Grow Places

GP 17: Place Purpose and Why it's Essential: with Joy Nazzari of DNCO

• Grow Places • Season 1 • Episode 17

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Have you ever walked through a place that felt like it was part of your soul - that you belonged? 

Join us on the Grow Places podcast with Joy Nazzari, Founder of DNCO, who weaves her global experiences and cultural insights into the art of storytelling, brand and Place Purpose, that resonate with our deepest human needs. 

Our conversation takes you on a journey through the essence of storytelling in the built environment, revealing how narrative can be the cornerstone of commercially vibrant and socially cohesive communities. Together, we peel back the layers of what makes places like King's Cross more than just a location – they become a part of who we are.

The places in our cities hold stories and the potential for profound connections, if only we know how to listen. This episode spotlights the transformative power of brand identity within real estate, evolving beyond mere logos to embody experiences that resonate with us on a deeper level. Our discussion navigates the dynamic landscape of urban development, where the delicate dance between brand and identity plays a pivotal role in our everyday life. We'll even take a detour through the charming streets of San Francisco, exploring how DNCO helped to reignite the city's innate vibrancy through its brand.

As we go deeper, the conversation turns to the property development industry's evolution. We pinpoint the critical role of trust and transparency in reshaping public perception. We ponder over strategies for developers to reinvent themselves as trusted stakeholders of the community. 

Be sure to catch this one! 

Speaker 1:

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.

Speaker 2:

Joy hi, how are you doing?

Speaker 3:

Very well, good to see you, Tom Good to see you again.

Speaker 2:

Thank you very much for joining me on this podcast. It's great to have you here, really honoured to have you. I'm going to ask a question for you to just hold in your mind, that we'll come back to at the end of the podcast. So it's what is your call to action for the built environment, so that we can bring people and the places they inhabit closer together?

Speaker 3:

great question yeah.

Speaker 2:

So just hold that one in your mind and we'll come back to it. But just as a place to start. You know we know each other really well. We've worked together for a long time, so I know that I can kind of lead with this type of question with you. But what drives you? Why do you do what you do? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Speaker 3:

I have a funny way into the industry and it's only in the last nearly 20 years working in real estate and with a built environment, and it's only, I think, maybe about five years ago, I had this epiphany. I was like, oh, this really makes sense. I get why I've ended up here and I think the reason is because I've never fit in anywhere. In fact, I think I'm an expert at not belonging. I grew up, I was born and raised in Brazil. My parents were Argentine, mostly European, so already we were foreigners in the place where I was born. We moved to the US Obviously I've got this accent to thank and then when I was in America, I was a foreigner. When I moved to the UK, I was 24 years old and, having been told I was a foreigner and not an American, for the first time I was an American and still to this day, 24 years later in this country, I'm still an American.

Speaker 3:

I'm also incredibly tall, as you know, tom, I'm six foot one. I stand out, I stick out, never really sort of blend into the background. I'm a woman in what has in the past been a very predominantly male industry, although that's fantastically changed quite a lot. So I have this expertise in not belonging and luckily I'm not really a shrinking violet it's never been a huge issue. But I think what I love, therefore, is this notion that belonging is a thing and place identity is a thing, and that you can nurture that connection to a place and make people feel wanted, comfortable, part of it, and that actually we can influence that as people who place, make and shape places, and I love that I really.

Speaker 2:

I think that's really special no amazing, and you know that idea about sense of belonging community, some of these themes which are much more grounded in humanity as much as they are in real estate, if not more so, absolutely. Do you class yourself kind of like a real estate person now? Are you kind of in that space or what's your kind of sense about your position in that industry? But also, I know your work's broader than simply real estate.

Speaker 3:

It is broader. But, gosh, do I feel like I'm in real estate? It's a fantastic question. I certainly do. It's funny in the brand sector, which is the world that we, I suppose, is our industry, that we mostly do and affect, real estate is considered kind of an unsexy area and I'm really happy that in our sphere people feel that way because I'm like it's cool, like stay away from this. Really cool stuff I do every day. I, you know, I'm helping shape the world that we live in and and I and I think that's that's that's tremendously sexy. Do I um sitting with you? Do I feel like I'm in the real estate world that we as DNCO are? Definitely.

