Author: Sarah Walker-Smith
In every conversation about the future, whether it’s housing, climate, jobs, or wellbeing, we keep coming back to one idea: place is where it all comes together.
After attending Anthropy 2025, every keynote speaker, panel discussion, workshop or activity, regardless of its title, related to place and community in some way.
Place isn’t just a setting. It’s the proving ground where real lives unfold, where national policies hit the ground, and where the future either flourishes or falters. And if place is where change becomes real, then community is how it happens.
We need to stop (just) building houses (although we need a lot of them) and start building communities, which of course turn those houses into homes.
More than bricks and mortar
What does that mean in practice? It means moving beyond transactional approaches to development, and towards a holistic, community-first model for regeneration.
For our group CEO and independent chair of the Eden Project Morecambe partnership, Sarah Walker-Smith, this has highlighted how a clear, values-led vision can attract partners and unlock opportunity. But it only works when the impact on the local community is the focus, and when they alongside businesses, higher education institutions, national and local government are keen to collaborate, rather than compete.
Key ingredients for place-based transformation:
- A clear vision – rooted in local identity.
- A champion – someone who holds the torch and galvanises momentum. Member of Anthropy’s vibrant places alliance, Alex Hughes, calls this person an ‘angry lover.’ Someone who loves their community but is also angry enough to do something about the challenges it faces.
- Strong networks – cross-sector partnerships that unlock potential.
- Empowered communities – with voice, resource, and opportunity to influence and advise, rather than be done to.
- A ‘Scavenger Mindset’ – inspired by Clare Richmond’s book which proves that you can drive effective regeneration with little or no budget.
- The courage to ‘be more pirate’ – challenging old rules when they no longer serve and asking for forgiveness, not permission, when red tape stands in the way of common-sense solutions for the community.
- Targeted support and help – not just money, but advice, facilitation and rates reform, providing targeted relief, discounts or tapered rates.
- Smarter funding – such as expanding Community Benefit Societies (CBSs) supported organisations like Plunkett, offering tax breaks over grants, streamlining access to finance. and where grant funding does exist, simplifying it.
- Policy alignment – joining the dots between housing, services, climate, and jobs.
These aren’t just nice-to-haves — they’re critical if we’re serious about scaling regeneration that sticks in a world of permacrises and overlapping challenges.
How do we meet the housing and community need for 2040?
At a national level, we need a long-term, cross-party housing and place strategy, focused not on short-term returns but on long-term outcomes.
Key priorities include:
- Reform land ownership rules to enable sustainable development, at pace.
- Modernise planning law with clear and accessible frameworks.
- Utilise modern construction methods such as modularised homes and digital innovation.
- Incentivise underperforming markets, and targeted funding for planning department resourcing.
- Integrate infrastructure and services into housing schemes.
Above all, we must shift our national housing model from investment-first to home-first, recognising that secure, affordable, and healthy homes are at the heart of everything else: health, education, work, and wellbeing.
To meet 2040 needs, we must:
Build the right homes in the right places — considering affordability, demographics, and land supply.
Tackle long-standing issues such as under-occupation, overcrowding, and rental unaffordability.
Adopt proactive, regional responses to varying demographic pressures.
Support new housing typologies — including intergenerational living, later living, and co-living.
Our team at Marrons have crunched the numbers and shown where homes should be prioritised across the UK, based on real demographic need data, which you can download here.
The new NPPF is a step forward, but it must be supported by delivery tools, funding, and community engagement to ensure it delivers sustainable and inclusive outcomes.
What now?
What’s needed isn’t radical reinvention, it’s strategic alignment. We already know what works, we’ve seen it in action. The challenge now is to scale it, resource it properly, and devolve power to where it’s most effective. That means building homes that truly serve the needs of their communities and fostering communities that are built to last. Because place is where everything comes together—and community is how it happens.