Project | City of York Housing Delivery Programme | Multiple Sites | Passivhaus | Community Growing | Mixed-use | Intergenerational Living | Low Car | Since July 2019 

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“We collaborate with ImaginePlaces since 2019. ImaginePlaces acts as the public engagement and co-design lead specialist for the City of York Council’s Housing Delivery Programme. Our ambition is to fully embrace the skills, enthusiasm and knowledge of local residents to drive inclusive development and growth, one which truly reflects the local context and community needs and preferences. Angela’s approach is both engaging and innovative, employing visually compelling and interactive techniques such as 3D models. Her approach focuses on mutual learning, common ground and inspiration and importantly it shares delivery challenges early on. It builds trust and enables us to deliver designs that are specifically suited to local needs and preferences. 

 

By briefing each process with local social, environmental, economic, physical, and financial market information and mapping, the ImaginePlaces approach enables residents and design team members to engage more meaningfully in a shared design development challenge. ImaginePlaces’ contributions established a robust foundation for understanding local community and neighbourhood needs and ambitions and inspired positive co-produced design outcomes.

 

Throughout our partnership, Angela has demonstrated remarkable skill and judgment in content production, planning and delivering engagement processes. As a result, each of the approved and award-winning planning applications captures the experiences of existing residents and businesses and they improve the wider neighbourhood. Work has started on sites and real change is underway.

 

Angela’s deliberate approach has aided us in creating the Building Better Places Design Manual, a programme-wide stakeholder engagement plan and a Building Better Places Checklist. This enables us to measure progress while setting out the requirements for the entire team and the public for what meaningful engagement with impact looks like. 

 

The approach includes stakeholder meetings, both in-person and online, as well as the design and delivery of neighbourhood-wide information-sharing content and media such as newsletters, exhibitions, online surveys, exhibitions and public design reviews. Together, this bundle of initiatives repeatedly and positively engaged a broad range of local residents, including young people and city-wide stakeholders. It has delivered a strong consensus in the project team around the specific requirements of each site and empowers the local community with a good sense of ownership over project outcomes. 

 

In short, ImaginePlaces is highly effective in its approach to public engagement, fun to work with and enables us to achieve our shared ambition of delivering exceptionally sustainable and inclusive places through the programme.”

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Michael Jones, Lead City of York Housing Delivery Programme,

Housing Delivery and Asset Manager

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Project |

Chingley Close/ Arcus Road | Phoenix Community Housing | 2020/21| 100% Passivhaus 

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“I worked closely with Angela at ImaginePlaces on a high-density backland development site in a suburban area of SE London during 2020/21. As a resident-led organisation, Phoenix wanted the ensure that resident consultation was effective and meaningful at a time when large public gatherings and face-to-face meetings were prohibited. 

 

Firstly Angela spent time getting to know Phoenix and our governance system before devising and implementing an innovative communications strategy that involved the use of engaging newsletters, virtual meetings, telephone surgeries, our website, our social media and postcard feedback. 

 

Angela was brilliant with our residents, helping them to understand both development opportunities and constraints and encouraging them to share their views on all aspects of the development. Angela also helped other members of the design team understand residents’ issues and always provided helpful and practical advice on how resident concerns might be addressed. As meeting restrictions were relaxed a public meeting was held bringing proponents and opponents of the development together. In this environment, the information, images and questionnaires prepared by Angela really helped foster open and well-mannered discussion with all parties. 

 

Angela has a breadth of development knowledge and experience, combined with her energy and positivity, helped bring the local residents on a journey where more than 80% of residents surveyed felt the consultation process had been highly valuable and that their feedback had made a difference and influenced the scheme’s design. The application was approved in September 2022." 

 

Steve Connor, Development and New Business Manager, Phoenix Community Housing

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Project | 

Cross Lane Fields | 31 Passivhaus Rual Homes  | OPA | Self-Build and Custom Housebuilding 

Masterplan & Design Codes | Green Belt site | Harpenden | 2022/23 

 

“Thanks to ImaginePlaces’ innovative and interactive co-design approach, set of tools and advice, Lansdown was able to engage the public in a way that led to tangible and meaningful impact.  Working with the community and our team, ImaginePlaces crafted a context analysis and co-designed a vision and masterplan with design code that is firmly rooted in the site’s and neighbourhood’s characteristics. The outcome of this collaboration is a distinctly sustainable proposal, which fosters a sense of community and is poised to become a cherished addition to the neighbourhood. We have full confidence in the effectiveness and meaningfulness of co-design processes led by ImaginePlaces, and we are excited to see the positive impact of this work on the site and the community for years to come.” 

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Emma Hardy, Project Lead Lansdown