Most of the cherished and highly valued places in Australia, as well as other parts of the world, share key characteristics or 'Place Qualities'.

Image: An Australian Urban Design Award winner - the conversion of a water reservoir into a high quality urban park – reminiscent of Greece. Good urban design or good park design?

Most of the cherished and highly valued places in Australia, as well as other parts of the world, share these key characteristics.

The first 12 are drivers of good urban design/placemaking. The “optimisers” (not sure if this is the best word yet?) are variable, based on personal preference. For example you might have a different tolerance for safety to an older or younger person (‘grittyness’)?

Place Drivers

1. Character
2. Diversity
3. Accessibility
4. Fit & function
5. Animators
6. Continuity and enclosure
7. Consistency & variety
8. Legibility
9. Structure
10. Features
11. Social Fabric
12. Sustainability

Place Preference

1. Quality of the public realm
2. Safety
3. Creativity
4. Sensory pleasure

Based on the Qualities of Successful Places in the Councillor's Guide to Urban Design (Urban Intiatives, 2003). This is a excellent and concise introduction to urban design. As well as the NZ Urban Design Protocol and the VIC Urban Design Charter.

Place Qualities E-Workbook

We offer a Place Qualities E-Workbook as part of our E-Learning series. The workbook provides a bite sized chunk of interactive urban design and placemaking learning and has a range of information, references and links which you can read at your leisure.

Each workbook in the E-learning series includes an assessment which is interactive with our website and tests your understanding through a mix of content and reflective questions. This preview shows the style and layout, table of contents and reflective questions. You can purchase this E-Workbook, or any of the others from the series, from our shop.

Latest information Available in  PPT on slideshare - Place Qualities

Relevant Blogs: Be brave - click the red button; Design and the four categories of placemaking; Home advertising - literally; Is your favourite place 5 Star?; Movie - New Town 1948; Should we copy local architecture?; William H Whyte's doco - “The Social Life of Small Urban Places”; Why height limits in our cities deliver more interesting places; Traffic studies are bull****; Forget the gym - focus on place!; 13 products to facilitate walking