08.00 - Registration opens

Healthy city design and planning

Quays Theatre

08.50 - 10.15

Session 17

 - Opening keynote

Chair: Stephen Kinsella, UK Managing director, MADE Partnership, UK

Stephen Kinsella

UK Managing director, MADE Partnership, UK

08.50

Opening remarks

Max Farrell, Chair, Healthy City Design; Founder and CEO, LDN Collective, UK

Max Farrell

Chair, Healthy City Design; Founder and CEO, LDN Collective, UK

Max is the new Chair of the Healthy City Design Congress, guiding its next chapter at a pivotal moment for health, place, and public policy. In this role, Max will bring valuable knowledge, expertise and an extensive network of developers, investors, planners, designers, public health professionals, policymakers, and community leaders to strengthen the Congress as the leading interdisciplinary platform for evidence-led debate, collaboration, and action in the creation of healthier cities. Max’s interests and expertise closely align with the ambitions of the Congress. With a background in urban planning and strategic communications, he has long championed people centred placemaking, social value, and the integration of health into the planning, design, and delivery of the built environment, with a particular focus on improving quality of life and reducing inequalities through better places. Alongside his role as Chair, Max is Founder and CEO of the LDN Collective, a network of built environment specialists working to improve people’s lives and the planet’s prospects. The Collective brings together expertise in placemaking and urban design, social value and co design, branding, communications, and engagement. Current projects include major regeneration initiatives, new communities, and innovative approaches to public realm, retrofit, and reuse across the UK and beyond. Max is Immediate Past President of the LAI Land Economics Society, London chapter, Chair of Built Environment Policy for West London Business, Lead Judge for the Healthy City Design Awards, and a Fellow of the RSA. He was Project Lead and Author of the Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment, commissioned by the UK Government, which made 60 recommendations, many of which have since been implemented. He advises a number of organisations working at the intersection of health, place, and policy, including Demos, Urban Design London, the Place Alliance, the Urban Room Network, and the Quality of Life Foundation.

09.00

Welcome address

Paul Dennett, City Mayor of Salford, UK

Paul Dennett

City Mayor of Salford, UK

Paul was elected as councillor for Langworthy in 2012, and held the role of strategic assistant mayor, where he championed equalities, technology innovation, urban regeneration, and workforce development until 2016. His focus on fostering inclusive prosperity and sustainable growth laid the groundwork for his future leadership. Since being elected as City Mayor in 2016, Paul has been campaigned for equality, financial inclusion, and the real living wage. He has worked to embed social value across the public and private sectors, with a particular commitment to tackling poverty and addressing the housing crisis. His leadership has helped create an environment where innovative solutions to Salford’s housing challenges can thrive. Passionate about empowering young people and nurturing Salford’s rich cultural and sporting life, Paul led the launch of Suprema Lex in 2020, Salford’s shared cultural strategy. Driven by the Salford Culture and Place Partnership, this strategy is a cornerstone of the city’s ambitions for creativity, arts, and community engagement. In his wider role as deputy city mayor in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), Paul has been instrumental in delivering the Housing First initiative and tackling homelessness. He continues to oversee the development of Greater Manchester’s Housing Strategy, while leading efforts on the Plan for Homes, Jobs, and the Environment, ensuring that the city region's growth is sustainable, inclusive and equitable.

09.15

Building for a healthy life: Simple principles for better places

Amy Burbidge, Head of design and master development, Homes England, UK

Amy Burbidge

Head of design and master development, Homes England, UK

Amy is head of design and master development at Homes England.

David Birkbeck, Chief executive, Design for Homes, UK

David Birkbeck

Chief executive, Design for Homes, UK

David is chief executive at Design for Homes.

Kelly Hillman, Group director – Public Land and Place, Vistry, UK

Kelly Hillman

Group director – Public Land and Place, Vistry, UK

Becky Phillips-Melhuish, Principal inspector, Active Travel England, UK

Becky Phillips-Melhuish

Principal inspector, Active Travel England, UK

Dr Saira Ali, President, Landscape Institute; Team leader, Landscape Design and Conservation, City of Bradford District Council, UK

Dr Saira Ali

President, Landscape Institute; Team leader, Landscape Design and Conservation, City of Bradford District Council, UK

Paul Dennett, City Mayor of Salford, UK

Paul Dennett

City Mayor of Salford, UK

Paul was elected as councillor for Langworthy in 2012, and held the role of strategic assistant mayor, where he championed equalities, technology innovation, urban regeneration, and workforce development until 2016. His focus on fostering inclusive prosperity and sustainable growth laid the groundwork for his future leadership. Since being elected as City Mayor in 2016, Paul has been campaigned for equality, financial inclusion, and the real living wage. He has worked to embed social value across the public and private sectors, with a particular commitment to tackling poverty and addressing the housing crisis. His leadership has helped create an environment where innovative solutions to Salford’s housing challenges can thrive. Passionate about empowering young people and nurturing Salford’s rich cultural and sporting life, Paul led the launch of Suprema Lex in 2020, Salford’s shared cultural strategy. Driven by the Salford Culture and Place Partnership, this strategy is a cornerstone of the city’s ambitions for creativity, arts, and community engagement. In his wider role as deputy city mayor in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), Paul has been instrumental in delivering the Housing First initiative and tackling homelessness. He continues to oversee the development of Greater Manchester’s Housing Strategy, while leading efforts on the Plan for Homes, Jobs, and the Environment, ensuring that the city region's growth is sustainable, inclusive and equitable.

+ View abstract

Building for a healthy life: Simple principles for better places

Abstract Copy

Healthy places are not created through technical standards alone but through simple principles that put people, nature and community first. Drawing on the new Building for a Healthy Life guidance, this keynote panel explores how planners, developers, designers and public health leaders can work together to create neighbourhoods where healthier lives become the natural choice.

