Image of Design Council report page spreads for Healthy Placemaking project.
The front cover of the Design Council Healthy Placemaking report.

The mission.

Research and insight for making changes at a policy level to enable healthy placemaking.

There is a wealth of insight around the impact placemaking has on health, yet few are actually doing it. We teamed up with Design Council who shared mission to understand why professionals in the built environment are not creating healthy places and to understand what challenges they face.

Image of the segmentation section in the Design Council Healthy Placemaking report.

The research.

Understanding the views and experiences of UK built environment professionals.

We launched a large-scale research project to capture the views of UK built environment professionals. A survey was distributed UK wide by Design Council and we conducted telephone interviews with professionals including urban designers, town planners, architects and developers to further explore their experiences and views of healthy placemaking. This six month study led to a comprehensive report, set of recommendations and a launch in the Houses Of Parliament - which led to cross party support to get healthy placemaking back on the agenda. 

The impact.

Insights and recommendations from this research has informed policy recommendations made by Design Council and has led to further high level talks about reform, policy change and even a change in the law. The report was formally launched in the Houses of Parliament in April 2018 and we have been lobbying for change and advocating the importance of healthy placemaking with local authorities across the UK. 

We also plan to look at how to change behaviour around car use and raise awareness of the indoor and outdoor air pollution. 

Download the full report and executive summary below!

Image of the executive report for the Healthy Placemaking project.
398 Built environment professionals completed our survey
30+ In depth telephone interviews with built environment professionals working across the UK
1 Launch in the Houses of Parliament
5+ Political parties behind healthy placemaking