The first stage in continuous place-based design is observation. It is a beginning that says before we do anything different here we need to try and understand this place.
The aim of this phase is to gather as much data and wisdom as we can before proposing changes. That data can be physical, cultural or even intangible — anything that helps us to notice what makes a place distinct, what gives it its feel.
One of the data sets I think is often overlooked — but vital — is hopes and dreams.
These are easy to dismiss as not ‘real’ but I see them as very real. Our hopes are distant but visible from where we are now — rooted both in the present and in the future. In the language of the Three Horizons Model, they belong in Horizon Three: an outline of what we see from here in the future.
Since the design process spans the present and the future, hopes and dreams are a vital link.
The hopes and dreams of the people that live or regularly used in a space are founded in their complex interaction with that place. So asking simple questions like:
What is your hope for this place?
What do you dream I could become?
…can a great deal about the current lie of the land and its future potential.
One the questions we ask in the Systems Survey motif (see the Pattern Book) is ‘what is this place trying to do?’
Hopes and dreams are part of that answer. They are usually motivating — either towards one place or away from another. They inject energy into certain courses of action over others. And so that are an important clue as to what patterns are already unfolding here or are likely to in the future.
So pay attention to hopes and dreams as well as the things you can physically observe. These dreams may already be shaping the path that this place is taking.