10.15 - 10.45Video+Poster Gallery, coffee and networking

+ View gallery

Select a Stream

• Stream 6Healthy city design and planning
• Stream 7Healthy homes and neighbourhoods
• Stream 8Smart cities and digital health
• Stream 9Mixed-used and working environments
• Stream 10Workshop stream

• Healthy city design and planning

  Quays Theatre

  10.45 - 12.30

  Session 18

   - Social urbanism and wellbeing

  

  Chair: Sunand Prasad OBE PPRIBA, Programme director, European Healthcare Design; Principal, Perkins&Will, UK

  

  Sunand Prasad OBE PPRIBA

  Programme director, European Healthcare Design; Principal, Perkins&Will, UK

  Sunand Prasad is a principal at Perkins&Will. While designing across several sectors, he has been consistently engaged in healthcare and sustainability for four decades. At the core of his architectural practice, alongside interdisciplinary collaboration, Sunand holds a passionate belief that expertise and aesthetic judgement are most effective in creating truly successful environments when they are catalysed by the everyday experience of people. Sunand has been active in the wider built environment industry, particularly championing low-carbon, regenerative design, and until recently, as chair of the UK Green Building Council. He was President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) from 2007 to 2009, campaigning for action on climate change. He was founding member of the UK Government’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment; a London Mayor’s design advocate; a trustee of the Centre for Cities; and Chair of the trustees of Article 25, the humanitarian architecture charity. He currently chairs the Editorial Board of the Journal of Architecture and the External Advisory Board of TRUUD, a major research project on the fundamental links between health and urban development. He has written widely on architecture, sustainability and healthcare design, such as the book 'Changing Hospital Architecture'.

  10.45

  People. Place. Health: How we can move to a place-based model of prevention

  Sophie Camburn, Director, UKIMEA advisory services leader, Arup, UK

  

  Sophie Camburn

  Director, UKIMEA advisory services leader, Arup, UK

  Sophie Camburn is a director and Arup’s UKIMEA advisory services leader. She works with public- and private-sector clients on complex place, infrastructure and organisational challenges, bringing together strategy, delivery and cross-sector collaboration. Sophie is project director for Arup’s People. Place. Health. research, which explores how prevention can move beyond the health system and become embedded in the way we shape communities, investment and places. Her work focuses on translating ambitious policy and strategy into practical models for implementation, with a particular interest in regeneration, infrastructure and place-based outcomes.

  + View abstract

  People. Place. Health: How we can move to a place-based model of prevention

  Abstract Copy

  Prevention must become the organising principle of health reform. But if prevention is to become more than a promise, it needs to start where health is actually made: in people’s everyday lives and the places where they live, work and connect.
  
  Arup’s new People. Place. Health. report builds on its 2022 work with the Bevan Commission and responds to the direction set by the NHS 10 Year Health Plan. That plan calls for three fundamental shifts: from hospital to community, from analogue to digital and from sickness to prevention. But these ambitions cannot be delivered by the health system alone.
  
  The new report’s central argument is that these shifts require a practical model through which Government, local authorities, health systems, developers, businesses and communities can act together, treating investment in place as investment in the country’s overall health infrastructure.
  
  Using Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, as a worked place-based scenario, the presentation will explore how local evidence and community insight could identify the interventions most likely to improve health and prosperity. It will set out a practical model that combines national and system-level change with local co-creation, to drive clearer cross-sector accountability, more closely aligned funding and a meaningful role for communities in defining priorities and shaping solutions.
  
  The challenge now is to move from principle to implementation. We need to test place-based prevention in real communities, learn quickly and build the evidence for wider adoption. Prevention will not work if it is done to communities. It must be shaped with them.

  11.05

  CyanLines: 100 miles for nature in the city: One year in

  Pete Swift, Founding director and CEO, Planit, UK

  

  Pete Swift

  Founding director and CEO, Planit, UK

  Pete is a landscape architect and urban designer, passionate about place, planet, and people. He is CEO and co-founder of Planit – a B Corp interdisciplinary, creative studio. Much of his work is built around setting frameworks and guidance for development and sustainable change and seeing that come to life. He is a proud co-founder of Manchester’s CyanLines project, alongside Urban Splash founder Tom Bloxham CBE, with a vision to create 100 miles of nature in the city by 2050. This ambitious project, backed by local, regional and national partners sits alongside his work with the PLANT CIC – the UK’s largest Urban Gardening project, established in partnership with MEPC and Federated Hermes.

  + View abstract

  CyanLines: 100 miles for nature in the city: One year in

  Abstract Copy

  CyanLines is our nature-powered partnership project that aims to connect Greater Manchester’s blue and green spaces into a high-quality network of walking and cycling routes for residents, for visitors and for nature. The vision is to develop a network of hundreds of miles of ‘CyanLines’ routes over ten years, starting with the city centres of Manchester and Salford and then stretching out across Greater Manchester to deliver a greener, healthier and more climate-resilient city for the future.
  
  It was launched in September 2025 by co-founders Tom Bloxham and Pete Swift, alongside then Cllr Bev Craig and Mayor Andy Burnham, with the aim of showcasing a Manchester as an ever-greener city, one that is investing in new parks and green spaces while also working to open up its rivers and canals. The project will connect people with nature through walking, wheeling and cycling routes that create a new ‘green grid’ for the city. Tom and Pete coined the name CyanLines because the colour Cyan is created by mixing blue and green.
  
  CyanLines is also a city-wide regeneration project for green and natural spaces. A huge pipeline of new opportunities, new connections and missing links will be unlocked through a series of CyanLines projects. These will range from mega project interventions like the future phases of Castlefield Viaduct or the idea of a new floating walkway along the River Irwell, through to the hyper-local such as food growing planters in housing developments or balcony gardening lessons.
  
  The ambition for CyanLines does not stop at Manchester and Salford city centres. It will ultimately link up all Greater Manchester’s boroughs to bring our citizens and communities closer to nature and help drive a greener, healthier, and inclusive future. From Dunham Massey in the south, to Northern Roots in Oldham; from Leigh via RHS Bridgewater, Media City on to the foot of the Pennines. And also connecting the GM Ringway, a huge orbital route devised by The Ramblers.

  11.25

  Re-inventing the City’s alleys: New pedestrian routes in the City of London

  Anna Rose, Director, Space Syntax, United Kingdom

  

  Anna Rose

  Director, Space Syntax, United Kingdom

  Anna Amodeo, Space Syntax, UK

  

  Anna Amodeo

  Space Syntax, UK

  Anna holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology from Lewis & Clark College in Portland Oregon, USA, and a Master of Science in Space Syntax: Architecture & Cities from the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, UK. She has expertise in spatial modelling and analysis at the urban scale, as well as in qualitative data coding and data visualisation. Her Master’s thesis assessed the success, failure and impact of grade separated systems as an urban design solution to downtown centres in America fractured by interstate highways, for which she received a distinction. Before joining Space Syntax, Anna worked as a consultant on healthcare and corporate design projects in the United States. Anna also has worked in the non-profit sector, in support of urban social equity projects aimed at improving transportation accessibility and policy for minority communities in Portland, Oregon.

