Our Chief Executive, Steven Medway, is among twelve industry experts interviewed for Making Sense of Place, a new report from placemaking specialists Hunter exploring what it really takes to create great places.
Sitting alongside voices from architecture, lighting design, hospitality, landscape, sound and public health, Steven’s chapter, “Building Places People Come Back To”, draws on his experience leading the Knightsbridge and King’s Road Partnerships at the junction of luxury retail, heritage environments, local politics and global expectations.
Here are some of the key takeaways from Steve’s interview:
Dwell time as a measure of engagement
Dwell time isn’t just a KPI; it’s a measure of how emotionally engaged people are with a place. Shopping centres may be functional, but the places people truly connect with are the ones that reward curiosity: the art tucked down a side street, a new coffee shop, a pop-up you didn’t know was there.
“Thriving places reward people with curiosity and layers of experience,” he explains. The goal isn’t fireworks once a year, but reasons to return every week.
Listen deeply before acting boldly
A recurring theme in the interview is the belief that no placemaking vision works top-down. It has to be co-designed, bringing politicians, landowners, residents and businesses into the room to build consensus around shared goals.
The Knightsbridge Partnership itself is a product of that approach. Created in response to concerns over deteriorating retail on Brompton Road, we now manage a £75m Place and Public Realm Strategy for the district and commands the trust of some of the district’s most influential landowners.
Pavilion Road in Chelsea is proof of what listening can achieve. Once a delivery yard, residents were consulted and asked for a traditional high street, butchers, bakers, fishmongers. It’s now one of the area’s most loved destinations.
Quality, not exclusivity
Balancing the needs of international visitors with those of local residents and workers isn’t easy in a district with more than 50 different property owners. Our approach to managing this is to design for quality, not exclusivity, and for authenticity. International audiences don’t come to Knightsbridge to feel like they could be anywhere; they come for heritage, character and warmth.
That philosophy runs through our Place and Public Realm Strategy, which sets out our plans to calm high-traffic streets, improve walkability and introduce more green and cultural moments across the district. “You can’t curate everything, but you can create conditions where great things happen organically. You build the place, and the right uses follow.”
About the Making Sense of Place report
Making Sense of Place brings together interviews with subject matter experts across a range of disciplines to understand what makes places work for people.
Across the twelve conversations, a clear and consistent theme emerges: great places are not defined by what they are, but by how they make people feel. They balance safety with joy, start with people rather than product, design through the senses, and perfect the details.
It’s a thoughtful, generous read for anyone shaping the built environment and we’re glad that our CEO could be a part of it.
Read the full report at hunter-design.co.uk/msop.
