A shared language for shaping better places.

Place Literacy is the ability to understand, engage with, and shape the places where we live, grow, work, and play.

Too often, we lack the words to talk about place together. What do we mean when we say a place feels welcoming, unequal, alive, or neglected? Without a shared language, conversations fragment, histories are overlooked, ecologies ignored, and power imbalances left unchallenged.

Place Literacy provides an answer. It builds the awareness, shared language, and tools to see how visible, hidden, and invisible forces shape place, and develops the agency to act for more abundant, sustainable, and resilient futures.

Every decision about place, whether made by policymakers, professionals, communities, or individuals, affects people, society, and the environment. Developing Place Literacy strengthens our capacity to:

  • Recognise the forces shaping our surroundings

  • Connect these to lived experience

  • Act to make places more equitable, resilient, and life-affirming

At its heart, Place Literacy is about civic capacity: giving everyone the ability to notice more about their surroundings, make sense of what they see, and work together to shape change. This can be understood through six simple practices—ways of looking, talking, and acting that help us read place more clearly and imagine how it could be better:

  1. Observe — look closely at the details, patterns, and dynamics of place

  2. Describe — use precise language to share what you notice

  3. Interpret — explore meanings, histories, and narratives

  4. Critique — examine assumptions and power dynamics

  5. Engage — participate thoughtfully in the life of place

  6. Transform — collaborate in shaping inclusive, regenerative futures

To support this process, IF/ has developed the Elements of Place framework: six interrelated lenses (Perspective, Life, Material, Form, Activity, and Relationships) that act as a scaffold for inquiry. Every place, no matter how familiar or complex, can be explored through these elements. Together, they help us notice connections between what is visible, partly hidden, and often invisible.

Elements of Place:

  • The viewpoints, positionalities, and cultural lenses through which place is seen and experienced. It reminds us that no place is understood from a single angle.

  • All the living systems that animate place. From health and wellbeing to ecological interdependence, life makes place dynamic and responsive.

  • The physical matter: organic, geologic, synthetic, waste, water, and air. Materials carry histories of extraction, use, and reuse, shaping how places feel and function.

  • The shapes, structures, and topographies of place, from landscapes and hydrological patterns to streets, buildings, and styles. Form gives physical presence to place.

  • The practices, routines, and rhythms that unfold in place. Activity highlights how people and communities use, adapt, and redefine spaces through everyday life.

  • The connections, roles, and interdependencies that bind people, species, and systems. Relationships define place through power, exchange, and care.

IF/ supports the development of Place Literacy in two ways: through the Place Literacy Lab and the Place Literacy Campaign.

The Lab is the experimental engine, where new methods are researched, tested, and refined. The Campaign takes these ideas into the world, sharing tools and practices openly and supporting the growth of Place Literacy worldwide. Together, they embed Place Literacy across schools, communities, cultural programmes, and policy, creating the conditions for better places, stronger connections, and more equitable futures.

We invite communities, educators, practitioners, and policymakers to join us in cultivating Place Literacy. Through workshops, tools, and shared practices, we can grow our civic capacity to read, understand, and shape the places we share.