  + View abstract

  Re-inventing the City’s alleys: New pedestrian routes in the City of London

  Abstract Copy

  City Planning is committed to transforming the Square Mile into a healthier, gentler, cleaner, more equitable and inclusive city. A central part of this vision is improving active travel, walking and wheeling, by expanding pedestrian routes through planning permissions. This approach is essential to accommodating a growing working population that now exceeds 680,000 people.
  
  In just 2025 alone, City Planning delivered ten new pedestrian routes through planning permissions, rapidly enhancing the City’s permeability and easing movement for all who use it. These new connections are helping to create a more walkable, better-connected and more humane urban environment – one that is gentler, cleaner, healthier and more sustainable. They also reveal new and surprising views of key landmarks and reintroduce the historic urban grain, reinstating long-lost alleys that enrich the City for workers, visitors and residents alike.
  
  Space Syntax has played a key role in this transformation over many years, supporting the design development, public realm improvements and impact assessments for major developments across the City of London. Most recently, we collaborated with the City Planning team on a cumulative analysis of the additional pedestrian route permeability created between 2016 and 2025. We are also working with the City to develop forward-looking spatial strategies for the future public realm, particularly in the context of substantial projected growth in the Eastern Cluster.
  
  This work reinforces the importance of co-ordinated planning and robust impact assessment to ensure that future development delivers a high-quality, healthy and enjoyable experience for the City’s workers, visitors and local communities.

  Learning Objectives

  • Understanding the important role of permeability for accommodating population growth in dense urban areas
  • Understanding the Space Syntax approach to pedestrain modelling and impact assessment
  • Using Space Syntax modelling for developing spatial planning strategies

  11.45

  Future of place: Research into the next generation’s breakthrough vision for future communities

  Marcus Adams, Managing Partner, J T P, United Kingdom

  

  Marcus Adams

  Managing Partner, J T P, United Kingdom

  Marcus is Managing Partner of JTP, a multi award-winning practice of architects and placemakers. He is an architect and urban designer, comfortable across all scales with substantial experience of working with private and public sectors to lead the design and delivery of major new mixed-use neighbourhoods, new towns and garden communities, large-scale regeneration, and strategic placemaking projects around the UK and internationally. He is driven by a commitment to creating healthy, sustainable new communities and through his work on new neighbourhoods and settlements Marcus has pioneered JTP’s Design Code methodology and spearheaded JTP as leaders in the field of masterplanning and placemaking at strategic scale. In celebration of JTP’s 30th anniversary, Marcus led the production of the "Future of Place" publication, showcasing JTP's research and findings on what the next generation want from their future places and communities and the planning and policy implications.

  Nigel Bidwell, Partner, JTP, United Kingdom

  

  Nigel Bidwell

  Partner, JTP, United Kingdom

  Nigel is an architect and partner at JTP who is passionate about design and its critique. His skills lie in an understanding of place; creating sustainable residential-led, mixed-use neighbourhoods with spaces and streets where people can positively lead their lives. Nigel gives particular emphasis to how buildings engage with the landscape and public realm and the generous enlivenment of their ground levels. He works across scales and brings a design perspective and thinking to a wide range of projects, from complex mixed-use town centre regeneration with reimagined offers and revitalised public realm, to innovative purpose-built student accommodation designs, placing community interaction to the fore, underpinned by first-hand research. His work has driven him to address issues our towns and cities face today. He has led research into urban densities and mid-rise residential typologies, as well as the opportunities for our built environment with the introduction of connected autonomous vehicles. Nigel also has a particular interest in the communication of design narratives through presentation and drawn storytelling, and he is a strong advocate of JTP’s unique community planning processes, opening doors to design for all. He actively enjoys understanding and debating design and is currently a member of a number of design review panels, including Wandsworth and as occasional chair for Hammersmith & Fulham.

  + View abstract

  Future of place: Research into the next generation’s breakthrough vision for future communities

  Abstract Copy

  Background: Across the UK and comparable global contexts, there is concern about the breakdown of opportunity for the younger generation, who face diminishing access to housing, declining living standards, and reduced long-term stability. Evidence of increasing dissatisfaction, including many young people contemplating emigrating for better life opportunities, suggests disconnect between current political and planning priorities and the aspirations of those under 30. Simultaneously, structural challenges, including housing undersupply, climate change, and shifting socio-economic conditions, are reshaping expectations of place and quality of life. Despite this, youth perspectives remain underrepresented in planning, policy, and design processes.
  
  Purpose: This paper presents findings from “Future of Place”, a research initiative by leading architects and placemakers JTP, exploring how the younger generation conceptualise the neighbourhoods and communities they wish to inhabit. It identifies the younger generation’s key breakthrough criteria, including their spatial, social, and environmental priorities, and examines how co-design approaches can better integrate these perspectives into the design and delivery of healthier, more sustainable cities, towns, and neighbourhoods.
  
  Method: The research employed participatory workshops with individuals aged under 30, primarily in London and Southeast England. Using collaborative and youth-focused engagement techniques, participants articulated their aspirations for future places, reflecting on themes including housing, community, mobility, environment, and wellbeing. The online and in-person methodologies emphasised inclusive, creative dialogue to capture nuanced insights often overlooked by traditional consultation processes.
  
  Results: Findings reveal a pragmatic and consistent set of priorities. Young people expressed a strong desire for access to safe, affordable housing, alongside inclusive and cohesive communities. Proximity to nature, environmental sustainability, and biodiversity were identified as critical to both physical health and mental wellbeing. Participants prioritised walkable neighbourhoods with strong public transport connections, reflecting low levels of car dependency. Access to employment, local amenities, and social infrastructure, including “third space”, is essential. Notably, these aspirations reflect a shift from previous generations, shaped by housing unaffordability, climate awareness, and changing social dynamics.
  
  Implications: The findings highlight the need for a recalibration of planning, policy, and development practices to more explicitly address the needs of younger generations. This includes prioritising and diversifying housing delivery and affordability, investing in social and environmental infrastructure, and embedding meaningful engagement of the younger generation within decision-making processes. The research demonstrates that amplifying the voices of the younger generation through participatory approaches can play a critical role in informing more inclusive, resilient, and health-oriented urban futures – from breakdown to breakthrough.

  Learning Objectives

  • Understand how younger generations conceptualise health, wellbeing, and quality of life in relation to housing, environment, mobility, and social infrastructure.
  • Critically assess how youth-focused engagement methods can inform more inclusive and responsive planning, policy, and placemaking practices.
  • Identify how the needs and aspirations of younger generations can be translated into strategies for delivering equitable, resilient, and health-oriented places.