Speaker 3:

I feel like we're quite an important piece of the steps that now the more enlightened developers are going through. Our best clients will get us in before architects are on board and they'll say, hey, let's come up with a vision for this place, what could we do for people here? So they've done the appraisal, they stop for that half a heartbeat and say what could we actually create here that would be inspiring and actually ultimately lead to a better bottom line, and then go out and commission the architecture that really sort of reflects that ambition and vision and potential and opportunity. So, yes, I definitely think we use creativity and brand and language and narrative, but where we deploy that right now is most successfully in large mixed-use developments cities, increasingly and the cultural sector is very near and dear to our heart. So, yes, I'm in real estate.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely no, I think so, and you are an integral part of that, and you've kind of touched on some of the reasons there. But I believe this fully. But why is that really important, do you think? Why is it really important to have this narrative piece, this storytelling piece, this brand and identity piece early on in the process, as opposed to something that is post-rationalized or sort of bolted on at the back end?

Speaker 3:

Well, I mean, I could do an hour on that question probably alone.

Speaker 3:

And I think for me the answer is it's when you're trying to sell to somebody. It's fairly well recognized that when you've got a really strong narrative, people are moved and they're much more interested, much more likely to buy. So that's the maybe, perhaps cynical, commercial side of it. The less I suppose cynical side of it it's not just about money is really that we're trying to. As humans, we want to communicate things and we want to explain why. Why are we moving there? Why are we taking an office space there we have to have? We use language to explain that. We don't use numbers, we don't use bottom lines. So somewhere along the line people are creating that narrative and that story. Our view is you can impact that in a really interesting way. For me, the worst example of that narrative is live work play. So I dislike very much that. If you type live-work-play into Google, it's phenomenal that you get like 10 billion results. You actually get pre-canned logos that you can buy on logo $25, logo image libraries of live-work-play. So a narrative is always going to be in place.

Speaker 3:

What the potential is is when we talk about places. Places actually is a word. The real estate industry has only started using the word place relatively recently, in fact, when we wrote Know your Place, we did a bit of a Google search and everyone was still talking about architecture and real estate and the built environment. And we were really keen that you talk about place. And the reason is and I'm super pleased, obviously, that you have that in your name the reason we talk about place is because you go to a place, you love a place, you recommend a place, you buy a place. You don't buy an architecture, you don't buy a real estate, you don't go to a real estate. You go to a place. You're like hey, I've seen this really wicked place. Do you want to come with me? So there's something about place that is narrative led. And there is a moment there where you can say what do I want people to be talking about when they talk about this place? What do I want people to say? What do I want the recommendation to be, the reputation to be? And you can't actually manage that really early on. And even better, you can decide what you want that narrative to be and then you build a thing that is actually going to genuinely deliver on that narrative. Maybe we call it a promise. It's even better If we say we're actually going to create a super special place that does X, y and Z, it starts to become a bit of a responsibility. This is what I want to do, and I want to do it for people, and therefore the product has to start to reflect that. And that's where we get really strong successful stories in real estate is where you have a thing that isn't the old.

Speaker 3:

When I've entered the industry, with very few exceptions, you would have branding agencies coming in when a building was 90% built. So it's like a glass box and the agents and the developers would say, hey, let's market this place. And it's like cool, who are you trying? Cool, who are you trying to speak to with this building? Sort of like, oh no, like anyone, just whoever's going to take the highest rent. So we've come a long way in how we do those things and actually the rest of the world with branding and marketing.

Speaker 3:

They do a ton of research in people first. What are people's needs? What are the things that are making their day difficult? What's inspiring to needs? What are the things that are making their day difficult? What's inspiring to them? What's going to make them work better or sleep better at night? Oxygen, what is it that they need those things?

Speaker 3:

A narrative around those things early on will impact actually what you produce in the physical realm. And then you just it sells itself because it's like I want that, because I'm a human being and I care about that thing that you've made. So our feeling is it's much badging something later on, you know, with pretty images and logos and whatever is fine. But actually the real, deep, strong benefits to community, to society, to local places, the people who are there and to your bottom line come when you create something authentically, undeniably desirable to people. They're like I want that, that's my spiritual home, I feel a connection to that. So we like to just squeeze some space in the RIBA stages and say, hey, can we just stop for a second and think about what we want the narrative to be and then make stuff.

