A few key trends that evolved over the past few years and continue to shape the field of placemaking in 2025 reflect a growing commitment to sustainability, resource efficiency, and the responsible management of urban spaces.
The future of urban placemaking will be shaped by our need to adapt—both to environmental challenges and to the growing demand for equitable public spaces. As cities face pressures from climate change, the demand for green spaces is rising because more of those cities recognize their role in improving urban ecosystems, enhancing biodiversity, and providing community health benefits. Additionally, we can expect to see green roofs, urban forests, and rain gardens become standard practice, helping cities manage stormwater, reduce urban heat, and create more livable environments. Simultaneously, the push for net zero buildings will drive innovations in design, with green infrastructure becoming integral to urban planning.
It is inspiring to see the focus on sustainable and adaptable urban placemaking in response to the challenges we face today and in the future. By incorporating more green spaces, active transportation corridors, and nature-based solutions, cities can become more resilient to climate change while also enhancing the well-being of residents. The shift toward nature-based solutions not only benefits the environment but also adds value to real estate and improves the overall quality of urban life. It is essential for the design and construction industry to embrace carbon tracking and evidence-based design to make impactful changes and drive innovation in creating more sustainable and livable cities.
David Crombie Park is one of the most significant ongoing public-realm projects in Toronto, blending park space and street corridors into a unified, holistic design. The project is about people and nature, and about the connections between them and the city. Its design aims to address the city’s sustainability goals through the application of Arcadis’ interactive carbon model, which will help minimize the project’s environmental impact by tracking carbon inputs and offsetting them through the sequestration of carbon outputs. Ultimately, the project aims to reach carbon neutrality within 15 years of its completion. It is anticipated to become increasingly climate positive each year thereafter.
Arcadis | SLA | Norm Li
Increasing green spaces doesn’t necessarily require converting productive land into parks; it involves reimagining what green space can be. Green roofs, urban forests, vertical gardens, and rain gardens help us envision green spaces that promote mental health, active transportation, and integrated green-blue infrastructure. Former park land, once serving a single purpose, can now offer numerous benefits, such as improved mental health, cooler temperatures, flood reduction through bioswales, lower carbon levels, and decreased greenhouse gas emissions. The design strategy for blue-green infrastructure focuses on maximizing benefits while using fewer resources, thus delivering multiple advantages through this approach.
Resource efficiency
Life-cycle considerations prioritize the use of sustainable materials and practices that minimize environmental harm while optimizing performance. These considerations influence how architects plan, design, and build future communities. Nature-based approaches will emphasize ecosystem restoration and enhance urban biodiversity, becoming a standard in future developments.
Performance-based metrics, including LEED v5, will incentivize the creation of innovative and comprehensive environmental strategies, thus encouraging developers to adopt measures that improve energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality. The more we track these metrics, the better equipped we are to use evidence-based decision-making to support project funding and execution.
Carbon tracking has become a key focus in design, influencing daily decisions on every site and material considered. If the entire design and construction industry adopts this approach, meaningful change will follow. Designers must anticipate the environmental benefits of each decision and measure these benefits by using the available tools.
The Dynamic Carbon Model envisions incorporating the use of parametric design tools and similar technologies that tap a database of source materials (life-cycle assessments and environmental product declarations) to display and help designers understand the embodied carbon associated with their design. By assigning values to materials and their associated embodied carbon output, the carbon model allows designers to implement strategies—e.g., material selections, planting strategies—in real-time. Ultimately, through the tool, the user can begin to develop strategies reducing the overall embodied carbon in their design, develop a time frame for when the project becomes carbon neutral, and understand the design’s carbon footprint.
Arcadis
Responsible management
The future of urban placemaking is about adapting to change and responding with integrated solutions. The urbanization of our cities—the demands for housing and for meaningful equitable public spaces—stresses the fact that we need to do more with less, and that our solutions must meet the demands that are upon us. Climate change means our summers are becoming hotter and our storm events more frequent. To respond, architects and designers must look to the mistakes that we have made in the past, and how to learn from them. By reducing hard surfaces, increasing green spaces, and creating more active transportation corridors, we can mitigate urban heat islands, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and transform underused spaces into thriving green ecosystems. An integrated design approach enables urban designers and landscape architects, in collaboration with environmental engineers, to develop system-based strategies for community design.
During the pandemic, the CAFÉ TO project helped about 1,200 Toronto restaurants stay in business by transforming curb lanes into outdoor patio spaces. This initiative safely closed portions of the curb lane to create patios while maintaining necessary infrastructure for vehicles and active transportation.
Arcadis
Evidence-based design allows measurable change, which the industry must leverage. By measuring factors that guide design options, changes, and operations, we can enhance our talent as designers. For instance, optimizing such infrastructure as roads and public spaces is crucial for assessing the return on real estate investment. Underused roads, for example, can be repurposed for other beneficial uses, maximizing their value.
Paris continues its transition to become a greener city. The city of Paris partnered with Arcadis to explore the technical feasibility of transforming three out of four underused areas into thriving urban forests. This project emphasizes the greening of spaces that have not been fully optimized, turning them into valuable ecological assets.
Courtesy of VILLE DE PARIS/APUR/CÉLINE ORSINGHER
Nature-based solutions involve viewing nature as a system—an urban ecosystem that enhances the life of a city and its residents. Everyone desires and needs nature, as the presence of green spaces in cities often reflects the value of real estate and the overall desirability of urban living. Cities must proactively shape their growth strategies. Politicians, community leaders, and economic developers need to lead efforts to implement significant initiatives that strengthen their cities’ brand on a global scale. The future of placemaking is promising, with sustainability, resource efficiency, and the thoughtful integration of nature and infrastructure leading us toward more resilient and livable urban environments.
