The Community of Place is the people with a significant and ongoing interest in the place. This includes landowners, business owners, workers, students, creatives, regular visitors, the school children who come by every Friday afternoon – anyone to whom the place matters.
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Placemaking that builds the trust and connections (social capital) in a locality over time can effectively develop a more cohesive Community of Place.
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A facilitator can be the connective tissue between people as cohesion develops. They will need to strengthen two kinds of social capital: connections within groups (bonding social capital) and connections between groups (bridging social capital). And they will need to keep these in balance, as too much of one kind compared to the other is unhelpful.

Here are some of the benefits of building connections between people and the places they share:

• It meets a fundamental human need to feel a sense of belonging
• It can help heal, address loneliness and isolation
• It helps rebalance us-versus-them-ism
• Sharing and caring for a place fosters a sense of environmental stewardship for now and future generations
• The combination of proximity and a culture of reciprocity is the precursor of resilience and innovation

This social rebuild is arguably the most important rebuild because we can’t have the cultural and economic rebuild without it. As cohesion grows, discussions about shared values are easier.