Speaker 3:

So one of our many things we've talked about live, work, play but one of the things we dislike really is this very vague term placemaking. It means a lot of different things. Obviously, originally it was a really radical concept, jane Jacobs. You know let's hold on to what's community-based and ours and maybe sometimes cynically it's been adopted by developers, oftentimes not so cynically and oftentimes with a real dedication.

Speaker 3:

But I think the strange thing about the language of placemaking is that it's a doing word, like you are making something and what we like to do is just cleave in a bit of space for place thinking. Or, as you know, the concept we coined was place purpose, which is just to stop for a second and say what are the human-centered needs of this place? Like, what are we doing for people? What's the purpose, sort of the existential reason this place exists, based on human-centered needs, not three-dimensional, architectural, certainly not financial, because we know what we're trying to go for in that case. But actually, if we can stop for a second and create a purpose, a reason that then taps into the making, that then delivers the making, it's just much clearer. It makes a much more relevant place that people fall in love with.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Joy, and I fully agree with everything you're saying and I've got to actually thank you because you put me on to simon senec um years and years ago.

Speaker 2:

This was probably seven years ago or something, and I think a lot of what the industry is kind of becoming much better at now and a lot of what you're talking about is the the why and potentially the how, as opposed to just the what. Ie it's residential, it's commercial, it's uh, this scale, it's that scale, and that's kind of some of the stuff you're touching on there, isn't it? In terms of the the why, particularly?

Speaker 3:

definitely I, I do. I do enjoy um that, that that particular simon cynic, um ted talk that that he did. Iinek, um Ted talk that that he did. I think that, um, we have our own version of of his, his uh language, which we say with clients. You know, we say um who cares? And it's quite a hard question. Why should anyone care? It's like you know, and even now it's you know, with sustainability.

Speaker 3:

Actually, what I'm really enjoying and reassured by, just as a human, is that developers now are increasingly discussing in earnest the S of ESG. So what's the social good that we are actually genuinely contributing towards? There's greenwashing that people are cynical about. I think we will have cynicism around social good too. In the same way, section 106 sometimes is considered, you know, just stuff, tick box stuff that people have to do. But I actually feel, listening behind the scenes to developers, I feel really reassured by how many of them are earnestly saying this is stuff you just have to do. It's not because it's marketing, it's because it's really important. So the why now is way more human focused and we're seeing that worldwide right.

Speaker 3:

We're seeing American Wall Street listed companies are changing what they're putting in their investor packs away from shareholder value and towards social value, and that shift is a little bit led by commercial demand. Companies are saying I need to know how your building stacks up to the next building because I'm going to put it in my annual report. That's a real thing. So I think there's a commercial side, but I'm seeing behind closed doors, people more and more concerned with the genuine. Are we doing some? Are we doing good stuff here? Can I sleep at night?

Speaker 2:

and and that's motivating- it's good to wake up, too, in the morning and say I'm doing something important, but the devil's advocate version of that is brand is a commercialization of a place, and I think you've kind of touched on some of that already. That's not necessarily the full story, but do you see anything in that about kind of identity and place as opposed to brand, or do you see it all as one of the same thing and maybe kind of looking forward in terms of kind of what you guys are up to? I know you're doing much, much bigger projects now in terms of city scale and other things, and is that still brand? Is that still identity of places? Is it all one in the same thing?

Speaker 3:

I think it's. I think it's a really great question. So for me, identity is is it's, it's a thing we sell? We absolutely do brand identity. So what's the? It's kind of? You know, I'm wearing a slightly bright dress today. What is that saying about me? Identity is a little bit like that, right, it's like what's the dress you're putting on in the morning? That's saying something about you and, of course, how you put that in and view that in lots of things starts to be a strand of your brand.

Speaker 3:

I would say much more important in terms of brand is what you do, and that's what's really interesting. If you think about crisp, if you think about a big crisp brand or a toothpaste brand, there's they have very little space to do stuff that isn't marketing activations and brand activations and things, whereas real estate you've got space to play with and what you're doing there it says way more about you as a place. So one of the classic, obviously, examples and most obvious examples is people say King's Cross has got such an incredible brand. I want a brand like King's Cross, and actually they won't. Thank me for saying this, but for a long time you probably couldn't necessarily have the identity of King's Cross in your head? It probably didn't. It wasn't like the Coca-Cola logo. There was nothing seared in your brain. But what was seared in your brain was?

