Who Decides What a Place is Worth? Guests Christa Breum Amhøj, and John Diamond

Who gets to decide the value of a place? In other words, who gets to decide the metric? I brought that question to Christa Breum Amhøj, a Danish practitioner, researcher, and what I can only describe as a social architect because she reads a place the way a building architect reads a site. And to John Diamond, who sits in Manchester and has been watching the same tensions play out in the UK across decades of academic research, consultation, and engagement with emerging local government challenges. What follows is my attempt to trace the arc of what the three of us discovered together. Be sure to check out the full video on MuniSquare or our YouTube Channel and subscribe to get more content like this! Chapters 01:39 — Opening: Who Creates Value in a Community? 02:23 — Competing Definitions of Public Value 03:38 — Rethinking Value: The Aging Society Example 06:22 — Tourism, Resistance, and Local Control (Scotland Case) 08:51 — Visible vs. Invisible Value 11:11 — Micro-Experiments vs. Traditional Innovation 14:53 — Professional Expertise vs. Local Knowledge 19:43 — A Place Has Agency 21:00 — Learning to Observe and Map a Place 23:27 — From Problem-Solving to System-Based Thinking 24:42 — Case Study: Faxe Municipality (Denmark) 27:00 — Redesigning the Festival Through Community Input 28:30 — Outcomes: Relationships, Access, and New Pathways 32:49 — Why Process Matters More Than Outputs 34:00 — Access and Infrastructure: The Transport Example 37:45 — The COMPASS Model Overview 42:30 — Managing Tension and Conflict in Co-Creation 44:00 — Expanding the Definition of Prosperity 46:30 — The Role of the Facilitator in Place-Based Work 53:34 — Closing Reflections: Practice Over Theory