Podcaster and branding & communications guru Tanisha Raffiuddin of Concept Culture explains why she’s on the hunt for anybody ready for the challenge of building neighbourhoods with a heartbeat.
What brings you to MIPM and what do you hope to achieve?
MIPIM is one of the few places where the entire ecosystem that shapes our cities shows up in one place – developers, investors, architects, planners and policymakers. I come wearing two hats: as the founder of Concept Culture, where we work on place brand strategy, and as the host of the Talking Place podcast. I’m here to champion the idea that places deserve stories, not templates. I want to meet people who care about identity as much as infrastructure – people ready to build neighbourhoods with a heartbeat rather than a roll‑out model. If I leave MIPIM having sparked a few new collaborations, found interesting voices for the podcast, and opened the door to projects where storytelling and placemaking can genuinely shape outcomes, then it’s time well spent.
What are you working on at the moment?
A mix of projects exploring how narrative, culture and lived experience can shape more meaningful places — from early‑stage brand thinking to deeper storytelling around how environments feel, not just how they function. At Concept Culture we work at the intersection of placemaking, sustainability and storytelling — helping developers, cities and organisations articulate the bigger narrative behind the places they’re shaping. At its core, my work asks one question: how do we create places people actually feel connected to?
What keeps you awake at night?
The fear that cities are slipping into sameness. And everyday people being priced out of living in city centres when good quality housing is unaffordable, making urban life dull and soulless. Across the world, you’re starting to see places that feel increasingly interchangeable — the same buildings, the same brands, the same public spaces. When every place starts to look and feel identical, we lose the humanity that makes urban life worth living. A city’s character and cultural identity are its greatest assets. It’s what attracts talent, investment, visitors, and most importantly, pride from the people who live there. If we strip that away, we end up with efficient developments but forgettable places. The challenge for all of us in the built environment is to make sure growth doesn’t come at the expense of the very qualities that make cities distinctive.
The idea that the places we shape today will outlive us. Every time I walk through a city I’m fascinated by the layers of decisions that came before — the planners, architects, developers, communities and policymakers who left their mark. It’s a huge responsibility, but also a huge privilege. I’m motivated by the possibility of helping create places that people feel proud of — places where culture, community, and environment work together rather than competing with each other.
More space for the intangible: culture, memory, identity, emotion I’d love to see more discussion about how we deliver genuinely good places. There’s plenty of conversation around deals, investment, and pipelines — which is understandable given the scale of capital involved. But the real question is what that investment ultimately produces on the ground. If MIPIM can become a space where we talk just as seriously about long-term place quality, community value, and cultural identity as we do about square metres and returns, then it becomes far more powerful as a platform for shaping better cities.
