Proposal for a Good Place

Argue that somewhere should exist. A real site, a real cost, a stated boundary, and evidence you can defend under questioning.

Due: 28 May 2027 · Weight: 45%

Argue that a particular place should exist, or should be brought back, or should be protected. This is the largest piece of the course and it is the one where everything else gets used.

The site is real#

An address. A building that exists and is empty, or exists and is doing something else. A stretch of ground. A server with a name. “A community hub in a mid-sized suburb” is not a proposal, it is a category.

Real sites come with real constraints — a rent, a licence, a council, a landlord, a moderation burden — and the constraints are what make this an argument rather than a wish.

Say what people are there to do, without using the word belonging#

This is a hard constraint and it is the heart of the brief. Week 12’s closing argument is that the good places produced belonging as a by-product of doing something else: selling drinks, washing clothes, cutting hair, raiding a dungeon. Places built to produce community directly have a worse record than any of them.

So name the activity. If the activity is “being together”, you have proposed the thing that historically does not work, and you will need a much better argument than the people who have tried it.

Use the framework#

Allen and colleagues’ four components — competencies, opportunities, motivations, perceptions. Say which ones your place supplies and which it assumes. A place that creates opportunities for people who lack the competencies to use them is a specific, common, predictable failure, and naming it in advance is what makes this a design rather than a hope.

Name the boundary#

Every place excludes. Yours will exclude by price, by hour, by skill, by language, by who is already in the room. Say who, and then argue that it is worth it. “It would be open to everyone” is the answer of someone who has not read week 3, week 4 or week 9.

Evidence at the strength it supports#

Week 11 was the rehearsal for this. You may absolutely cite the mortality findings. You may not imply that opening a café prevents death. Use each piece of evidence at the strength the study actually licenses — a marker who knows this literature is reading, and overclaiming is the fastest way to lose a reader you had.

The presentation#

Ten minutes in the week 12 Round, five of questions, to a room that has spent a semester learning what to ask. The presentation is not separately weighted; it is where the proposal gets tested, and the written version you submit afterwards should show what the questions did to it.

Format. PDF, 3000 words, or 2000 words plus drawings, plans or maps. If drawings carry part of the argument, say what each one is for.