UKREiiF 2025: Public Realm

What does a good public realm look like to you? Speakers and visitors at the Connected Places Catapult pavilion at UKREiiF detail what they think makes for a good public realm.

0:04 – 0:48

Good Public Realm looks like there’s been really great engagement with the different range of potential stakeholders and designing with their needs in mind what’s going to bring the community into that space and provide them with benefits over the long term. Public realm really needs to recognize the context and meet the needs of the people that are living, working or spending time in that place. Public Realm is our symbolic and functional shared space and it’s where all the values of society are played out. It needs to be spatialised, it needs really good design, but much more importantly, it needs a good brief. And that brief needs to be informed by participation and having lots of different voices.

0:48 – 1:13

Strength test a spatial brief. Good Public Realm is places that are dynamic, inclusive and sustainable. It’s about enabling and empowering people to have the best quality of life, making sure that people who work and live and play and places, they’re all part of the conversation about what a place means to them. All of that comes together to make real magic and that’s what good Pocket run looks like.

‘Who isn’t in the room?’ Public realm developers challenged to better understand communities

A panel of public realm experts underlined that better engagement is key to creating sustainable, flourishing places.