Speaker 3:

They launched the public realm really early. It was a construction site with fountains that kids could run through. That's brand. That's saying something I value the community. Please come and run in my fountains. They put in an incredible university which made it a magnet for creative culture. They have phenomenally focused on the ground floor plane. So we're not looking at sexy towers that we're like wow towers will never go into.

Speaker 3:

No, it's not our experience of King's Cross. It's much more democratic. Of course, they've got a lot of space to play with. Which is it helps. Not everybody has that. But that thinking which I think probably they would say as much as anything, was it organic and involved. But they took risks. I think risks experimentation is probably the nicer way of saying risks. We need to experiment with things Like what's going to work, how do we pull things in? The other one I love is, you know, meanwhile use is a big area that we talk about. My sadness with meanwhile use is that it is meanwhile like. Why not use meanwhile as an experimentation for like, what's going to actually work here afterwards, not just let's stick a prep in later, and so I think that brand is what you do, more than what you look like, for example yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2:

And I think on the meanwhile side of things, as you say, I know you used to work in tech and in other industries and it feels like the place's version of iterative design kind of like almost like minimum viable products you can test something, you can see if it works, you can change it, rather than having to wait, as you say, roph, stage six, before you actually can occupy um a building. And I think there's that's something playful in that and creative in that. It's really, really interesting. And and obviously, when you're talking about a big site like king's cross, where, um, you're fundamentally changing how that area of the city operates from, you know, an industrial wasteland into a very vibrant mixed-use place, and it's an amazing example of that.

Speaker 2:

But lots of the work we do in places is working within existing places that have a spirit, have a culture, have a sort of a community that's already established. And then it's about kind of, how do you work with that and how do you sort of grow that in? In the way that we talk about things, you know, seeing places as a continuum. They've got a long history backwards, they'll have a very long history forwards and we're kind of a point in time on that and then it is. You know, it's sort of about culture and then isn't it.

Speaker 3:

It's about kind of there's there can be an element of actually the brand kind of coming from what's there already, as opposed to necessarily it being about something that is kind of transformational in that sense for I 100 agree with that and actually I think we've had many situations, many projects we've worked on, where people have, you know, said, oh, we want to, whatever it might be, and there's a really high and mighty vision from the client and actually what's on the ground is already a gift, and I think being able to identify that is important.

Speaker 3:

Sometimes our job is just about holding up the mirror and saying, hey, this is good here, you just need to amplify that, make it more of that, or just invite people to see what's there or preserve that piece, which I think is really important.

Speaker 3:

We are working on Earl's Court right now, which is an incredible project and a lot of it's in the public domain because they're going through planning, consultation and it's a phenomenal site that obviously is imbued with lots of history and I think they as a team have been really thoughtful about how they continue those stories and those narratives in a way that is very real and very ripe for that West London site and drawing in from over their redline boundaries. What are the things that influence us and are relevant for this area that we've got to keep? What are the things that influence us and are relevant for this area that we've got to keep what's the heritage. So it's a completely scorched earth site. It's a ground zero site. But to pull in the historical bits, to pull in what already locals love and make sure that's stitched in, I think that's very clever.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, really interesting. And, as you say, there is an opportunity, isn't there is? The scale increases, whether it's from a building to a site, to a neighborhood, to a, to a city, like I know you're operating at that sort of scale now, um, and back to something you said earlier, you know about this kind of idea about belonging and you've obviously been on a long journey personally from you, grew up in, you know in america, as you, as you mentioned, as well as brazil and other places. So how does it feel having them work back in that city where you've, um, grown up but you've obviously spent a lot of time away from, you've lived here? How does that sense of belonging for that place maybe influence the work that you did? Or did you look at it from a different way, different lens, sort of having spent maybe a long period of time away from the place?

Speaker 3:

do you know. That's particularly relevant to the work we've done in san francisco with the mayor of san francisco recently, which I lived 17 years in San Francisco. It's an incredible place Geographically. It is such a phenomenally beautiful piece of California. It's interesting. It obviously has this massive tech boom that happened, but it's gone through a huge decline. So certainly in the COVID years it went through this decline.