  12.05

  Panel discussion

  12.30 - 13.45Video+Poster Gallery, workshop, lunch and networking

  + View gallery

  13.45 - 15.15

  Session 19

   - From design to delivery: Co-producing health equity through English devolution

  

  Chair: Siobhan Morris, Assistant director, Grand Challenges, University College London, United Kingdom

  

  Siobhan Morris

  Assistant director, Grand Challenges, University College London, United Kingdom

  Siobhan Morris is assistant director, Grand Challenges at UCL. Responsible for a broad portfolio working with academics and external partners to facilitate impactful research, interdisciplinary innovations, and cross-sector collaborations, Siobhan is an experienced knowledge broker. Cultivating and managing strategic high-level relationships and leading award-winning research projects, she specialises in equalities and structural inequities and has published extensively on intersectional inequalities in the UK.

  13.45

  From design to delivery: Co-producing health equity through English devolution

  Siobhan Morris, Assistant director, Grand Challenges, University College London, United Kingdom

  

  Siobhan Morris

  Assistant director, Grand Challenges, University College London, United Kingdom

  Siobhan Morris is assistant director, Grand Challenges at UCL. Responsible for a broad portfolio working with academics and external partners to facilitate impactful research, interdisciplinary innovations, and cross-sector collaborations, Siobhan is an experienced knowledge broker. Cultivating and managing strategic high-level relationships and leading award-winning research projects, she specialises in equalities and structural inequities and has published extensively on intersectional inequalities in the UK.

  Rebecca Wallwork, Co-ordinator, health inequalities, University College London, United Kingdom

  

  Rebecca Wallwork

  Co-ordinator, health inequalities, University College London, United Kingdom

  Rebecca is the Grand Challenges co-ordinator for health inequalities. In this role, she facilitates across Grand Challenges and the Institute of Health Equity to integrate activity across UCL and drive impact of research. Rebecca joined the team in November 2024. She previously worked in the civil service on health and social care and rough sleeping and homelessness policy. Prior to this, she worked in the select committee office at Parliament. Rebecca has an MSc in Government, Policy and Politics from Birkbeck College, University of London.

  Olivia Stevenson, Deputy Director, UCL Public Policy, University College London, United Kingdom

  

  Olivia Stevenson

  Deputy Director, UCL Public Policy, University College London, United Kingdom

  Dr Olivia Stevenson is responsible for leading UCL’s Public Policy programme. Focused on generating collaborative opportunities, Olivia develops strategic initiatives to improve the quality of engagement between academic research and public policy. She is the co-lead for practice on the UPEN Programmes project, funded by Research England, the ESRC, and UKRI. Olivia is a co-founder of the Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN), was UCL's co-lead on the £10m Capabilities in Academic-Policy Engagement (CAPE) project, and has delivered a range of internationally recognised high-impact research projects, published widely, most recently on knowledge mobilisation. Olivia has a PhD in Social Geography from the University of Leeds and a Level 7 Senior Leader Apprenticeship.

  Alice Nerurker, Health Inequalities Research Assistant, University College London, United Kingdom

  

  Alice Nerurker

  Health Inequalities Research Assistant, University College London, United Kingdom

  Alice is the Research Assistant for the Devolution and Health Equity Knowledge Exchange (DeHEx) collaboration. Alice leads project coordination and research activities, facilitating a series of knowledge exchange events to develop evidence-based resources that will embed health equity into local government. Joining the team in May 2025, she also coordinates the SDG Reactor Innovation Network, connecting UK businesses with Higher Education Institutions to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. Alice previously worked as a Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), where she investigated food systems transformation in collaboration with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. She holds an MPA in Innovation, Public Purpose and Public Value from UCL IIPP and a BA in History and Criminology from the University of Melbourne.

  Philip Clifford, Local Government Association, UK

  

  Philip Clifford

  Local Government Association, UK

  Philip Clifford is a principal policy advisor at the Local Government Association and leads the LGA’s policy work on devolution, place-based growth and public-sector reform. For much of his professional career, Philip has worked on issues of local leadership, regeneration, and public service transformation. Prior to joining the LGA he was part of the Government’s London Thames Gateway Initiative and worked with partners across London local government on a range of issues including housing investment, migration, welfare reform and devolution. Recently, his work at the LGA has focused on influencing the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act, making the case for local councils as a Force for Growth and kick-starting new work on building a sector-led vision for local public service reform.

  Gill Leng, Senior consultant, Institute of Health Equity, UK

  

  Gill Leng

  Senior consultant, Institute of Health Equity, UK

  + View abstract

  From design to delivery: Co-producing health equity through English devolution

  Abstract Copy

  Framework: The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill introduces a new statutory duty for strategic authorities to act on health inequalities. This provides a timely opportunity to embed health equity into the design, planning, and governance of places. As the legislation develops, support is needed on how this duty is interpreted and delivered locally, and how place leaders translate policy into practical action.
  
  The 2010 Marmot Review,  and its follow-up in 2020, established a framework for action on health equity, with the Institute for Health Equity now collaborating with more than 50 local areas to become ‘Marmot Places’ – places committed to improving health equity over the short, medium, and long term.
  
  Practical application: This session will share findings from UCL-LGA Devolution and Health Equity Knowledge Exchange project. Led by Professor Sir Michael Marmot, this is a practice-focused collaboration supporting local and combined authorities in tackling health inequalities within their communities.
  
  Combining UCL's evidence on the social determinants of health with LGA’s expertise in leading local government through devolution, the project convenes public health practitioners, elected members, policymakers, and researchers through workshops, peer learning sessions, and policy roundtables to address how policy design can be translated into delivery.
  
  The panel will explore how devolution can support healthy placemaking; the levers local partners can use; and the kinds of evidence, approaches, and cross-sector relationships that are needed to translate national policy into local change.
  
  Outcomes: The project’s first phase concludes in June, and this conference offers a timely opportunity for panellists to reflect on findings. They will share practical insights on governance, system design, and navigating the challenges of applying health equity principles within real-world constraints. Emerging learnings highlight opportunities for long-term, system-wide collaboration, alongside challenges around clarity of roles across local and combined authorities, capacity, and aligning economic and health equity priorities. This emphasises the importance of cross-sector relationships and shared approaches to embedding health equity in decision-making.
  
  Implications: Insights are already informing ongoing policy discussions and the development of project outputs, offering early guidance on how devolved place leaders can embed health equity within their missions, governance, and future practice. With a focus on knowledge sharing and collaborative relationships, this session will provide healthy city design delegates with a timely example of how cities and regions can capitalise on devolution in healthy placemaking to enhance quality of life for all members of communities.

