The 3 Ps of Place-led government – how to make "Place" work

In Government, what is a Place, rather than just a space? Primarily, the difference is in the complexity or layering of different kinds of infrastructure - the social, economic, political and community infrastructure that makes it more than just a physical space, be that at the micro-level (a street), or a megacity conurbation.

What it isn’t, is a neatly-delineated box of “delivery targets”, with people wandering around as automatons waiting to be experimented upon. It’s an organic ecosystem of people, nature, buildings, transport – the physical infrastructure and how it is used and impacts people - and a webbing of social, civic and political connectivity, value, and work.

German Bundestag, US Census Bureau, Federal Secretariat of the Nigerian Government, Barbados Government: Place-led work we draw on to make Place to national level policymaking "work"

Many countries think of Place not just in a human or city sense – but as the actual (natural) ecosystem, the story and history, heritage and mythos, of the Places that humans are part, not just the owners, of. And these approaches to Place often have much stronger social connectivity, cohesiveness, resilience, and collective power for change than atomising ideas of city blocks and one-size-fits-all neighbourhoods.

Reorienting how we think about and build state capacity, capabilities, and collective problem solving, around what works – for people, Places, to population-level solutions –is what we’ve seen as the common thread of successful approaches.

Place – what is it good at?

Place is about finding out what works, with people, solving the problems we collectively face with two things: better evidence and information to take more effective approaches to solving our problems, and better collective capabilities. Chiefly, it’s about re-formulating accountability for the work of the state around what actually happens for people where they live.

So Place is a reorientation: of accountability, of leadership, but also critically, of thinking – and doing.

Place and solutions creation - some snapshots

Edit: some have asked for some specific snapshots of what we're talking about, and absent the deep dives underway and the work that's hard to talk about publicly, here are some quick examples of work on people-to-Place-to-population level solutions creation we draw from:

US Government - White House, US Census Bureau, Department of Energy, et al

The US's system is very different, as we know; in spacial terms, "Place" for the US Government is about making sense of that concept in a country with a space of 3,531,905 square miles of land area. The UK is 94,354 square miles: the UK's physical size is 2.64% of the US.

Population-wise, the UK has roughly 20% of the population of the US. So we have a fifth of the population, in a land size of less than 3% [caveat on how much of the US's land is inhabitable, of course, but that in itself raises different questions about Place - are we including wild spaces in our Place approaches or not?], with a system that is in some ways not just different, but oppositional, to ours.

Our work with US Government and its agencies was about navigating things that the White House or the Census Bureau needed to change - over this size of space, and for roughly 340 million people. Because the US system, with its state level and federal level of government, was set up in opposition to the UK's constitutional monarchy system of the time, it provides a useful snapshot of what some of the thinking of mitigating centralised control should look like, 250 years ago. What's interesting is how, given the size of some states, "Place" is actually about cities and neighbourhoods, and how the state-level legislatures and administrations can work better with them - national to Place is around or sometimes through state, but not always. Here's a whole case library on some of this here.

German Bundestag (Parliament) - how to 'go' from local to national policymaking and not forget what you already know

One theme of our previous work with the Bosch Stiftung on co-creating a programme for Members of the German Bundestag (Parliament), was that some of the new Members had come out of state-level legislatures and politics, and in that experience and in campaigning, had a good sense of what their constituencies were, the differences between them, and how the state to municipal level government worked (or didn't work).

But the transition to federal government creates a completely different machinery of working, and contextual environment. One of the things we worked on is how to create 'bubbles' of time, reflection and cognition, individually and together, including across party lines, to connect back in to Place, where people are, to understand things like, at the time, the beginning of the rise of the AfD.

Barbados and all-of-Society co-creation

Previous work with the Barbados Government on how to work with all of society on overarching for the country, taught us more and more about how people-led co-creation of solutions, working across sectors and society not just to 'engage with stakeholders' but to create solutions pathways gives us so much to learn from in Place-led work - balancing rights and responsibilities of sectors, actors, and people.

A Prime Minister in Mia Mottley who is a strong international presence and also leads meetings in each Parish of the country, setting out her vision and hearing from citizens about their concerns, before co-building potential solutions, would be someone from whom we could learn much about solutions creation, as well as the national narratives we tell ourselves.

Nigeria - social norming and Place-up context for anti-corruption

Working with the MacArthur Foundation and the Nigerian Government on applying behavioural and human sciences approaches to corruption control in the early days of behavioural science and public policy was fascinating, as it gave a behavioural environment lens to eg retail corruption - plotting how the process and systems worked, and suggesting transparency interventions to empower citizens to circumvent the blockages that corruption could then exploit.

