By Stephen Burton | Featuring Brooke Williams, Fourfold Studio
We have all seen them. The multi-million dollar plazas with perfect paving, high-end landscaping, and award-winning architecture—that are completely empty.
They look beautiful in a render, but in reality, they feel sterile. Soulless.
According to Brooke Williams, Director of Fourfold Studio, this happens when we treat placemaking as a design output rather than a human process.
In this episode of The Placemakers, Brooke advocates for a radical shift in how we build our cities. Instead of experts designing for a community, she argues we must design with them, ensuring their “fingerprints” are visible on every bench, street corner, and public square.
Key Takeaways for Urban Designers:
🎧 Listen to the Episode
We discuss the success of the Grafton main street revitalization and why community trust is the hardest (but most important) thing to build.
đź“„ Accessibility & Reference
Prefer to read? Download the full word-for-word transcript of this interview.
Australia has excellent urban design practices. We have experts who know how to grade a road, select durable materials, and navigate complex planning codes.
But Brooke argues that in this pursuit of professional excellence, we often exclude the true experts: the locals.
“We bring together all of these experts of place,” Brooke explains. “But instead of working with those locals… we tend to work together.”
The result is a landscape of technically perfect but emotionally hollow spaces. Because the locals were not part of the journey, they do not see themselves in the outcome. They don’t know how to use it, they don’t feel ownership over it, and ultimately, they don’t visit it.
To avoid the “cookie-cutter” approach, Brooke uses a concept she calls “community fingerprints.”
When a resident walks down their revitalized main street, they shouldn’t just see a new bench. They should see a reflection of their town’s specific culture, history, or personality.
“It’s something that could only be specific to them,” Brooke says.
This prevents the sensation of “placelessness”—where a development in Queensland looks exactly the same as one in Western Australia. When a community sees their fingerprints on the built form, they become the custodians of that space.
This approach isn’t just fluffy community sentiment; it delivers hard economic results.
Brooke shares the story of a project in Grafton, New South Wales. By working deeply with local businesses to create an action plan, they secured funding for a “Streets as Shared Spaces” project.
The result? Two years later, the street had zero commercial vacancies (barring one with structural issues).
“The feel of the street was completely different,” Brooke recalls. “You’d walk into a business and you can see that they’re proud.”
Finally, Brooke touches on a critical but often overlooked driver for placemaking: the loneliness epidemic.
With statistics suggesting that one in three young people feel lonely, our public spaces have a role to play that transcends property value.
“It’s a place where we all come together,” Brooke notes.
While funding is often tied to economic metrics—retail spend, foot traffic, property uplift—the social return on investment is arguably higher. A well-designed, people-first public place provides a neutral ground for connection, acting as a direct counter-measure to social isolation.
Share
View all articles