  Learning Objectives

  • Knowledge synthesis and exchange to support place-based approaches to practice and policy
  • Approaches to leveraging place-based learning for regional and national policymaking
  • Supporting collaboration on priority policy-issues

  15.15 - 15.45Video+Poster Gallery, coffee and networking

  + View gallery

  15.45 - 17.00

  Session 20

   - Promoting health outcomes in urban development decision-making in the UK Government

  

  Chair: Sarah Ayres, Professor of Public Policy and Governance, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

  

  Sarah Ayres

  Professor of Public Policy and Governance, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

  Professor Sarah Ayres is Professor of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Bristol. Working at the intersection between political science and regional studies, her research has examined how diverse actors solve complex problems through collaboration and local leadership. She specialises in Whitehall decision making, collaborative governance and English devolution.

  15.45

  Promoting health outcomes in urban development decision-making in the UK Government: A collaboration between academia and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

  Sarah Ayres, Professor of Public Policy and Governance, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

  

  Sarah Ayres

  Professor of Public Policy and Governance, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

  Professor Sarah Ayres is Professor of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Bristol. Working at the intersection between political science and regional studies, her research has examined how diverse actors solve complex problems through collaboration and local leadership. She specialises in Whitehall decision making, collaborative governance and English devolution.

  Geoff Bates, Lecturer in Public Health Policy, University of Bath, United Kingdom

  

  Geoff Bates

  Lecturer in Public Health Policy, University of Bath, United Kingdom

  Dr Geoff Bates is a Lecturer in Public Health Policy at the University of Bath. His research focuses on how to improve public health and reduce inequalities through tackling the wider determinants of health, such as the social, political and economic factors that shape the conditions we live in. He is interested in the effective use of different types of evidence to inform policy-making, and the design and evaluation of interventions and policies to improve health and wellbeing.

  Andrew Charlesworth May, Appraisal Guide Lead, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, United Kingdom

  

  Andrew Charlesworth May

  Appraisal Guide Lead, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, United Kingdom

  Dr Andrew Charlesworth May is the MHCLG economic appraisal lead. He is responsible for writing the MHCLG Appraisal Guide, making sure it is applied properly and developing appraisal capability and capacity within MHCLG and externally. His key area of focus is on developing better ways of appraising the impacts of early intervention initiatives, particularly urban design impacts on health and policies to tackle homelessness.

  Eleanor Eaton, Research Fellow, University of Bath, United Kingdom

  

  Eleanor Eaton

  Research Fellow, University of Bath, United Kingdom

  Dr Eleanor Eaton is an environmental economist at the University of Bath. Her work advances robust health‑driven metrics and tools for better urban decision‑making. With a detailed understanding of how homes and neighbourhoods shape health, her research helps unlock capacity for policy makers to assess impacts early and describe how impacts and costs fall across communities, supporting more equitable, evidence‑led planning.

  Becca Kelly, Economic advisor - new towns, infrastructure and housing delivery, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, United Kingdom

  

  Becca Kelly

  Economic advisor - new towns, infrastructure and housing delivery, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, United Kingdom

  Becca Kelly is an economic advisor in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. She works predominantly across the New Towns programme, building the analysis for where and how the government should designate New Towns in England. Her role as part of this work is to develop understanding within the department of how the HAUS tool can be used in practice and aid the development of ensuring it is user-friendly to meet the needs of the department. She is also building a programme-level internal tool for ease of use within appraisal alongside guidance for efficient and effective application within housing development policies, such as New Towns.

  + View abstract

  Promoting health outcomes in urban development decision-making in the UK Government: A collaboration between academia and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

  Abstract Copy

  This panel discussion session builds on a collaboration between the Tackling Root causes Upstream of unhealthy Urban Development (TRUUD) research team and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to promote health outcomes in urban development funding and policy decisions. Panellists include representatives from TRUUD and MHCLG.
  
  Urban development officials would like to improve public health through funding and policy that supports good urban design. However, they lack the tools and evidence to fully understand and assess health impacts and the incentives to act. Overcoming this is crucial if the Government’s plans for delivering new homes are to provide the conditions to improve health and wellbeing and prevent disease.
  
  The three-year collaboration between TRUUD and MHCLG aimed to increase the use of evidence of health outcomes when MHCLG assess the impacts of urban development options. It involved co‑developing the Health Appraisal of Urban Systems (HAUS) model, which compares scenarios to show how changes in the urban environment may affect physical and mental health across 200 impact pathways, valuing wider effects on wellbeing, health services and the economy.
  
  The work was published in the updated MHCLG Appraisal Guide in February 2026. MHCLG and Homes England officials are using HAUS in appraisals and promoting it for wider use through the Appraisal Guide. Impacts and implementation at national and local levels were explored through extensive engagement with stakeholders across public, private and third sectors.
  
  This session aims to share learning from this collaboration and to provide attendees with examples of how to incentivise and enable urban development officials to prioritise health outcomes. The audience will learn about HAUS and how it is being applied in MHCLG, and participate in discussions about promoting health evidence and how MHCLG can support healthy local development.
  
  The session includes three 30-minute sections based around presentations, staged conversation and audience Q&A. Firstly, short presentations by TRUUD and MHCLG panellists will provide participants with overviews of the collaboration, MHCLG appraisals, the HAUS model, and how HAUS is being applied in MHCLG and its impacts. Secondly, the panel will discuss the implications nationally and locally, consider what needs to happen next, and reflect on lessons learnt about promoting health in urban design processes in the current political and economic context. Thirdly, attendees will have the opportunity to ask the panellists questions and provide reflections on this work, and how to build upon it.

  Learning Objectives

  • To examine how MHCLG is prioritising health outcomes and supporting healthy local development
  • To identify approaches to support urban development officials to prioritise health outcomes
  • To discuss how the HAUS economic valuation model can support decision making for healthy development and the opportunities for applying it

  End of Healthy city design and planning stream

• Healthy homes and neighbourhoods

  Compass Room

  

  10.45 - 12.30

  Session 22

   - Housing and place: Evidence, innovation and practice

  

  Chair: Jim Chapman, Independent design consultant, UK

  

  Jim Chapman

  Independent design consultant, UK

  Jim Chapman is a chartered architect and urban designer, with more than 36 years' experience as a consultant delivering a wide range of projects in many sectors. In 2006, he established an independent consultancy, which focuses on supporting and advising clients on the delivery of high-quality projects.

