Purposeful Placemaking
Understanding Places
Spending time researching and learning about the needs of a community is the crucial first step in the creation of any new Strata development.
Our Pre-Development team conduct a variety of activities including local authority engagement, collaboration with other relevant stakeholders such as Housing Associations, and the top-level review of reports and documents such as local plans and need assessments, to fully understand exactly what it is that a community needs and how we can contribute.
Designing for People
Our comprehensive design process utilises the expertise of our in-house design team, who create spaces based on the findings from the first step of the process (Understanding Places). They use this insight to create a tailored design that works for each specific community and facilitates a good quality of life.
As standard, the following areas are considered when creating the masterplan and designs for the development:
a. Creating a sense of belonging (Local heritage, continued relationships, access to amenities, community infrastructure)
b. Enabling sustainable travel
c. Providing access to nature
d. Ensuring equitable access (affordable homes, safe, climate resilience)
All designs undergo a strict design review process whereby all plans created by our experienced and qualified in-house design team are reviewed by an Urban Designer or other design professions within the Local Authority.
Community Learning
The inclusion of the community is essential when designing truly purposeful places. That’s why we engage existing communities in a variety of ways to understand their thoughts and feelings towards a proposed development. We then ensure that we are addressing any needs and concerns through the design and delivery of developments, as well as engagement with the community following its completion.
The ways in which we communicate and collaborate with communities varies to ensure that both Strata and the community get the most out of the process. Some methods include postal and digital consultations, public exhibitions and public consultation events.
Local Impact
Delivering purposeful placemaking is about more than just the design of a site. To have true impact, our developments should benefit the wider community and economy through local employment and purchasing, the establishment of community relationships and wider community outreach.
Creating Communities
Good community relationships form the building blocks for a happy development where people can flourish. We understand the importance of establishing human connections that will continue to evolve long after the last bricks are laid, which is where our two key processes come in across all our developments.
Making Meaningful Connections
Every customer that experiences the Strata journey will build a personal relationship with their Experience Manager and Production teams, who will take them through the entire process of purchasing a home with Strata. All customers, regardless of tenure, are able to make their own design choices and are kept up to date with build progress regularly. When their home is complete, customers are offered a home demonstration that includes everything you need to know about your home, including how to operate and live in the home sustainably.
We established, and continue to foster, an online community where our customers and the wider community can connect. This community has been built on Instagram, where thousands of our customers have documented their own experiences of living in a Strata home. It has become a source of inspiration, friendship and support, and that community spirit continues offline on all our developments.
To date, over 15,000 posts have been shared using the hashtag, and customers have found neighbours and friends through this online community. We have also delivered regular customer and community events in person or online, across all live Strata developments to establish relationships that flourish into a sense of community, leaving a positive legacy in the form of a unified community behind.
These processes mean that when we physically move on from the development, we have a community of happy customers who are able to enjoy their homes and live sustainably, while continuing to interact with us and the wider community after their official customer journey has concluded.
The aim is to use these Strata- customer relationships to begin to measure and understand the impact we have on customers through our work. This will allow us to make informed decisions on future designs and processes, so that we can continue to create happy customers.