Editorial

Citation

Parker, C., Byrom, J., Quin, S. and Roberts, G. (2008), "Editorial", Journal of Place Management and Development, Vol. 1 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpmd.2008.35501cac.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Place Management and Development, Volume 1, Issue 3

Place management was defined by this journal as a coordinated, area-based, multi-stakeholder approach, harnessing the skills, experience and resources of those in the public, private and voluntary sectors. In this issue, the theme of multiple stakeholders across and within sectors is especially apparent, including their often conflicting views on what makes a place better.

The issue begins with a paper from Leonard A. Jackson entitled “Residents’ perceptions of the impacts of special event tourism”. This paper acknowledges the potential for conflict between those charged with increasing visitor numbers to a location (i.e. tourism managers) and those that actually have to live in that location and “contend with the constant influx and outflow of visitors” (i.e. the residents). Leonard chose Daytona Beach, FL as the location to study along with its annual calendar of special events that are mainly for “petrol heads” (motor sports enthusiasts) but which between them contribute over $1.6 billion to the city’s economy and generate over 36,000 full-time equivalent jobs. Whilst residents are, in the main, positive about the economic impact of special events, they are conscious of specific disruption to their everyday activities, such as “dining in restaurants” and “driving in town”. Residents also blame some negative economic outcomes upon special event tourism (inflated real estate prices and the higher cost of some consumer items). Nevertheless, the majority of residents seem to be content with the trade-off between the increased economic benefits tourism brings and its negative consequences. This demonstrates the ability of one stakeholder group (residents) to recognise the contribution of another set (visitors). Studies, such as Leonard’s, help place managers to know if the correct “balance” between different stakeholder groups is being achieved. When it is, conflict is minimised.

Our second paper looks at the process of balancing the different needs and expectations of stakeholders, this time in the context of the governance of town planning. In their paper, “Transforming the governance of plan-making in Hong Kong”, Penny Wan and Rebecca Chiu examine how planning in Hong Kong has changed from an approach that was “elitist-led pro-growth to one of more engagement with the community and (one of) more environmental consciousness and sustainability”. A number of factors have contributed to this change including a desire for citizens to have more influence in planning decisions, increasing environmental awareness and also changing market conditions such as the drop in land values resulting from the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The ever-changing economic, social, political and technological back-drop to planning decisions means that the planning processes themselves have to be able to reflect this dynamic environment. Likewise, the planning governance structures are having to change from being hierarchical, top-down and “closed”, to more open networks, including a much wider range of agencies and communities themselves.

In Simon Yau’s study “To rehabilitate or redevelop? A study of the decision criteria for urban regeneration projects” a practical tool to help integrate the differing perspectives of various stakeholders is trialled. The study demonstrates that even within a fairly homogeneous stakeholder group of “regeneration professionals” there are markedly different views upon the relative importance of various facets of a regeneration project. When evaluating whether to redevelop an area or refurbish the existing building stock building surveyors ranked the structural conditions of the existing buildings as the most important factor to consider, followed by the economic return of the project and basic amenities to be provided by the project. In contrast, town planners were more concerned with the visual quality and impacts upon the micro-climate of the neighbourhood as the most important decision-making criteria, followed by social disturbance and the creation of public spaces. An analysis of the planning decision-making group, in the case-study example, demonstrated that the views of building surveyors were not included. This may have resulted in decisions less likely to be accepted/adopted by the wider development and investment community and the creation/maintenance of conflict between these stakeholder groups.

After cities and territories, Magdalena Florek (in her second paper for the JPMD) and Andrea Insch remind us that countries are places too through an examination of the opportunities and challenges of trademark protection for country brands in their paper “Trademark Protection of Country Brands: Insights from New Zealand”. Their paper examines the distinction between a brand and a trademark and notes the particular concerns that would arise through exclusive rights to a specific place, particularly country, name. They move on to look at how national symbols or icons are developed, officially and unofficially, and the protection given to some of them, such as the flag, national anthem or coat of arms. Using New Zealand as a case study, the authors note that many things are associated with the “kiwi identity” but that pre-eminent amongst them is the fern leaf. The case study explores the evolution of such usage citing examples from the sports field, military, currency, and corporate identities for New Zealand companies and the various approaches taken by government agencies to use the fern to symbolise “Brand New Zealand”.

The case study tells an interesting story for those place managers engaged in or considering trademark development. The lack of control that results from a plethora of historic or aspirational place identities and icons; the multiple voices that may have trenchant views on the particular image of their place that they see being created by the trademark symbol; the many versions of an historic symbol that may exist across a wide range of activities that potentially dilute the impact of the brand and lead to misuse and overuse will be familiar to many similarly engaged. The authors conclude their paper by proposing that government needs to take a more central role in establishing systems and taking action if a country brand identity is to be managed.

Our second paper of particular relevance to practitioners, “How place managers can harness the power of stakeholder feedback to improve satisfaction”, asks how we can measure whether a town centre or a commercial place is maximising the delivery of benefits to its different stakeholders. This paper, by Howard Morgan, draws on experience in the UK property market and a recent paper to the ATCM Conference in London which highlighted the paucity of evidence that place managers have about how business funders regard the service they get from place management. Morgan explores the challenge of multiple stakeholders that are typical for most place management initiatives and cites examples of what is being done by some to secure effective feedback. His first case study is the 110 acre area of Central London that has been owned and managed by the Portman Estate for almost 500 years but which has adopted a Balanced Scorecard approach to ensure the importance of stakeholder input and direct feedback into their management. Another case study looks at SEGRO, who own and manage the Slough Trading Estate, Europe’s largest such centre in single private ownership, and how they have introduced and incorporated into their business model regular independent occupier surveys. The case study details some of the successful changes that have resulted. Morgan moves on to describe an annual customer service benchmarking system in operation amongst major UK property companies and sets out four clear lessons from this for place management practitioners. He concludes baldly by stating that if the office of a place manager is not “pulsing with feedback from your customers” then it is time to take action and find out.

From Magdalena Florek and Andrea Insch’s insight into countries as places, through the challenges of managing major commercial estates and business stakeholders considered by Howard Morgan, we next come to an paper Robin Gower has entitled “People-managed places” and which starts by looking at a stereotypical village green; evidence if it were required that place management is a very diverse concept. In his paper Gower looks at what economics and game theory tell us about how different place user needs can be represented and co-exist. He asks how we can encourage unique and distinctive places when community inter-relationship is so chaotic. Gower is concerned that too much emphasis is placed by documents such as the New Athens Charter 2003 (European Council of Town Planners) on place management by function rather than by users and he argues that people need to develop a sense of “belonging” to a place as this creates neighbourliness. He describes the opportunities offered to place management practitioners by three of the ten axioms set out in The Principles of Intelligent Urbanism, those of “conviviality”, “equal access to opportunity” and “institutional integrity” and makes six recommendations that would promote the concept of people managed places. He concludes by suggesting that communities possess the power of self-organisation and takes the view that long term effective place management is sustained through self-management by the community itself.

The papers in this issue highlight that the problem of how to best manage a disparate group of stakeholders in the wider context of overseeing the effective functioning of a place is one that is prevalent the world over. Keeping residents happy, involving all relevant parties in planning processes, ensuring a country’s population is represented satisfactorily by the branding used to convey what their country represents around the world, ensuring that feedback from stakeholders is sought as part of an ongoing process of evaluation, and how we can foster a feeling of belonging amongst stakeholders by taking the correct actions; all of these are pertinent subjects dealt with in this issue.

Cathy Parker, John Byrom, Simon Quin, Gareth Roberts