While area planners have grown accustomed to looking at the physicality of a location when charting city growth, one nationally renowned urbanist says it may be time to focus on how to enhance city centers by addressing their sense of place with residents and visitors.
 
That was the message delivered by Katherine Loflin, an international award-winning placemaking consultant with Cary-based Loflin Consulting Solutions, to more than 50 community and city officials Tuesday during the Cape Fear Community Land Trust (CFCLT) luncheon at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Wilmington. 
 
Formerly called the Cape Fear Housing Land Trust, the CFCLT recently rebranded its organization in an effort to focus on neighborhood revitalization and workforce housing demands across the region.
 
Titled ‘Making the case for place: Loving where you live and why it matters,’ Loflin tasked community leaders with pinpointing what makes Wilmington a destination community and embracing the places that make the Port City attractive to residents and visitors.
 
“When people come to visit you here, what do you show off?” Loflin asked the crowd in attendance. “Placemaking is the creation of loved places in a community.”
 
Loflin, a native of North Carolina, said a number of communities are in the midst of a “place renaissance” – meaning a number of cities across the nation are finally tapping into specific places within their communities that make them attractive for residents and business.
 
“People are reprioritizing place, they are reprioritizing quality of life,” Loflin said. “The job should be about serving the life.”
 
That could bode well in Wilmington’s efforts to attract and retain younger professionals and workers.
 
Loflin said it is the millennial generation, an age demographic born in the early 1980s to early 2000s, which is forcing cities to reevaluate their planning objectives to include a placemaking.
 
“This is an age group that will choose a place over a job,” she said.
 
Loflin said as area leaders press forward with the future vision of the region, community advocates, planners and politicos must find ways to implement a mix of quick starts and long-term ideas. She added leaders must also be strength-based in their approach to streamline positive actions completed to make places in their community welcoming.
 
The most important element in placemaking, however, lies in being knowledgeable and authentic to your location, Loflin said.

“You can’t copy off another city’s paper … these places are radically different,” Loflin said. “You have to adapt with what you have; you cannot adopt.”