  10.45

  From masterplanning to liveable urbanism: Empowering agents of change for healthier and more resilient cities

  Lucy Bullivant, Director, Lucy Bullivant & Associates, United Kingdom

  

  Lucy Bullivant

  Director, Lucy Bullivant & Associates, United Kingdom

  Lucy Bullivant is a place and culture strategist, curator and award-winning author dedicated to just transitions enabled through bespoke and engaged adaptive planning. In 2010, she was elected an honorary fellow by RIBA for her contribution to sustainable architectural culture globally. Through her consultancy firm, Lucy Bullivant & Associates, she has delivered place, cultural and community engagement strategies for the London BIDs Central District Alliance and Team London Bridge, and local authorities including Enfield Council, Westminster City Council and Bydel Bjerke, Oslo. Lucy’s advisory roles also include chair, Lambeth Design Review Panel; trustee, Temple Bar Trust; and guest critic and author, School of Architecture, ETH Zurich. She has curated groundbreaking exhibitions including ‘Phoenix Rising: Visions for Rebuilding Ukraine’ (Building Centre, 2025-26); ‘Retrofit 23: Towards Deep Retrofit of Homes at Scale’ (Building Centre, London, 2023); ‘Dugnad Days’, Oslo Architecture Triennale, 2019 and 2022; ‘Urbanistas’ (Roca London Gallery, 2014); ‘Space Invaders’ (the British Council); ‘The near and the far, fixed and in flux’ (Milan Triennale); and ‘Kid size: the material world of childhood’ (Vitra Design Museum). Lucy’s published books include Masterplanning Futures (Routledge, 2012), winner of the Urban Design Group Book of the Year, 2014. Her follow-up, Masterplanning Futures: Agents of Change, is published by Routledge, Sept 2026. She has given many keynotes globally, lectured extensively in the UK and chaired panels on all aspects of adaptive planning and resilient urbanism. In 2013, she founded her webzine for liveable urbanism, Urbanista.org. She has a PhD in adaptive planning, School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University, and an MA(RCA) in Cultural History, Royal College of Art. See https://lucybullivantandassociates.net/ and https://www.urbanista.org/

  + View abstract

  From masterplanning to liveable urbanism: Empowering agents of change for healthier and more resilient cities

  Abstract Copy

  Thesis statement: Contemporary urban planning is trapped between rigid, top-down "command and control" blueprints and increasingly restrictive dystopian paths, failing to address escalating global "polycrises". This research explores the hypothesis that a vital "middle way" – defined as generative strategic planning – can foster healthy, resilient, and inclusive cities by empowering "agents of change" to prioritise local social value. The study addresses the problem of transitioning from static masterplans to a human-driven agency that reclaims urban space for both people and nature, specifically through adaptive reuse and healthy environments.
  
  Methodology: This study employs a qualitative, international comparative analysis to evaluate adaptive urban strategies. Data collection involved first-hand accounts, field observations, and semi-structured interviews with leading "agents of change," including architects, curators, and policymakers. The research further utilises literary analysis and critique of existing planning frameworks, supported by an evaluation of visual data and case studies across Europe, the Global South, and regions facing radical uncertainty.
  
  Results: The research identifies that successful "healthy city" outcomes are directly linked to adaptive reuse and retrofitting rather than tabula rasa development. Key findings include:
  • Systemic liveability: Evidence from Copenhagen proves that iterative, pedestrian-centric design creates resilient health outcomes.
  • Social urbanism: In Medellín, "green corridors" reduced urban heat islands and improved social equity through nature-positive infrastructure.
  • Adaptive reconstruction in Ukraine: Research into Lviv highlights the "Unbroken" national rehabilitation centre as a transformative model. By retrofitting existing urban fabric to integrate medical and social rehabilitation, Lviv demonstrates how adaptive planning creates inclusive, accessible spaces for war-affected populations. In Kyiv and Kharkiv, visionary planning relies on incremental resilience, focusing on the rapid restoration of healthy homes through human-driven agency.
  • Technological governance: Generative AI is a viable tool for navigating uncertainty only when scrutinised through grounded human experience to ensure it serves social value.
  
  Conclusions and implications: The results confirm that the transition to liveable urbanism requires a shift from "commander" to "responsible guardian." By focusing on healthy homes and inclusive public spaces—as seen in the rehabilitation models of Lviv—cities can move away from extractive logic. For society, these findings imply that reclaiming urban agency is essential for just transitions. This supports the initial hypothesis: empowering agents of change to retrofit our cities is the most viable path to delivering equitable, healthy neighbourhoods in an age of uncertainty.

  Learning Objectives

  • Contrast "Static Masterplanning" with "Generative Health outcomes": Participants will explain why rigid blueprints fail urban polycrises, and how generative planning prioritises social value for resilient, healthy environments.
  • Evaluate the health impacts of Adaptive Reuse versus "Tabula Rasa" development: Attendees will advocate for retrofitting existing urban fabric—using Lviv’s "Unbroken" model—to provide inclusive, accessible, and therapeutic spaces for vulnerable populations
  • Analyse "Social Urbanism" as a tool for environmental and physical well-being: Participants will identify how nature-positive infrastructure, like Medellín’s green corridors, simultaneously reduces urban heat islands and improves systemic liveability.

  11.05

  Compassionate Places – implementing neuroarchitecture and “human impact design” for transdisciplinary, health-creating built environments in practice and policy

  Natasha Reid, Founder, MATTER SPACE SOUL, United Kingdom

  

  Natasha Reid

  Founder, MATTER SPACE SOUL, United Kingdom

  Natasha Reid is founder of MATTER SPACE SOUL, a progressive spatial design studio and lab shaping places for human and social wellbeing. The studio specialises in Human-Centric Design, NeuroArchitecture and Biophilic Design. She works at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, art and the human sciences, such as environmental psychology and neuroscience. Building on her experience at award-winning architecture studios, she then spent over a decade developing and implementing new approaches for humanistic design from 2013. She often speaks at conferences on design innovation to address societal challenges. She was named a “Groundbreaker” by international design authority Wallpaper* magazine in 2021. www.matterspacesoul.com

  + View abstract

  Compassionate Places – implementing neuroarchitecture and “human impact design” for transdisciplinary, health-creating built environments in practice and policy

  Abstract Copy

  Recognised by the World Health Organization as a global exemplar for “Strategic Action on Urban Health” (2025), Compassionate Places presents a transdisciplinary, practical approach to innovation across architecture, urban design and planning. Both a manifesto and method in practice, it places human experience, health and social wellbeing at the heart of the built environment to support a shift to a new urban paradigm.
  