Speaker 3:

So, as a former San Francisco San Franciscan or a San Franciscan at heart, going back and actually being able to affect and help the narrative and help San Francisco remind people what it's known for, that's that's been really interesting to me. It's it's you know for. For for a moment in time, san Francisco or the world, I think, looked at San Francisco and said, oh, that's you know. For a moment in time, san Francisco or the world, I think, looked at San Francisco and said, oh, that's just gone all wrong. And San Francisco has been this hotbed for, you know, being yourself through to starting up a business, been an incredible place for startups. The diversity there has been real for a long time. Diversity is a thing. Now Everyone's investing very heavily and very seriously looking at diversity, but there it's been a thing In fact. Actually it's probably reversed a little bit in recent times, but San Francisco needed to remember what all those pieces were.

Speaker 3:

So sometimes our job is about going in and being an outsider. Actually, it's quite political for us. People don't like outsiders to come in and say, how dare you tell us what we're like? It's sort of like sometimes you have to have the objective room and space from the outside to say, hey, you guys have forgotten what's good here. Let's help you remind people about that.

Speaker 3:

Or you have things that you're not currently identifying, that are good, that you can bring to the fore, and I think that's in a way it's therapy, and we do that so often with development. You have years of planning, years of planning, and it's complex from a construction perspective or from a financing perspective or what the local community or the council want. It's really complex stuff. Sometimes I think the wood for the trees it's just blinding. You're just buried in stacks of wood.

Speaker 3:

So I think sometimes having someone come in and go through all of that and have that external perspective is really interesting. So I think if I learned anything from travels and living in different places is that is, if you have a global perspective, if you've seen lots of different places, you're able to perhaps have that more objective. Hey, here are some things that are interesting that we can just push upwards or remind people that is there, or build on, build on Like this is a good thing, let's build on that piece, let's do more of that. So I feel really pleased about having had those experiences. I can pull from one and the other.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It must be really, really interesting and enriching to your work to do that, and you've kind of touched on some of it. But do you think In terms of your method about, you know, sort of almost like the how-to with a client obviously there's similarities and differences in places and people all around the world, but do you feel like you can kind of sort of unpick those in a similar way in terms of your kind of process, about whether you're operating in London or San Fran or somewhere else in the world?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So I would say, totally central to our process is speaking to people. So, and it's it's something I would say historically the built environment has been a little bit. Oh, we have to have some consultation. Let's stick it at the back of city halls where, like, no one's going to walk past it and there's been a sort of I hope no one, I hope none of the neighbors come and see this and object, and some people are getting a little bit more, I think, informed about how to do these things.

Speaker 3:

But for us, so much of what we do we have a really we do. We have an eight-stage process and I won't go into the detail but before we ever put any design to anything, there are three big areas that we're very interested in looking. A lot of it is about client objectives. The research side is a deep dive that involves product analysis, audience analysis, benchmarking, you know, to really try and find what we call blue water. So there's a lot of red water. Live work, play is my favorite Red water. Like please don't use that expression it sucks. So but what if we're not saying that? What are we saying? That is that's interesting and is relevant. So there's a ton of research and a lot of it comes out of speaking to people.

Speaker 3:

When we worked on a project for Brookfield in San Francisco before we did the big project for the mayor, we spoke to some 200 San Franciscans about what's it like? What are new developments like in San Francisco? Just give us a little bit of a what are your thoughts? And people had really terrible views of developers. It was like, oh, they're building all these huge sites that are just dormitory villages, no sense of place, no community spirit, and there are tumbleweeds going down there. They're gray and ugly and lifeless. This is San Francisco we're talking about. San Francisco is lively. This is a place that's historically been full of life. So the view was developers are ruining our city. I was like, well, that's such an easy starting point for developers Like, hey, just don't do that, don't create a dormitory village with tumbleweeds, and how can you put community and society into the middle of your development? And so we helped Brookfield create this really interesting story there. So that stuff comes out of speaking to people, like what is the perspective of the guy and the gal in the street, what are they saying? And can you respond to that? So we do a lot of speaking to people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, awesome. And then I guess there's also then like how do you kind of measure stuff, like how does it, how does it translate from kind of theory into practice? And obviously that is during the project, but most importantly, obviously beyond the project. So are you, are you seeing that in terms of maybe your work about how you're measuring success of, of effectively, that kind of that emotional attachment that people then have to a place going forwards?

