The thinking behind Sticky Places — and why the question of what makes people stay has never mattered more.
Some places you visit once. Others you return to. A rare few you never want to leave. The difference between those three experiences isn't luck, geography or heritage. It's the result of deliberate, strategic thinking by the people who design, develop and manage the places we live in.
That's what Sticky Places is about. Since 2011, this platform has tracked the ideas, strategies and stories that reveal what actually makes places work — for residents, visitors, investors and the communities who call them home.
The challenges facing UK places have never been greater. Post-pandemic migration has reshuffled the residential map. Retail vacancy in town centres has accelerated structural change. Levelling Up funding has created new pressures on local authorities to demonstrate impact. And the global competition for talent, investment and tourism is fiercer than ever.
Against this backdrop, the places that are winning aren't just those with the most money or the biggest regeneration programmes. They're the ones that have understood something fundamental: people choose to stay — and return — because of how a place makes them feel.
"Practical, pragmatic, direct and authentic. Just like the places we write about."
Stickiness is the combination of identity, belonging, opportunity and environment that creates genuine attachment to a place. It can be engineered — thoughtfully, collaboratively and with a long-term view — but it can't be faked.
Sticky Places curates the global stories, strategies and case studies that reveal how places are building that stickiness — from Copenhagen's car-free superblocks to Norwegian towns paying people to move there; from Singapore's community-engineered HDB estates to UK towns finding their post-pandemic identity.
We cover five broad themes: Tourism (what draws people in), Economic Development (what creates opportunity and growth), Residential (what makes people choose to live somewhere), Environmental (what makes a place liveable and sustainable), and Investment (what attracts capital and commitment).
Stories are curated fortnightly, with a monthly longer-form piece that goes deeper on strategy, policy and real-world application for UK practitioners.
Sticky Places is for anyone professionally invested in making places better. Local authority planners and economic development officers. Property developers and housing associations. Place marketing agencies and BIDs. Community leaders, regeneration consultants and town centre managers. And anyone who simply cares about the places around them.
Nick Bolton is a place marketer, developer and strategist with over fifteen years of experience working with places across the UK. He is Managing Director of Positive Places Ltd, a Build to Rent developer focused on community-centred design and integrated community energy systems, and Vice Chair of Trustees at Adrenaline Alley, the UK's largest urban sports venue.
Sticky Places was founded in 2011 as a platform for sharing the thinking that informs how places are made, marketed and managed. It remains an independent, curator-led intelligence resource — practical, pragmatic and unsponsored in its editorial voice.