Quality of place: why residents stay, and what a public calendar adds
By Tully Zeitlin · Published
Quality of place is the economic developer's term for what makes residents stay in a city, spend their evenings there, and tell other people to move there. It is built from things a city can see: the parks and streets, the restaurants and shops, the people who are out, and the reasons to be out. This guide covers what drives quality of place, how it differs from quality of life, and what a year-round public calendar adds that buildings alone cannot.
What drives quality of place
The best-known study of why people become attached to where they live is the Knight Soul of the Community survey, in which Gallup interviewed about 43,000 adults in 26 American communities between 2008 and 2010. Three qualities drove attachment more than any other: a community's social offerings, its openness, and its beauty. They outranked residents' views of the local economy, leadership and safety. And the communities with the highest attachment had the highest rates of GDP growth over time, a link the researchers called significant and positive. That is a correlation, not a proof of cause, and it is still the strongest public evidence that quality of place pays. Of the three, social offerings is the one a city can change fastest, because it is made of things to do and places to meet people, and a calendar supplies both.
Quality of place versus quality of life
Quality of life describes one person's circumstances: health, income, commute, housing. Quality of place describes the shared thing: whether the city itself is somewhere people want to be. A city cannot program a resident's salary. It can program its square. That is why the term belongs to economic development: it names the part of a resident's experience a city can act on.
What makes a good place
Project for Public Spaces, which has worked on public space since 1975, finds that the places that work share four qualities: they are easy to get to and get through, people are doing things there, they are comfortable and look cared for, and they are sociable, the kind of place people meet each other and bring visitors. Three of the four are design. The second, people doing things there, is programming, and it is the one that decides whether the other three get used. A sense of place is what a visitor feels when a location is somewhere rather than anywhere: they know where they are, they recognize the people, and they can picture coming back. Design gives a place its look. Habit gives it its sense: the same good night every week, the monthly event people put on the calendar, the season's big weekend. The design half and the programming half are both covered on placemaking.
What a public calendar adds to quality of place
Every calendar we build stands on one architecture: a weekly rhythm people can count on, monthly anchors that spike traffic, and seasonal tentpoles that put a place on the map, drawn from a working catalog of 150-plus formats across twelve categories, tuned to each place and its seasons. For a city that is the weekly night on the plaza people plan around, the monthly market or concert that becomes a habit, and the seasonal tentpoles the whole region marks on its calendar. Residents who feel the city is theirs. Families who choose to live there. Residents who go out at home, not in the next town. Events increase tax revenue, attendance and the vitality of a downtown people have a reason to visit. A third place is the sociologist's name for the same thing at the scale of one square or one lawn, and the third place has its own page. Community engagement is a second lever: corporations who bring their annual traditions, charities who build their biggest nights with us, and schools, academies and arts organizations whose recitals and showcases need a stage. Those events happen every year. The only question is where.
Who builds quality of place
City staff in parks and recreation and on main street already produce a strong calendar, and do it well. What every team like that runs short of is time: the booking, the vendor-by-vendor scheduling, the production, and the hundred calls behind every good Saturday, on top of everything else on their plates. We work alongside the teams producing events now, at whatever scale helps. We plan it, book the talent and vendors, write the day-of instructions, and produce it with your staff or our own people on the ground. Your team keeps the relationships and the credit; we take the load. Reported against the numbers the city already watches: attendance, visits, local business activity, and resident feedback. Measured, not modeled. The whole of our work with cities and municipalities is on its own page; the downtown case is on downtown revitalization and the counting is on the economic impact of events.
Frequently asked questions
What is quality of place?
The economic developer's term for what makes residents stay in a city, spend their evenings there, and tell other people to move there: the parks and streets, the restaurants and shops, the people who are out, and the reasons to be out.
What makes a good place?
Project for Public Spaces finds four shared qualities: easy to get to and get through, people doing things there, comfortable and cared for, and sociable. Three are design; the second is programming.
What are the qualities of a good community?
In the Knight Soul of the Community survey, three qualities drove residents' attachment more than any other: social offerings, openness and beauty, ahead of the economy, leadership and safety.
Does quality of place affect economic growth?
The Knight and Gallup survey found that the communities with the highest resident attachment also had the highest GDP growth over time. That is a correlation, not a proof of cause.
What does a public calendar add to quality of place?
The social offerings: a weekly night on the plaza people plan around, a monthly market or concert that becomes a habit, and the seasonal tentpoles the region marks on its calendar. Events increase tax revenue, attendance and the vitality of a downtown people have a reason to visit.
Who runs a city's public calendar?
City staff in parks and recreation and on main street already produce a strong calendar; what they run short of is time. We work alongside the teams producing events now, at whatever scale helps, with the city keeping the relationships and the credit.
Get in touch.
Tell us about the city. We listen first, propose what fits, and shape the engagement around what your council can approve.