Publications

Over the past 15 years we have researched, made, collaborated, iterated and published, always learning from peers and critical friends at each step. Here is a sample of publications, reflecting a span of our activities and learning to date ...

2025 - Generating Visions with AI: Urban Lexicons (peer report) in chapter of Designing Sustainable Futures: How to Imagine, Create and Lead the Transition to a Better World (2025), by Joseph Press and Manuela Celi, Routledge.

2022-current - We're building a collaborative, open-source publication — the Urban Lexicon (see sample above) — working with free online collaborative tools such as Google Slides and Padlet. Together with MA Cities at Central Saint Martins, we have developed this through street-workshop based practice, and participants contributing from Bilbao, London, Lahore, Geneva and Bradford, among other locations. 

2021 - How the City Speaks to Us, and How We Speak Back: Rewriting the Relationship Between People & Place (chapter) - exploring how placemaking should open the conversation between citizens and the city, creating more equitable local places as our post-Covid world emerges. This is the final chapter of The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking, available here.

2020 - Local Legends (curated interview series, online) - exploring how the power and poetry of narrative helps us make better places, through interviews, events and site stories. 

2011 - Destination Branding and the Urban Lexicon (chapter) - exploring how the character of city streets should inform and express a place brand. 

2010 - Unravelling the Urban Lexicons of our Everyday Environments (book) - exploring how signs of love, life, welcome, and character support positive relationships with places.

2006 - The Difference is in the Detail (paper) - exploring the potential of detail as a place branding tool and its impact upon our perceptions and responses.