The Social Turn in Place Development: TOPOSOPHY’s insights on the CNP UK annual conference
On September 18th-19th, TOPOSOPHY was delighted to take part in the UK annual conference of City Nation Place, which brought together place development experts, place marketing leaders and destination authorities from city, regional, and national levels across the UK.
About the Conference
TOPOSOPHY had the pleasure of delivering a keynote on “Reframing the nighttime economy” and a roundtable on “Social sustainability: how places deliver, measure, and communicate social impact”, drawing insights from our recently published white papers (Night time economy, Social sustainability). We also thank Boyd Sleator from Free The Night for being our guest speaker and joining our conversation in discussing how city-wide collaboration, partnerships and strategic policy-making can put people at the forefront of NTE development and management in the future. Below, we reflect on the central themes that emerged from the two-day event and share our key takeaways.
TOPOSOPHY’s Key Takeaways
- Place development is undergoing a significant shift towards social sustainability.
In our keynote on reframing the nighttime economy, we emphasised a broader view, focusing on not just bars and clubs but on the entire spectrum of nighttime city users including residents, workers and visitors. This socially inclusive perspective resonated strongly with the attendees at our round table on social sustainability too. We were glad to see a strong synergy among delegates in tackling the challenge of embedding effective public engagement and social impact measurements in their work. The social ‘turn’ emphases on participation, public engagement, equality, inclusion, well-being and sustainability. This resonates with the ethos TOPOSOPHY has been championing for some time, not least in our 2017 ECM Manifest on the Future of DMOs, where we proposed to elevate social sustainability metrics alongside traditional economic indicators in our envisioned Future of DMOs.
- Meaningful public engagement and social impact will become the new baseline for good urban development practices.
While the call for social-driven placemaking is not new, we are witnessing an exciting shift from it being experimental rhetoric or tokenised symbol to seeing a handful of structured and more matured practices at scale. A standout session for us was delivered by Miriam O’Keeffe, Head of Operations at Bradford 2025, who vividly showcased how diversity, learning, community well-being, civic pride and environmental sustainability are integral to activities and inputs behind the UK city of culture programmes. Similar ambitions were echoed by various destination authorities across the UK, indicating a growing movement to make public engagement a fundamental approach in shaping place rather than a singled-out phase. Another notable example came from Alex Harvie, Head of Marketing, Communications and Destination Marketing at Glasgow Life, who demonstrated how place branding empowers citizens, allowing them to take ownership of their city and even use it as a platform for social activism.
- A social-driven approach starts from strategic alignment and effective communications to bring decision makers together.
Successful place development in real-life operation requires effective coordination among a variety of stakeholders, which can often involve managing conflicts and ensuring alignment between parties. Several speakers at the conference noted that failures in achieving social-driven results were often due not to a lack of intent, but a breakdown in communication and strategic alignment. For DMOs and destination authorities, establishing a common ground through robust research, stakeholder consultations and strategic alignment is critical to success. This is an area TOPOSOPHY has received a lot of positive feedback on from our clients over the years, and we are proud of the impact our work has had on both places and communities.
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