The physical aspects of how eg driver's licenses were issued was a critical component in the learning and solutions design - and this can only be done physically, in a Place, with the logging and analysis with people in these areas as to how this worked. Inherently a Place-led approach, the 'scaling' also needed to focus on how each subsequent Place across a country of 356,669 square miles and 240 million people, where this kind of solution was relevant and where it wasn't - and what could be refashioned and adapted from what we collectively learned.

Place in the UK - building blocks

Compared to most countries where this work on Place to population-level solutions has happened, the UK has none of the major and very few of the secondary challenges to making Place ‘work’. This is really good news.

We have a lot of the pre-conditions already that make Place-led working more possible, and more successful - relatively small, and well-connected in transport and communication links, strong rule of law and collective vision for the country, including large interest in public institutions like the NHS.

And we have a thriving practice of community-led initiatives throughout the country, experimenting with new thinking and co-generating solutions to our most pressing problems at the Place level, from climate adaptation to health to collective co-ownership and building projects, as well as ongoing work and experience in the devolved nations to show us how some of this “works”, in practice, here in the UK.

These ongoing organic experiments in how to solve problems with people where they are, are the backbone of our knowledge and capabilities to be able to accomplish competent 21^st century problem solving, for the country as a whole.

All of these are huge benefits, which many countries including some we’re working with right now in the Accelerator for Good who are further ahead in their work on Place-led innovation, don’t have.

So what do we need to solve to make this happen? First, nuts and bolts

So given all of these benefits we have here in the UK that are unusual, what’s stopping us doing more of this?

In our work in over 40 countries with over 120 projects so far, from the neighbourhood level to the UN, the nuts and bolts of how people collaborate, convene, make decisions, and follow through on work are the key things to get right - as attempting to tackle complex challenges will fail if we can't do the basics.

So we have an evaluative methodology to find this stuff out with any project and any government with whom we work, and this is our reading of some key points of stickiness, from work with central government (Cabinet Office and other departments) and at the national and Place level here in the UK over the last few years.

It's not wildly divergent from most challenges, but we are behind in a few key areas in how we approach work and solutions, which may account for one of the reasons why we lag on progress in this realm, when we have huge upsides that would make this work relatively easier for success:

Resistance to learning– All successful changes in government have as their bedrock the understanding that we need to explore and learn new things to create new approaches – yet post-secondary level learning as a set of capabilities is comparatively low in the UK, especially as compared with other OECD countries (global south governments, by and large, are better at this).

Basic work capabilities – there's no other way to say this except: can we show up to meetings on time, for the length of time agreed to, prepared, and pay attention and contribute? Do we do the work in between meetings that we committed to? Can we convene and work together as groups, within teams and across team boundaries? Can we move forward work, use evidence and find new tools when needed? Do we know how to design convening and meeting structures, as well as different kinds of project and resource management, to include experimentation and learning throughout the process? Can we change direction when the evidence tells us to? These all sound like basic questions, but the answer is often: no. And without the basics, we cannot do complex things.

Vested interests – large and powerful institutions often don’t want change to happen as it would affect their monopolies of power and capital; so when engaging in Place-led work, it is always worth understanding not just what the visible structures are in those places, but what the powerful vested interests who will resist change are, how they operate, and having a plan for this.

Identity and culture-within-a-culture – beliefs like those that say that the work of policymaking, and government, is in putting forward a clever argument in writing or in Oxbridge union-style debates rather than making something tangible happen that improves the country and people’s lives; government by focus group; and the recent admission that it was a surprise that any preparation needed to be done to govern - these are all rather breathtaking statements when said out loud. But these are all common and prevalent in how governmental leadership is viewed and discussed here - much to change.

"There's nothing I can do" – a lot of the conversations I’ve had with people at the moment go a similar way: enumerating the many issues with how the system is set up, passionate and sincere complaints about it and lamentations of how this means it fails to do its job, but when you suggest alternatives of ways they themselves could start to chip away at this, there is surprise and it ends with something along the lines of ‘I would, but it’s hard/uncomfortable’. I find this really sad, for us as a country. Good work is hard; and change involves discomfort; but pushing through discomfort to create or change something that wouldn't otherwise have happened is hugely personally - as well as societally - rewarding. Hopefully more positive change happening if it can, creates a flywheel of success, and more people will want to join it, despite the uncertainty and temporary discomfort this involves.

All of which leads to a lack of use of evidence of what works in the 3 ‘Ps’ – people, Places, to population-level solutions creation: partially because a lot of this evidence comes from countries further ahead in this process, ie the not-made-here issue that will get that evidence rejected sight unseen, but also because we just generally aren’t used to seeking out and using diversified kinds of evidence in this work, for the non-exhaustive list of reasons above.

It will be interesting to see how much progress can be made on this – we’re working on some useful parallel work in the Accelerator for Good that we’re almost ready to talk about, both at the Place level here in the UK and the national level in other countries, supporting their work creating their people to Place to population-level structures and new ways of working.

More soon!