Advocacy & Impact

Building Social Capital Through Spaces, Programmes, and Community

Mediera's fifth Business Unit — Advocacy & Impact / Placemaking — focuses on the social and civic dimensions of the built environment. It designs and activates social spaces, learning hubs, and placemaking programmes that build community resilience, shared stewardship of place, and long-term social capital. Its primary platform is 7th Place Commons.

7th Place Commons

7th Place Commons is Mediera's flagship placemaking initiative. Named for the idea of a seventh kind of social space — beyond home, work, school, retail, civic institutions, and digital space — it focuses on designing and activating places where people can genuinely own, use, and govern over time.

7th Commons spaces are not just physical environments. They are programmed — with activities, governance structures, and community economic models — so that the space continues to generate value long after it is built.

Current and planned 7th Place Commons activations include:

Community learning and maker hubs in peri-urban and underserved locations
Shared micro-enterprise and creative workspace co-located with green public space
Cultural and civic gathering spaces integrated into TBU and InstaHub developments

What We Do

Placemaking Design & Activation

We work with local government units (LGUs), community organisations, NGOs, and developers to co-design social spaces — from initial community consultation through to physical design, programming, and ongoing stewardship models.

Community Resilience Programmes

We develop and facilitate programmes that build social capital alongside physical infrastructure — including skills training, community economic models, urban farming, and cultural activation tied to the spaces we help create.

Advocacy & Policy Engagement

We engage with policy agencies, academic institutions, and regional networks to advocate for policy environments that support circular construction, community land stewardship, and just transition in the built environment.

University & Civil Society Partnerships

Maintains active partnerships with universities and civil society organisations to co-develop programmes, conduct community-based research, and build the evidence base for community-centred placemaking in Southeast Asia.

Current partners include:

ADNU TBI — community engagement and social impact design embedded in the Bicol pilot
TSD Design Studio — design and activation of social and creative spaces

Sustainability Education & Communication

Working through Tanda Creatives and Artlife&Co, this develops education programmes, toolkits, and public communications that make sustainability, circularity, and climate resilience accessible to communities and practitioners.