It’s an odd business, property development. Particularly the kind of development I do – large regeneration schemes where we are re-making places that have been lost, typically through post-industrial decay. When rebuilding parts of cities our job is to re-create fast, to the drumbeat of our investors, that which was developed over at least decades and sometimes centuries. Is it possible to make good places quickly?

Initially this is the job of the masterplanning architect – a role we developers often take for granted as we stand around meeting room tables, poring over plans like some latter-day Baron Haussmann, laying down the principles by which, sometimes, thousands of people are going to live their lives in coming decades.

Then the marketing kicks in. Because nothing will happen unless someone buys. So, the instinct is to design, package, brand, position and sell a place that otherwise would have grown organically over centuries, messily and unevenly and, other than planners guiding the process along broad policy guidelines, without anyone really in charge.

…