Dropbox Paper

Digital Placemaking

Digital placemaking. The focus is on Footways providing inspiration and a trigger for projects that use maps, apps and rich media to help people explore and engage with their neighbourhoods. Living Streets examples - From spaces to place and Mapping for Change including the Southwark Walk Elephant. Footways finds/develops more examples and creates a digital placemaking toolkit comparable with Walk to School. The toolkit would offer options on different platforms, decided after further research. For the big vision see the Digital Placemaking Guide by Calvium, who developed the City Visitor Trail.

Digital Placemaking Guide by Jo Morrison Calvium

The Place Experience Platform (PEP) is already being used in 10 cities across Europe and recently saw Calvium become a finalist for ‘Innovation’ in the 2022 UK Digital Growth Awards, as well as be recognised as one of CreaTech Ones to Watch 2021. On a top level, PEP combines the ability to create, deliver, update and analyse bespoke digital visitor experiences.

Digital placemaking for health and wellbeing by Jo Morrison 2018-19

This article explores some ways that location-based digital technologies are being used to help create more liveable urban spaces. As such, it shows that a digital placemaking approach is a key element in creating the types of places where we wish to live.

Digital placemaking for more inclusive towns and cities Jo Morrison August 2020

Four elements of adigital [placemaking project: people, place, technology, datas

Putting the power of digital placemaking into the hands of place marketers by Jo Morrison

Interview with Peter Madden: sustainability, innovation, place and technology by Jo Morrison September 2022

I just helped create a new module, which we’re launching next year, on digital planning. I work in the Planning school and we train the next generation of planners to go out and work in our consultancies and in our city planning departments. Training them to use all the digital tools that we have at our disposal, intelligently and well, is really important. So we’ve designed a course to help do that.

What do you see as the critical aspects of city living that can enhance people’s relationships with their neighbourhoods?

Thinking about the great public realm is important. Don’t focus entirely on buildings themselves; think about the spaces between buildings and how people interact in those buildings, in their spaces. Making sure that we’re able to step out of our homes into greenery; not having to visit some special place to access nature, but when we step out our front doors and walk to school or work or to see friends we’re walking under trees or by greenery and through nature. For me, that makes a good public realm and good city experience.

Also, the ability of people to meet on foot. I go to cities that are dominated by cars and it doesn’t feel like people are meeting in the city. The ability for people to stroll along and bump into or chat to somebody else, and different people – every class, nationality, age, gender – to be able to enjoy the space. A diverse and inclusive, accessible, high-quality public space is important to create a good and thriving labour.

Back to the NHS: activities are important – spaces that encourage people to be active to walk and cycle – so building public realm and infrastructure that help that. Increasingly we need to think about not just physical wellbeing but mental wellbeing. Again, we know that being in nature and having a good public realm and natural environment enhances your mental wellbeing as well. Designing for good physical and mental wellbeing in our spaces through accessibility, greening and also through noise and sound – the hidden pollutant that affects a lot of people’s physical and mental wellbeing. Good sounds are an important part of cities but bad noise absolutely impacts people.

Thinking about designing places for health is really important and if you design them to work well for health, they’re going to work well for lots of other things.

Researching digital placemaking for health and wellbeing in North East London 2022

The Digital Placemaking Scoping Project is an exploratory research study being undertaken by Calvium on behalf of the NHS North East London. .

The research explores how digital placemaking can enhance the physical and mental health and emotional wellbeing of North East London’s stakeholder communities. In particular, it seeks to reveal how digital placemaking can be incorporated into the strategic planning of future healthcare facilities and their neighbouring public realm.

Calvium 2020

Calvium Place Experience system Salisbury, Exeter