Building Community by Design: What Greece Can Learn from the Global Placemaking Debate

By Dennis Lidis

Founder and CEO, Lidis Property Partners

In the coming weeks, my Harvard colleague Quoc-Dung Ngo will present an important independent research report at Harvard, later to be published with ULI Vietnam. His report, Building Community by Design, examines a question that is increasingly relevant not only to Vietnam, but to every fast-changing urban market in the world:

Why do so many developments get built, sold, occupied — and still fail to become real places?

Dennis Lidis (left) with Quoc-Dung Ngo (right), Harvard classmates and fellow contributors to the global conversation on development, placemaking and community vitality.

I was pleased to be one of fourteen people interviewed for the research, alongside developers, planners, architects, academics, public officials and institutional operators from several markets.

Although the report focuses on mixed-use urban districts in Vietnam, its conclusions are highly relevant to Greece today.

The central issue is not Vietnamese. It is global.

Across the world, we are building projects, buildings, resorts, residential districts, retail centres and new urban quarters. Many are physically complete. Many meet the planning code. Many sell well. Many look polished in photographs.

And yet too many fail to create life.

They do not create the rhythm of daily use. They do not create the informal encounters that make people feel they belong. They do not create retail streets that survive beyond launch. They do not create neighbourhoods that age well. They do not create places where people want to return, linger, meet, work, eat, raise families and grow old.

This is not just a design issue. It is a development issue. It is an asset management issue. It is a governance issue. It is a long-term stewardship issue. Development is not only about buildings

One of the most important lessons from Dung’s report is that community vitality is not created at the end of a project.

It is not something that can be added later with a few events, a logo, a fountain or some marketing language about “lifestyle”. It is decided much earlier.

It begins with the first question the developer asks.

Is the question: “Who will buy this and how do we sell it?”

Or is the question: “Who will live here, who will use this place, and what do they need?”

That difference matters.

If a project is designed only around sales, it will optimise for what looks attractive at launch.

If a project is designed around life, it will optimise for what works after completion.

That is where the real development challenge begins.

If a project is designed only around sales, it will optimise for what looks attractive at launch. If a project is designed around life, it will optimise for what works after completion. That is where the real development challenge begins.

A successful place requires density, mix of uses, public realm, active ground floors, shade, walkability, daily services, cultural identity, programming and long-term management. None of these are luxuries. They are the operating system of a successful urban place.

Density is not the enemy of placemaking

Empire City, Thu Thiem, Ho Chi Minh City — a new mixed-use district where public realm, density, landscape and riverfront activation are being planned together.

In Greece, we often have the argument the wrong way around.

The common assumption is that lower density protects the environment, protects communities and creates better places. In practice, the opposite is often true.

Low density, badly planned, is one of the most environmentally damaging forms of development. It consumes more land, spreads infrastructure over larger areas, makes public transport harder, weakens local retail, increases car dependency and damages the very landscapes it claims to protect.

Anyone who travels through Greece can see the result: scattered buildings, weak village edges, fragmented development, ribbon roads, underused plots, poor public realm and places that lack a centre.

This is not environmental protection. It is environmental dilution.

And it is not community protection. It often weakens community.

Strong places need people. They need enough people within walking distance to support cafés, shops, restaurants, schools, services, cultural uses and everyday activity. Density does not guarantee this outcome. Bad density can also fail. But a lack of density almost guarantees failure.

Without enough people, there is not enough footfall. Without footfall, retail fails. Without retail and daily services, streets are empty. Without activity, public spaces become decorative rather than lived. Without lived public space, there is no real placemaking.

The point is not to build everywhere. The point is to build intelligently where development should occur, and to protect what should remain natural, rural or open.

That requires better planning, not simply lower density.

Greece already understood this once

Traditional Greek villages were often compact, walkable and centred around public life — the square, the café, the church, the bakery and the taverna.

There is an important distinction here.

When people think of traditional Greek villages, they often imagine “low density” living. But that is not what most historic villages were.

Traditional Greek villages were often compact, dense, walkable and highly social. Homes were close together. Streets were narrow. The square mattered. The church, the café, the taverna, the bakery and the small shop created the social and economic heart of the village.

That was placemaking.

People did not drive twenty minutes to buy bread or meet a neighbour. The centre was close. The community was visible. The public realm was lived, not theoretical.

So when we argue today for low-density planning in the name of tradition or environmental protection, we should be careful. The places Greeks love were often not low-density at all. They were compact, human-scale, mixed-use settlements with a strong centre.

The problem is not density. The problem is bad density, badly placed, badly designed and badly governed. Planning should allocate height and bulk intelligently

One of the most important tools modern planning needs is the ability to allocate developable space intelligently across a site or district.This means we should not treat every plot, every height, every building envelope and every use in isolation. Planning should be design-led and outcome-led. In practice, this may mean concentrating height and density in the right locations in order to free land for better public space, parks, pedestrian areas, cultural uses, retail villages, sports facilities, schools and community infrastructure.

