The following text is an excerpt from the hcma book Include Enable Connect: A framework for maximizing social impact through design.
How do you quantify joy, connection, or belonging? How do you track a sense of ownership, dignity, or empowerment? How do you measure a building’s contribution to local identity or cultural enrichment?
By nature, understanding social impact remains elusive in practice. Impact evolves over time and rarely fits neatly into a spreadsheet. There’s no shared definition, language, or metrics to measure against.
What’s more, social value is inherently subjective—what feels significant to one person may create a barrier for another. Social scientists have long developed ways of studying these questions, but their methods are often resource-intensive and unfold over years. For those of us who shape the built environment, it’s hard to reconcile those methods with the timelines and budgets of a typical design project.
This is a critical issue. Without consistent ways to track social performance—both internally within our own practices, and let alone across the whole industry—it’s difficult to compare projects, learn from experience, or propose meaningful solutions.
To help bridge this gap, we’ve adopted this definition of social sustainability from The Young Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that specializes in community research, social innovation, and evidence-based approaches to improving local life:
“A process for creating sustainable, successful places that promote wellbeing by understanding what people need from the places they live and work.
Social sustainability combines the design of the physical realm with the design of the social world—supporting social and cultural life, amenities, systems for citizen engagement, and space for people and places to evolve.”¹
That’s what Include Enable Connect sets out to do: provide a shared framework for an incredibly complex subject, so we can keep practicing, learning, and sharing what we discover—even if the outcomes are hard to define, and harder still to measure.
The framework is shaped around three scales of impact: Include, Enable, Connect.
These scales mirror the micro/mezzo/macro structure commonly recognized in social sciences. This acknowledges that social impact unfolds across multiple layers of human experience—from the individual, to immediate groups, to the wider community.
What does it mean to include?
At the individual level, every person feels welcome, comfortable, and heard.
Inclusion starts with removing physical, sensory, cultural, or economic barriers—and extends to how people feel when they arrive and take part. It’s about designing with awareness and respect for diverse experiences.
Include begins with awareness of who might be present, who might be missing, and how the design responds to a range of needs and experiences.
It considers how people access and navigate a space, how safe and comfortable they feel, and whether they’re given the freedom to take part in ways that matter to them.
Projects that embed inclusion early tend to create stronger foundations for long-term social impact. They help build trust, reduce friction, and open up opportunities for meaningful connection.
![A playful graphic displaying coloured squares that frame three questions: "Where can small actions make people feel valued", Can everyone access, use, and feel comfortable in this space?", and "Who should be involved in shaping decisions from the start?". Additionally there is a box that says "Did you know? Views of nature can reduce heart rates and blood pressure within five minutes, allowing people to recover from mental fatigue and regain emotional control through passive means.[2]"](https://hcma.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/SIF-Thought-leadership-Graphics-REV-07-1-scaled.jpg)
What does it mean to enable?
At the group level, shared experiences allow people to develop, grow, and thrive alongside others directly around them.
Once people are included, design can support joy, health, learning, and belonging. Enabling environments offer flexibility and foster conditions where people can explore, develop, and feel at home in their own way.
When people feel welcome and supported, the spaces around them can begin to nurture growth.
Enable focuses on what happens next—how environments can empower people to learn, explore, and take part in shared experiences.
It’s about creating places that promote health and wellbeing, encourage personal development, offer moments of joy, and strengthen our connection to place.
![A playful graphic displaying coloured squares that frame three questions: "How do our design choices support how people want to feel, both individually and together?", "What details would help people feel grounded, calm, or curious?", How does this environment help people thrive?" Additionally there is a box that says "Did you know? When a space feels exclusionary, it activates the same neural pathways in the brain as physical pain.[3] When people feel connected to public spaces, however, they’re more likely to engage positively with their surroundings and each other, helping reduce feelings of isolation and promote a shared community identity."[4]](https://hcma.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/SIF-Thought-leadership-Graphics-REV-08-scaled.jpg)
What does it mean to connect?
At the community level, people become part of something greater, contributing to collective identity and resilience.
Connection moves beyond individuals and small groups to focus on shared identity, wider social bonds, and resilience. It's about designing places that celebrate culture, foster participation, and help communities grow stronger over time.
Connection shapes places where people feel part of something larger. It’s the quality that turns a building into a community—a sense of shared identity, belonging, and resilience that builds over time.
At this scale of impact, the built environment supports social bonds, celebrates culture, and creates the rhythms and rituals that bring people together. When projects are planned with connection in mind, they help communities flourish. The effects often reach beyond the building itself, carried forward through events, traditions, relationships, and shared memory.
![A playful graphic displaying coloured squares that frame three questions: "How does the design reflect shared identity and everyday life?", How can the community take ownership of this place?", "How can we design so people naturally meet, pause, or cross paths?" Additionally there is a box that says "Did you know?
The concept of 'shaping over time' is rooted in the evolutionary life of a place, where architecture must adapt to shifting patterns of use to remain inclusive.[5] By decentralizing authority through community-led maintenance and programming, public buildings function as bottom-up platforms that foster spatial justice, collective agency, and long-term place attachment."[6]](https://hcma.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/SIF-Thought-leadership-Graphics-REV-09-scaled.jpg)
To continue reading, request a copy of Include Enable Connect: A framework for maximizing social impact through design via the button below.
Works cited
1. Bacon N, Cochrane D, Woodcraft S. Creating strong communities: how to measure the social sustainability of new housing developments. London: The Berkeley Group; 2012.
2. Browning B, Ryan C, Walker D. The economics of biophilia: Why designing with nature in mind makes financial sense. Terrapin Bright Green, LLC; 2024. / Berto R. The role of nature in coping with psycho-physiological stress: a literature review on restorativeness. Behavioral Sciences. 2014;4(4):394–409. / Kaplan R, Kaplan S. The experience of nature: a psychological perspective. Cambridge University Press; 1989. / Ulrich R. View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science. 1984;224(4647):420–1.
3. MacDonald G, Leary MR. Why does social exclusion hurt? The relationship between social and physical pain. Psychological Bulletin. 2005;131(2):202–23.
4. Allen KA. The psychology of belonging. Routledge; 2020. / Scannell L, Gifford R. Defining place attachment: a tripartite organizing framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology. 2010;30(1):1–10.
5. Lynch K. What Time Is This Place? MIT Press; 1976.
6. Imrie R. Universalism, universal design and equitable access to the built environment. Disability and Rehabilitation. 2012;34(10):873–82. / Jian IY, Luo J, Chan EHW. Spatial justice in public open space planning: Accessibility and inclusivity. Habitat International. 2020;97:102122. / Kim J. COVID-19’s impact on local planning and urban design practice: focusing on tactical urbanism and the public realm with respect to low income communities. Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability. 2022;18(1):157–63.