Speaker 3:

I think that's such a great question and I wish, as an industry, we would get much more creative about how we measure. Measurement's important. You cannot assess what you don't measure. I remember many years ago being blown away by a DBA so Design Business Association Someone won an award for, by the way, effectiveness is a very hard award to win in any design category. Someone won a basically a refurb of their office canteen and the way they measured it was by quantity of apples eaten, and it seems stupid, but I love that. It's like they wanted to create a canteen where more people came in and hung out together and the way they measured it was in apples. Apple consumption went up and we need to find more of these interesting little ways Like how are we getting people together? Is it working? What are we using as a measure of success? I've seen apples as a thing I love. Brent Crosstown has a thriving index, so they're flourishing index, so they're tracking how people flourish. I think that's amazing.

Speaker 3:

Branding and marketing tends to be measured by the financial success. I think we have to figure out what can we track over a longer period of time that is interesting to an asset but interesting to the world too. So, for example, you're done. The whole project is pre-let, is pre-sold, the flats are all sold. What are you doing beyond that that tells you that your place is a great place, that your brand is a great brand? We put brand trackers in place. I think there's a lot you can do. I think it's totally essential. Put brand trackers in place. I think there's a lot you can do. I think it's totally essential.

Speaker 3:

We are, coincidentally, launching something called the Place Brand Diagnostic in about a month's time. That is really trying to help all sorts of marketing managers of large-scale developments to city brands. What are the things they do? And actually, of the 10 different criteria, only two of them are to do with narrative and brand identity. The rest are very much about commitment, long-term commitment through to activation, through ambassadors. There's a lot that you can do. That's more than just the traditional things that we're doing brand identity and narrative things. So we're putting our chips behind measurement. It's hard, it's setting a higher bar for ourselves and for our clients, but I'm optimistic, that's going to be good yeah, awesome.

Speaker 2:

No, it sounds good. I look forward to seeing that. Um, so joy. Just before we circle back to the, the question that I asked you at the start, um, just something that's popped into mind as you're talking. You know this, this perception of property developers point, which is real. You know there's no getting away from it. You know, I started in architecture. When I was an architect, I used to take pride in saying in social situations, you know I'm an architect oh, oh.

Speaker 2:

That would make people warm up. You know they want to talk about everything from the house to something. Now I know actually that's not always the case. There's actually a lot of kind of connotations that come with that. But you see more architects played in movies than you do property developers in a positive way.

Speaker 2:

But, um, I also believe in kind of like calling a spade a spade. So now you know we are a property developer and I I'd love to be able to take real pride in calling ourselves a property developer in the same way that you you do. But you know you do say that in social situations and people will switch off. I never used to lead with that on a date, for example. If I was cause it would bring the wrong kind of connotations with it. So you kind of touched on some of it there, but you know what. But what are the things that you think we could do to really maybe reframe that in a much more positive way? You know you're a branding specialist. How does the brand of being a property developer kind of transform into something much more positive in that sense?

Speaker 3:

Well, it's a big question and I'm going to go lateral to then probably circle back to the question. Look, investment banking has had it much worse, Right? That's the thing you need to know. First of all, Just be glad, post the GFC, that you don't have to say I'm a banker. And we did a big piece of research at Broadgate with British Land and about this. It was considered a very financial place and we helped do a new narrative and a new brand identity for Broadgate. And in that research, speaking to lots of people, you had these really cool guys and gals you know who just didn't. They weren't wearing the dress of investment banker.

Speaker 3:

If I can go back to my previous metaphor, they're just people right who work in finance, and so I think they have been going through this massive shift in how do we reinvent ourselves? Not as the investment banker, and there's a worse rhyme that people call them, of course, and I don't think property developers have it quite like that, but I think we have to go back to what did property developers who got that kind of murky, bad reputation, what was it that their behavior was, that led to that reputation? And let's make sure, firstly, that we are not like that. So we're not demolishing things and ripping things up and ripping them apart in a way that is irresponsible and ugly and cheap and then selling it for maximum value and that's the whole story. What is it that we are putting in along the way? That is improving trust, and trust is, I think, a really important word that we're not looking at nearly enough in our industry. It's a big word. So I've got a pal called Sarah Gold who runs a studio called Projects by If and she directly is looking at trust in tech Huge area. She's going to do very well because we're all scared, right. How can I trust AI? How can I trust this? We've got a bit of a trust issue, too, with the people who build buildings. I think the guy and the gal on the street don't see the complexity of that.