It may mean larger parks surrounded by higher-density residential, hospitality and other uses.

It may mean a retail and entertainment village at the heart of a district, with quieter residential areas around it. It may mean transferring bulk away from sensitive edges and concentrating it where infrastructure, views, access and public life can support it. It may mean accepting taller buildings in the right place so that the overall urban outcome is better, greener and more walkable.

This is not a call for uncontrolled development. It is the opposite. It is a call for more sophisticated planning. Good planning should not simply restrict. It should organise. It should shape. It should trade off. It should create better outcomes.

Public realm needs ownership after completion

The Lennox - 333 Church Street, Parramatta – Syndey – Dennis Lidis. Density is not the problem. The issue is whether density is planned, designed, serviced and governed properly.

The other lesson from Dung’s report that is highly relevant to Greece is governance.

What happens after the development is completed?

Who manages the public realm? Who maintains the landscaping? Who programs the square? Who curates the retail? Who protects the quality of the streets? Who ensures that infrastructure does not decay? Who pays? Who decides? Who is accountable?

Too often, development is treated as complete when construction is finished. But in reality, that is when the life of the place begins.

A building can be handed over. A community cannot.

If nobody owns the long-term stewardship of the place, quality will decline. Public areas will deteriorate. Retail will become random. Maintenance will be underfunded.

The original design intent will disappear. The weakest form of management will eventually prevail.

This is where development and asset management must come together.

A successful place needs a governance model, not just a masterplan. It needs operating budgets, service standards, programming, resident participation, commercial curation, maintenance reserves and management capability. The best places are not only designed well. They are run well.

Greece needs a new development conversation

Fragmented low-density development consumes land without necessarily creating public realm, walkability, community or environmental protection.

Greece is at an important moment. Tourism is strong. Foreign interest is real. Capital is entering the market. Cities such as Athens are changing. Islands and coastal areas are under pressure. At the same time, the country is still struggling with outdated planning assumptions, fragmented ownership, weak infrastructure, slow approvals and a public conversation that often treats all development as either good or bad.

Greece will develop. That is not the question.

The real question is how it develops.

Will we continue spreading fragmented, low-density, car-dependent development across the landscape ? Or will we create compact, walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods with vibrant centres, quality public spaces, and lasting respect for the surrounding landscape?

The challenge is not choosing between development and protection. It is using intelligent planning to achieve both protecting more land by building better where development belongs.

And ultimately, success should not be measured by projects that simply sell, but by places that continue to thrive long after construction is complete.

The role of developers

Nixon Downtown – Axarnon 282, Kato Patisia, Athens. Regenerating an underinvested urban building into a design-led hospitality asset, bringing activity, care and renewed confidence to a neighbourhood that needs investment, life and long-term stewardship.

Developers also need to accept responsibility.

It is easy to blame planning rules, government delays or market conditions. These are real issues. But developers also make choices.

We choose whether to design only for sale or for long-term use. We choose whether to retain and curate important ground-floor spaces or sell everything away. We choose whether to think about the public realm as cost or as value. We choose whether to create a community heart or just a collection of buildings. We choose whether to stay involved after completion or disappear.

At Lidis Property Partners, this question sits at the centre of how we think about development and asset management.

We believe value is created not only by buying land or building space, but by converting complexity into places that work. That means design, construction, hospitality, operations, financing, asset management and governance must be connected. A beautiful building is not enough A successful place must be felt. It must work through the senses: what people see, hear, touch, smell and taste. It must have energy, comfort, imperfection, rhythm and identity. The best places are not sterile. They are alive.

A beautiful building is not enough A successful place must be felt. It must work through the senses: what people see, hear, touch, smell and taste. It must have energy, comfort, imperfection, rhythm and identity. The best places are not sterile. They are alive.

From Vietnam to Greece

Dung’s report is important because it gives structure to something many practitioners feel but do not always measure. Community vitality does not happen by accident. It requires intentional decisions at every stage: vision, masterplanning, design, programming and operations.

Although the report is written for Vietnam’s rapidly urbanising cities, the themes apply directly to Greece. Density matters. Mixed use matters. Ground-floor activation matters. Shade and walkability matter. Local culture matters. Programming matters. Governance matters. Long-term stewardship matters.

The failure to understand these themes does not only produce weak developments. It damages cities, communities, landscapes and long-term asset value.

Greece has a remarkable opportunity. It has history, landscape, climate, culture, food, hospitality, architecture and human scale. Few countries have stronger raw material for placemaking.

But raw material is not enough.

We need better tools, better planning, better governance and a more mature development conversation.

Development should not be about filling land with buildings. It should be about creating places that future generations are proud to inherit.

That is the challenge. And it is a global one.

Link to Quoc-Dung Ngo’s report

Building Community By Design - Quoc-Dung Ngo