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Last week Jen Heal was pleased to be invited to speak alongside Public Practice at the RSAW Large Practice Network open event focused on the civic role of the architect and what value really means.  Jen provided a short presentation of the role of design in creating value, the key points of which are set out here.

Good design and effective placemaking are often spoken about as aspirations, or worse, as discretionary extras that can be trimmed when budgets tighten. In reality, they are strategic investments. They shape long-term outcomes for people, places, and public finances, and they fundamentally determine whether publicly funded projects deliver enduring value or embed future costs.

For many working in the built environment, this may be obvious. Yet the challenge remains: to consistently articulate, evidence, and defend the value of design and placemaking in a context that is frequently dominated by short-term financial metrics.

What Do We Mean by “Value”?

When discussing value in design and placemaking, it is essential to move beyond a narrow focus on immediate capital cost or developer return. Publicly funded projects, in particular, must be assessed through a broader and more balanced lens. Value includes:

• Development value – long-term asset performance, resilience, and return on investment.
• Public value – contributions to shared infrastructure, civic life, and the quality of the public realm.
• Social value – improved health outcomes, wellbeing, inclusion, and equity.
• Cultural value – identity, memory, distinctiveness, and civic pride.

These forms of value are not abstract or incidental. They flow directly from decisions made during the design and placemaking process, particularly at the earliest stages of a project.

Design as a Value-Creating Activity

Design is not simply about aesthetics. It is a value-creating activity with measurable impacts on health, wellbeing, economics, and environmental sustainability. Early design decisions are especially critical: they are estimated to determine up to 90 per cent of a building’s life-cycle impact.

Well-considered design enables:

• Efficient use of energy and resources, reducing operating costs and environmental impact.
• Adaptability and resilience, lowering the need for costly retrofits, repairs, and premature replacement.
• Healthier environments, which can reduce long-term public health expenditure.

Conversely, poor design locks in future liabilities: higher energy consumption, inefficient layouts, maintenance issues, environmental harm, and negative health outcomes. These costs are rarely visible at the outset but are borne over decades by owners, occupants, and the public purse.

Placemaking and the Conditions for Thriving

The principles of the Placemaking Wales Charter are explicitly focused on creating places in which people can thrive. This includes approaches that:

• Support active travel and healthier lifestyles.
• Foster social interaction and stronger communities.
• Improve wellbeing and reduce inequalities.
• Create distinctive, legible, and memorable places.

Good design helps shape identity. Distinctive places attract people, encourage care and stewardship, and build civic pride. In an increasingly competitive environment, this matters. Whether the goal is to attract visitors, retain residents, support local businesses, or encourage long-term investment, places with character and delight perform better socially, economically, and culturally.

The fundamental question is simple: why would people want to visit, return to, live in, or invest in a place that offers no sense of quality, identity, or belonging?

Value Does Not Happen by Accident

The benefits associated with good design and placemaking are not automatic. They require deliberate and sustained investment, particularly in:

• Qualified and experienced design professionals who can add value through insight, creativity, and technical expertise.
• Robust project briefs that align ambition, outcomes, and public value from the outset.
• Sufficient time for design, testing options and resolving complexity rather than defaulting to lowest-risk, lowest-quality solutions.
• Ambition beyond minimum compliance, recognising that meeting baseline standards rarely delivers excellence or long-term value.

When viewed across the full life cycle of a building or place, investment in design consistently pays for itself. It mitigates risk, avoids future costs, and delivers benefits that compound over time.

The Role of Institutions and the Profession

Organisations such as Design Commission for Wales, the Royal Society of Architects in Wales, and Public Practice play a critical role in championing these principles. Through guidance, advocacy, training, and review, they help clients and decision-makers understand how design quality underpins long-term value.

Architects and built environment professionals also carry significant responsibility. This includes:

• Challenging briefs that prioritise short-term gain at the expense of long-term value.
• Going beyond minimum standards to explore better outcomes.
• Helping clients weigh up trade-offs – for example, more units versus higher performance standards such as Passivhaus.
• Balancing competing priorities and, where necessary, standing up for principles and values rather than serving financial metrics alone.
• Actively seeking opportunities, sharing good practice, and maintaining professional conviction even when progress feels incremental.

Making the Case for Design, Now and in the Future

A central challenge for all of us is to continue demonstrating the value of design and placemaking in ways that resonate in both the short and long term. This means aligning design quality with risk management, cost certainty, health outcomes, climate commitments, and public accountability.

Investing in design is not about expensive ornamentation. It is about unlocking value, mitigating risk, harnessing efficiencies, enhancing human experience, and strengthening cultural capital.

A Call to Action

• For public bodies and policymakers: embed design quality and placemaking principles into policy, funding criteria, and procurement processes from the outset.
• For developers and clients: view design as a strategic asset that protects long-term value rather than a cost to be minimised.
• For professionals: continue to advocate, evidence, and deliver high-quality design, even in challenging contexts.
• For organisations and partnerships: support collective approaches, shared learning, and frameworks such as the Placemaking Wales Charter.

If we are serious about creating places that are sustainable, healthy, distinctive, and resilient, we must treat design and placemaking as the strategic investments they truly are.