  Synthesising cutting-edge research from neuroscience and environmental psychology with insights from public health, sociology, anthropology and the arts, Compassionate Places sets out the basis of a new specialist discipline – Human Impact Design. As an experience-led, evidence-backed and equity-based method, it creates a pragmatic pathway to intentionally support people to flourish and thrive through the built environment. The presentation will share case-studies implemented in policy and practice, offering a deep dive into the methods behind this bold vision and fresh approach, which has been:
  
  • applied within real planning systems and large-scale commercial design projects in industry, such as a landmark, mixed-use development on Oxford Street (2023-25);
  • evaluated by the PHIRST (Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Team) scheme and the new “Place Quality” human-centric design standards recommended for scaling up to national policy (2025);
  • grounded in interdisciplinary experience collaborating with world-leading neuroscience and psychology experts, such as the co-founder of the new International Centre for Neuroarchitecture by UCL & Research Institute of Sweden (RISE);
  • published in the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health (2025) – a peer-reviewed, academic journal; and
  • to be published as a chapter in upcoming Springer Nature book at the forefront of neuroarchitecture research, “From Neuroarchitecture to Neurocities” (2026).
  
  Despite the profound impact that the built environment has on people, there is currently no unified, structured model for built environment design that can systematically and holistically address the full complexity of human needs, nature and experience to shape settings that create health. Neuroarchitecture is an interdisciplinary research field combining neuroscience, environmental psychology and architecture, emerging from the early 2000s and now quickly gaining prominence within industry.
  
  As the understanding of how architecture, urban design, and planning directly affects human health, biology, stress regulation, cognition, social connection, inclusivity and mental health increases, the integration of scientific knowledge into the way places are shaped becomes an ethical imperative and matter of duty of care. The presentation urges the industry to embrace the transformational role that built environment practitioners can have at a time of global poly-crisis.
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Introduction to Human Impact Design and multifacted impacts of built environment on people
  • Understanding new field of Neuroarchitecture in relation to Healthy Cities
  • Understanding how design innovation can be implemented in practice and policy

  11.25

  Co-creation living lab for dementia-friendly residential care environments

  Femke Feenstra, (Interior) architect-director, partner, Gortemaker Algra Feenstra architects, Netherlands

  

  Femke Feenstra

  (Interior) architect-director, partner, Gortemaker Algra Feenstra architects, Netherlands

  Femke Feenstra is an (interior) architect-director and one of the three partners at Gortemaker Algra Feenstra architects. The firm bridges the gap between innovation and tradition, combining decades of expertise with fresh ideas. It is also specialised in conducting research and development. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague and the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture. She believes it is important as a designer to look beyond her own discipline. How can a designer contribute to the future of healthcare, wellbeing, and the built environment? What makes a house a home? Remaining part of society is essential. Femke is currently working on various research projects, including the Reactivating Hospital and MAYA. Her design projects include Rijnstate Hospital in Elst, Residential care centre Allévo in Zierikzee, Marijke Hiem in Heerenveen, and Health Hub Ipse de Bruggen, Youth Care Institution Campus de Hutten and OCMW Halle.

  + View abstract

  Co-creation living lab for dementia-friendly residential care environments

  Abstract Copy

  "Back & Forth" is a concept that, through co-creation between both client(s) and design team, transcends traditional approaches to enhance dementia-friendly living and care environments.
  
  Background and aims: Corporations, municipalities, and healthcare organisations in the Netherlands are exploring new social concepts to improve the social environment for residents. To create future-proof environments, the needs of community residents must be prioritised, aligning interests, funding, and policies. Back & Forth presents an integrated approach to develop sustainable dementia-friendly care environments that support residents positive health. This approach focuses on long-term social value, such as improved quality of life, reduced loneliness, increased societal participation, better job satisfaction, and reduced absenteeism.
  
  Methods: The design team consists of professionals with diverse expertise, including researchers, social designers, architects, urban planners, and healthcare professionals. They applied a multidisciplinary approach to the pilot project ‘Beresteinlaan’ (living lab). Back & Forth encourages social interactions and connections beyond physical spaces, focusing on three levels of social cohesion: between residents, between residents and their environment, and between residents and care organisations. The concept includes three dimensions:
  
  1. Living Together: This social dimension promotes co-reliance and encourages planned and spontaneous encounters to build a vital community.
  2. Healthy Living: The physical dimension connects residents to the neighbourhood and care groups, with routes and spaces designed to encourage mobility and casual social interactions.
  3. Living with Care: The organisational dimension fosters co-operation between residents, care organisations, housing corporations, municipalities, and care offices. New roles, like a home coach, and innovative financing methods, such as population funding and shared-savings agreements, support this approach.
  
  The concept advocates for a long-term partnership between organisations, ensuring shared responsibilities towards common goals.
  
  Results: The research has led to the initiation of the ‘Beresteinlaan’ pilot project, with defined interventions and a joint business case. Early expectations indicate improved social cohesion and quality of life for residents. A baseline measurement will be conducted to monitor the impact post-realisation. The co-creation process itself has proven to be a valuable tool and can be applied to similar projects.
  
  Conclusion: Back & Forth shifts the focus from care to health, individualism to collective action, and short-term to long-term solutions. This requires new ways of organising, financing, and monitoring. The integrated business case is essential to measuring the success of the pilot project. The co-creation process, led by a multidisciplinary team, is key to aligning the interests of all stakeholders and creating a sustainable, future-proof residential care environment.

  Learning Objectives

  • Dementia-Friendly Residential Care
  • Quality of living
  • Living with Care

  11.45

  Health impacts of housing retrofit programmes: A modelling analysis of targeting for health inequality reduction

  Huihui Song, Research associate, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

  

  Huihui Song

  Research associate, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

  I currently hold a postdoctoral position in public health at the University of Liverpool, where my research focuses on how welfare reforms impact health outcomes. I am also part of the NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research) PHIRST (Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Teams) team. Prior to joining Liverpool, I completed my doctoral studies in Economics at the University of Glasgow (2020-2023).

  Sarah Rodgers, Professor, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

  

  Sarah Rodgers

  Professor, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

  I'm a Professor of Health Informatics with expertise in evaluating natural experiments and non-randomised intervention studies using anonymised linked administrative and health datasets. My research focuses on using safe haven data that have been linked across health, social and environmental domains to explore the impact of exposures such as decent housing conditions, alcohol outlets, pollution, and natural outdoor spaces, on health and wellbeing. I am co-Director of a UK Prevention Research Partnership, GroundsWell. This Consortium aims to reduce health inequities of non communicable diseases through the provision of appropriate urban green and blue spaces. We work across the Liverpool, Belfast, and Edinburgh city regions.

