Swimming pool, gym, gourmet kitchen, co-working space, pet area. At some point, every property development started offering the same things. And when everything is the same, the decision to buy comes down to the lowest price per square metre, which is exactly where no developer wants to compete. Location is the only differentiator that cannot be copied, because it is unique by nature.
The problem of property commoditisation
The property market is caught in a vicious cycle. A developer innovates with a new feature – an infinity pool, a yoga space, a community vegetable garden. The market copies it. Within two years, everyone has it; the unique selling point becomes a commodity, and the race starts all over again.
The result is increasingly expensive developments, because they need to have everything, and increasingly indistinguishable, because everyone else has everything too. Buyers compare square metre for square metre, location for location, price list for price list. The identity of the place doesn’t factor into the equation because nobody has built it.
This logic overlooks something fundamental about the decision to buy a property: it is deeply emotional. More than a financial or functional decision, it is a decision about identity. People buy the place they want to live in, the lifestyle they want to lead, the community they want to be part of, the story they want to tell about themselves. When a development offers only amenities, it offers nothing of this nature.
What place branding does for a property development
Place branding in a property context is neither creative naming nor visual identity; it is the strengthening of the strategic identity of the place that the development creates or becomes part of. It is the answer to the question that no brochure answers: what is this place genuinely about?
When this question has a clear answer, rooted in the uniqueness of the place, in the character of the surroundings, in the profile of the potential community, the development begins to communicate something that goes beyond technical specifications. It communicates a sense of belonging. And belonging creates loyalty, reduces the need for discounts and sustains the property’s value over time.
The identity of the place also guides design decisions: what kind of curation of use makes sense for the ground floor, how public spaces should function, what kind of programming brings the neighbourhood to life, and how the relationship with the surroundings should be built. Not as a wishlist of amenities, but as a coherent system built around the place’s Singularity.
What placemaking does for a property development
Placemaking is where identity meets physical space. It is the practice that transforms a generic ground floor into a place with character, a forgotten square into the neighbourhood’s centre of gravity, a pedestrian walkway into a meeting place.
In a property context, strategic placemaking begins with the right question: what will people do here? Not what the project allows them to do, but what they will actually do, spontaneously and repeatedly, because the place was designed for that purpose.
The answer requires research, co-creation with the potential community, and the translation of these needs into design decisions—not in terms of facilities, but in spatial configurations that facilitate certain behaviours. A space that encourages chance encounters between neighbours is different from a space that simply has an extra bench. It is a choice of scale, of materiality, of programme.
The dimension of the future: Place Strategic Foresight© in real estate
A property development is a long-term investment. The developer decides today on something that will exist for decades, in a place that will change, in a city that will evolve, with residents whose behaviours and needs will transform. Most projects ignore this dimension because they lack the tools to consider it.
Place Strategic Foresight© offers precisely that: the exploration of multiple future scenarios to ensure that today’s decisions are robust enough to keep the development relevant regardless of the scenario that arise. How do changes in remote working affect what people look for in a neighbourhood? How does climate change alter our relationship with open spaces? How does the evolution of the surrounding area impact perceived value?
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