Place Management - History

History

Place management has its roots in the management of towns, cities, neighbourhoods and other locations. The reasons for the need for place management are compelling. The proportion of the world’s population living in cities has grown from 13% in 1900 to nearly 50% now. Changes particularly in healthcare and technology have led to dramatic shifts in migration practices. Fluctuations in the movement of people places a strain on both urban and rural locations.

Migration is not limited between rural and urban locations but can also happen between countries, creating issues relating to cultural integration. People will migrate for numerous reasons often linked with finding a better quality of life either through superior employment prospects, escaping war or poverty, or even to enjoy a better climate. This can create problems for locations which become exposed to increases in population, decreases in population, or a shift in the demographic composition of a population. Places subsequently act as focal points for the occurrence of phenomena such as globalisation and the clash of civilisations.

Factors such as changing technology not only drive migration, but can in themselves trouble the prosperity of places. Technological development was a driver behind the Industrial Revolution which led to high levels of migration into urban locations. However, further technological development rendered many of the primary functions of successful industrial cities as obsolete towards the end of the twentieth century. Grimond cites New York as being one city which “went through a bad patch in the 1970s” while other major cities, such as Manchester in the UK which is famed for instigating the Industrial Revolution, also suffered. Rapid technological and industrial change not only creates jobs but can also cause mass unemployment, damaging local economies and leaving pockets of deprivation across regions.

Another important factor in the development of the field of place management is the impact of the retail sector. As a non-judicial parliamentary review of the UK retail sector states, retailing is a necessity for local populations, supplying food and goods in the absence of self agricultural practices. However, shifts in the sector influenced by national and multi-national companies have led to the globalisation of the sector, which raises concerns about the sustainability of the supply of goods and the effectiveness of local economies. Furthermore, all business practices, either positively or negatively, can impact upon the prosperity of the area it is based through the employment of people, investment and skills retention.

As it now appears to be accepted that for numerous reasons places undergo a process evolution which can impact upon their prosperity, it has become more widely acknowledged that deliberate and co-ordinated intervention in this evolution is desirable. Recognising a symbiotic relationship between the prosperity of a location and the prosperity of retail, firms Boots the Chemist, J Sainsburys and Marks & Spencer in the UK contributed to the development of place management by supporting local authorities in the formation of locally based intervention schemes. This led to the appointments of the United Kingdom's first town centre managers in Ilford and the London Borough of Redbridge in 1987. This consequently led to the formation of the Association of Town Centre Management. Between 1987 and 2000 around 500 town centre management schemes covering 600 towns and cities dedicated to co-ordinating various functions of a particular location have been established.

Since the 1970s and 1980s, similar intervention schemes were practiced elsewhere under different guises including urban revitalisation in Poland, activity centre management in Australia, and business improvement districts in the US. Despite their differences, as they each embody the aim of improving the effectiveness of a location, the Institute of Place Management has sought to unify them under the banner of ‘place management’ borrowing a term which was originally conceived in Australia.