Speaker 3:

As an industry, we probably have a better job to do to explain how much we do to build a new place. It's a lot, but also we need to come out of the shadows. So we hide. We hide a lot. We don't speak to the people enough. We don't really I mean, the enlightened developers certainly do but go and stand in front of people and have lots of conversations, Be very visible, stand in front of people and have lots of conversations, be very visible.

Speaker 3:

I mentioned ambassadors. We talk about ambassadors. A mayor is an ambassador of a city, but as a developer, you have to figure out who's going to be the face to this place. That's actually going to feel okay standing in front of people and saying, hey, this is what I'm doing. I think I'm doing a good job and also I'm trying to do my best. But I'd like to hear what you think, too. Those conversations are. They're just. They remove a lot of the anxiety out of I don't know what you're doing here and if you don't tell me, I hate it. My instinct is I hate it.

Speaker 3:

So we see really great examples of where people are setting up actual little retail shops, just getting in front of the community, talking to people, bringing them along, telling them what you want to do. Draw it for me. What do you think we should be doing here? What's going to matter and what's going to help? Oftentimes it's. I really need a corner shop with a pint of milk in it, because I have to take two buses to get to one right now. So hearing those things, it's going to take a long time. It's turning a tanker around. It's going to take a while. I'm not sure property developer and architect will ever have this synonymous kind of vibe. Architects are. They're creatives. There's something warm and fuzzy and slightly sexy and mysterious about an architect, but I think there is a lot more that can be done with property developer.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I agree, and everything you're saying, as you say, is really kind of encouraging and hopeful and actually a big part of this platform, as you know, why we're sat here today having these conversations, why we as a business are taking this Grow Places platform to consultation events to try and open up the dialogue with local people, trying to sort of come out of the ivory tower.

Speaker 2:

In that sense, is is important, but, um, it's a, it's just part of the process.

Speaker 2:

That, I think, is, um, setting good intentions and then actually then following up on them, and that's the. The trick isn't, it is kind of actually being there, being present, being for the long term and that's not always easy to do with a property developers model. That that may not necessarily be about the the 10-15 year time horizon, even though that's what you're kind of envisaging and planning for and and building some trust over that when, when people maybe are looking at you as someone who is is, you know, a moment in time on the process, as opposed to someone who's going to be there long-term, I think is really important. And I could, obviously I could keep talking to you all day about some of this stuff, but we're going to have to wrap up soon, so I'm just refreshing my memory. I'm going to go back to that question that I asked you at the top, which was what would be your call to action for the built environment industry to bring people and the places they inhabit closer together.

Speaker 3:

So the thing I almost campaign I would call it with our clients is to have an operational model. So I think, historically, in real estate we have an asset management model but we don't have an operational model. There are very few historical examples going back. Chiswick Park is one of my favorite ones. It might seem like a really old, dated, maybe even example, but that was in my memory. I mean, long before we had WeWork. We had Chiswick Park and they had a massive team there that was on the ground and their whole entire place purpose was around enjoy work, creating a place that people actually enjoyed coming to work, and the important fact was that they had oxygen in the form of finance to operationalize that concept. So it wasn't just a brand that was stuck on the front of some lovely Richard Rogers buildings, it was an operational model.

Speaker 3:

How do we create a place that people will enjoy so long before WeWork? Wework came and made a huge international household name out of a similar concept. I think actually, if Regis had looked more closely at what was going on at Cheswick Park, they would have probably figured out how to do the WeWork thing long before. They did from a brand perspective, not from a financial perspective. So that's a piece I think we're still not entirely geared up as an industry to do. Everyone goes oh no one's going to want to pay for it in the service charge. Everyone goes oh no one's going to want to pay for it in the service charge. But actually, if we can rethink how we're building in an operational layer the way hotels do that looks after people, that brings people together, that builds communities together, as opposed to just facilities managers, I think that is transformational and actually is really an opportunity area that people who want to do something better than the next guy put an operational model in. How can I operationalize my brand so that it's not just a marketing ploy?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, and that in essence brings the property industry or property owner closer to the people. And that is in essence what we're talking about here, isn't it?

Speaker 3:

A hundred percent yeah.

Speaker 2:

Joy, thank you very much, really appreciate your time.

Speaker 3:

Oh, such a pleasure.

Speaker 1:

Good to see you.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, Joy.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Grow Places podcast. For more information, visit growplacescom and follow us at. We Grow Places across all social channels. See you next time.