about in that way. So generic everyone is the kind of like we need to chuck that out and be like, who are we planning for and how do we know that's gonna work? There's lots of great guidance out there.

Let's use it, look at it, and understand. Yeah, that was where I was gonna go, because you know we've we've had Lucy Musgrave on this podcast as well in the past, and I know she's very active in this space, writing guidance and so on. And and so what so where you've kind of answered it there, but I was gonna ask where do you think this sits? Because there's policy, there's guidance, and then there's practice, isn't there?

There's actually, you know. And um linking to the conversations we've had, you know, um there is an argument to say that we we can be too top-heavy on top of policy and requirements and and maybe not sort of thoughtful enough in terms of what are we actually kind of proposing, and and then the judgment that comes through experienced planning officers and experienced teams and and shared sets of values and vision to then go, okay, no, this is what we think is right for this place.

Um so how how do you how do you see that balance? And I think so I mean, particularly, I think it's happened even more now than it used to be. Over time, people have become more like, oh well, if the government says this, then that's what I must do and I must think. I don't think it used to be quite like that, or maybe I just wasn't aware of it at the time.

But I think if we just say things, then people will think and have that conversation. An example of where it could work well, so I did quite a lot of design review, been involved in design review panels for a long time. One of the um panels I've done um uh has in its criteria for the questions for the panel is about safety and violence against women and girls. So when you're doing the design review, you have to ask the question, what's your strategy?

How does it work? Have you got any areas you're worried about? How will you deal with it in lighting? And it is transformative in the conversation because you could so easily not talk about that rubbishy corner where you haven't really solved how it worked, or the fire officer made your door open outwards and you have a big indent and you can see that actually it's just not a great space.

You've got to find a different way of solving that problem if you have that lens in the questions. So we just we have to have tools that allow us to just interrogate a little bit how that works, and that's just an example that I've come across where um it happens to be in their criteria, their their design criteria, and I think it it's a really good set of questions to ask. It's it's fundamentally part of design, but it's not a part of design that's part of everyday conversations, um, and we should do that.

Quite often with the the team here, um, I've had lots of conversations with them like, okay, how would this feel to walk home past this development or through this development at 3 am? How would you feel? I mean, no one's around, it's dark. Do you feel like any you're near any properties or there's houses nearby, or what does it feel like?

Um, because I I kind of think we should all be able to do that. And we should be planning places that where it feels safe if you want to go for a run, you go for a run. But we we just we sort of seem to think that's all that's too much, that people should be planned for in that way. But why not?

Yeah, no, I I I tend to agree, and I think um, as you say, the the best projects and the best teams and and practitioners should be thinking about these things as a matter of course. But that's not in any way to say that we don't need the guidance and and the policies in place, because I think we have to to do that to signal to what you know where these where these issues are like coming up for different aspects of society and different um different groups. And and I and I think that that's the only way is to kind of put some kind of formal guidance or some kind of sort of acknowledgement around those things, and then and then the onus then falls down, as you say, through the process.

I think actually we have we have more than enough sort of procedural steps, whether it's quality review panels or other things, to uh allow for really good places and projects to come forward. I I don't I don't think it's about that necessarily. I think it's it's then just about actually everyone sort of coming forward with that right mindset from clients down through the teams to to address these things. The good clients will ask those questions.

Um the good um design teams will already talk about it. The good planning officers will think will think about these things, but everyone's got a lot to do. Yeah. So I'd be really interested in thinking about whether we should be planning and writing project briefs to talk about emotions in buildings.

How do you want people to feel? Do you want people to feel safe? Do you want people to feel comfortable, um, excited, um, energized, joyful? What is it you want your project to make people feel?

It might not be the same everywhere, but imagine if we wrote project briefs differently, so that that's what we wanted it to do. You're describing to your team how do you create this, um, and then it's their job to work out how to solve it, which would be a really fantastic brief to get and to think about how you would respond to that. Yeah, yeah, completely. I completely agree.

And I think that just that openness and allowing space for conversation and and space for people to kind of, you know, within a project team, to to feel their way through a project and to think about things in a in a much more human way, putting people at the centre, as you kind of said earlier, I think is is really, really it would be really valuable to do. I think so maybe we could try and do that together at some point would be Yeah, no, exactly. Um because if you think about other industries like um user experience, other things are much more front and centre of the process than they are in in in what we do, and I think yeah, we do need to continually work towards towards that, I think, um, in what we do.

And then and so so so you get really passionate when you talk about these things, particularly I think when you talk about people at the centre and and emotion. Do you have a sense in yourself where that kind of comes from, like why you're doing what you're doing, what gets you out of bed in the morning? Uh I'm just a bit of an enthusiast, really. I just I love the way cities and places and towns makes me feel.

I don't quite know where it comes from, really. I um just like going to places, I like talking to people, um and I just get very interested in things. I think my family all wish maybe I could just like not be quite so interested in everything sometimes. Um but I just I just am like the built environment is all around us.

You can pretty much never escape it. And so you're you're like in a an experiment or in a kind of an understanding of how things what what options or what choices are out there at every minute of every day. And I guess that could feel like it's a bit too much, um, but it's just it just is so rich and so interesting, and it's like precedence around every corner. Like, why is that like that?

How did that work? And sometimes we don't think about it that directly, we just experience it, and it just you think, okay, why why don't I never cross the road there or why do I do those things? So I'm I just I really love the built environment. I just can't really quite explain where it came from, but um I've yeah, been an enthusiast for a very long time.

Yeah, me too, and I think for a lot of those same reasons, and and I just think it's it's so relevant to everything we we do and we experience every day. Um, and there is really that opportunity to to to improve things, I think. You know, it's tough, it's hard, like the industry is not easy, um and things take a long time, but actually, you know, we are building things in physical places that hopefully will stand the test of time, and I think there's a huge amount that can you can take from that personally, but also um it's really valuable work, basically.

Yeah. I think it also helps in this industry to be a bit of an optimist. Um, because if we were all hyper-realistic about how long everything would take and how complex it would be, we might not get that far. So I think a little bit of optimism definitely helps.

Optimism and curiosity. Optimism and curiosity. Yeah, those are two great things to start with. Yeah, yeah.

Maybe we could design the built environment for that. I don't know how that would work, but it's a good question to think about. Hilary, thanks very much for your time today. It's been a pleasure.

Brilliant. Thanks, Tom. Thank you for listening to the Grow Places podcast. For more information, visit growplaces.

com and follow us at We Grow Places across all social channels. See you next time.