Executive Summary
Understanding how people feel about the places they live – including what they value and what they want to change – is a vital first step for supporting communities to make plans for their future.
The University of Southampton has undertaken three overlapping projects to adress this challenge. These projects created opportunities for meaningful dialogue and trust-building by establishing connections between residents, housing associations, councils, and local government. Community researchers have found that new development is rarely just about buildings. It is also about identity, belonging, memory, social relationships and how these are connected to the future of the place.
This submission recommends the following to improve human resilience and wellbeing, enhance social connectedness, promote inclusive planning, support local economic growth, and diversify opportunities for civic engagement and active citizenship:
- We can support residents to plan for the future by understanding how existing communities operate and what they value.
- Community researchers must be embedded in new communities at the start of their development to establish social connectedness.
- Heritage is a key driver for leveraging place identity and social connectedness to build new communities and support cohesion.
Contributors:
Dr Joseph Owen, Research Fellow in the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities and specialist policy officer for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Co-Director of the Centre for Modern and Contemporary Writing and the Culture and Creativity Policy Network.
Prof Joanna Sofaer, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton.
