Editor: The benefits that music, recreation and culture bring to our cities have been ignored for too long by owners and stakeholders.
More than a third of the UK’s live performance venues have closed over the past decade, depriving music and culture lovers of the chance to see great acts up close – and denying young artists the opportunity to become the next Adele, Oasis or Arctic Monkeys.
That is why Legal & General has partnered with Sound Diplomacy to call upon developers, planners and architects to prioritise music and culture alongside commercial concerns when designing schemes (‘L&G calls for reform of planning laws to protect UK’s live music scene’).
While buildings, cities and the urban environment change over time, music and culture are the common language that is resistant to the advance of time.
And as a long-term investor in property and cities, we will be doing our best to support the role of music and culture in placemaking.
We recognise and agree that jobs and houses are important, but so are great places to live – this is what makes good future cities.
Our report, This Must Be the Place, offers a range of recommendations to foster culture in our future cities, such as writing a culture infrastructure plan, mapping local cultural organisations and engaging more with the community to inform the initial stages of planning.
Eleanor Jukes, senior investment manager, Legal & General Capital
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