  + View abstract

  Health impacts of housing retrofit programmes: A modelling analysis of targeting for health inequality reduction

  Abstract Copy

  Background: Poor-quality housing is a well-established social determinant of health, associated with increased risks of respiratory and cardiovascular disease and preventable injuries. Housing retrofit programmes have the potential to improve population health and reduce health inequalities, yet evidence remains limited on the magnitude of these benefits and on whether existing programmes are targeted in ways that maximise health gains.
  
  Methods: We constructed a Monte Carlo simulation of the impacts of housing retrofit delivered for 5263 properties in the Liverpool City Region between 2020 and 2023 on emergency hospital admissions for respiratory, cardiovascular, injury and all causes and how much greater they would have been if retrofit had prioritised eligible households with high health needs. Using published effect estimates and retrofit delivery data linked to neighbourhood-level hospital admission rates, we compared reductions in admissions and health inequalities under the observed allocation to a counterfactual scenario incorporating a health need index into the targeting of retrofit. We extrapolate findings to give a national projection aligned with England's planned five-million-property Warm Homes Plan.
  
  Findings: The observed allocation in Liverpool city region was estimated to have prevented 213 emergency hospital admissions per year (95 per cent uncertainty interval [UI]: 164–265), compared with no retrofit scenario. This corresponds to annual NHS savings of approximately £530,000 (95 per cent UI: £410,000–£660,000) and a reduction in inequality gap between the most and least deprived areas by 43 admissions per year (13 per cent of the baseline inequality gap). Incorporating a health need index into targeting could prevent a further 22.5 admissions annually (11 per cent additional gain), generate £56,000 in additional annual savings without increasing programme size, and further reduce the inequality gap by around 50 admissions per year (an additional 15-per-cent reduction in the inequality gap, reducing the inequality gap in admissions by 28 per cent). Illustrative national projections suggest these gains could scale to approximately 45,000 additional admissions prevented per year under England's Warm Homes Plan if health need is used to target housing retrofit compared with just using energy efficiency and deprivation.
  
  Interpretation: Incorporating health need into retrofit targeting criteria – alongside existing energy efficiency and income eligibility – could substantially enhance population health benefits and reduce health inequalities without additional resources. These findings are directly relevant to the design of England's Warm Homes Plan and similar national retrofit programmes.
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Housing retrofit
  • Social determinants of health
  • Health inequalities

  12.05

  Panel discussion

  12.30 - 13.45Video+Poster Gallery, coffee and networking

  + View gallery

  13.45 - 15.15

  Session 23

   - Designing child-friendly neighbourhoods

  

  Chair: Gemma Hyde, Projects and policy manager, Town & Country Planning Association, United Kingdom

  

  Gemma Hyde

  Projects and policy manager, Town & Country Planning Association, United Kingdom

  Gemma Hyde is a projects and policy manager at the Town and Country Planning Association, where she leads work on healthy placemaking. Working at the intersection of planning, public health and children’s rights, she supports councils and national partners to embed health and wellbeing in planning policy and practice. Her work has a particular focus on championing the rights, needs and voices of children and young people in the built environment and enabling them to help shape the places where they live, learn and play.

  13.45

  Embedding children’s needs in urban design: Applying the Child Friendly Urban Environments (CFUE) Framework in Cardiff

  Tayo Isa-Daniel, Senior Design Researcher, AtkinsRéalis, United Kingdom

  

  Tayo Isa-Daniel

  Senior Design Researcher, AtkinsRéalis, United Kingdom

  Tayo Isa-Daniel is a Part 3 RIAI Architect and Design Consultant working as a Senior Design Researcher within the AtkinsRéalis Building Design Research & Innovation team. Tayo holds an Architecture degree and a MSc in City Design and Social Science from the LSE where she conducted urban advisory research for mayors. Tayo’s work focusses on gender-focused planning and urban participatory design methods.

  + View abstract

  Embedding children’s needs in urban design: Applying the Child Friendly Urban Environments (CFUE) Framework in Cardiff

  Abstract Copy

  Cities shape children’s daily experiences, developmental outcomes, and long-term wellbeing. While global movements such as UNICEF’s Child Friendly Cities Initiative have advanced children’s rights, there remains a significant gap in practical tools that enable planners, designers and decision-makers to embed child-friendly principles into urban development. In response, AtkinsRéalis has developed the Child Friendly Urban Environments (CFUE) framework to support practitioners to assess, design and monitor urban environments through the lens of children’s needs.
  
  CFUE is structured around six pillars: health and wellbeing; play; independent mobility; social amenities and education; community and connectivity; and safety and protection. The framework combines qualitative engagement and quantitative analysis to enable practitioners to interrogate the extent to which an environment supports children’s needs. It is designed for use throughout the planning and design process, from early goal-setting to post-development evaluation, embedding children’s rights in real‑world design decisions.
  
  To test the framework, AtkinsRéalis partnered with Cardiff Council’s Child Friendly team to pilot CFUE on a major development scheme in Grangetown, Cardiff. The pilot aimed to evaluate existing neighbourhood conditions, understand children’s lived experiences, and identify opportunities for child‑centred design interventions in the proposed masterplan. Methods included the spatial analysis of mobility networks, lighting conditions, wayfinding, and play infrastructure, alongside a community engagement event with local children and caregivers.
  
  The pilot revealed clear gaps between existing ambitions and children’s everyday needs. Findings highlighted persistent barriers to independent mobility, with children and caregivers describing poorly lit routes, shared congested paths, and areas with poor visibility and passive surveillance. These concerns were reinforced by spatial analysis, which identified gaps in lighting and indirect or unsafe journeys to schools, parks and local facilities. Opportunities were identified to introduce child-focused wayfinding, improving navigability and reducing reliance on adult supervision. At the same time, the interface between the development and the neighbouring park emerged as a major under-utilised asset. Despite its proximity, poor connectivity, inactive frontages, and minimal play features restricted access and limited the potential for multi-functional, year-round play.
  
  Across these insights, CFUE acted as a mechanism to critically evaluate regeneration efforts, enabling practitioners to identify gaps, challenge assumptions, and reimagine urban spaces from a child-centred perspective. The pilot illustrates CFUE’s potential to be applied across diverse contexts, offering a scalable tool for embedding children’s needs and creating environments that foster connection, confidence, and wellbeing.

  Learning Objectives

  • Understand how the Child Friendly Urban Environments Framework translates children’s rights and needs into a practical methodology for assessing, designing and evaluating urban spaces.
  • Analyse how spatial, social and experiential data can reveal barriers and opportunities for children’s independent mobility, play, safety and wellbeing.
  • Evaluate how child-centred design principles can be embedded into planning and regeneration projects.

  14.05

  Designing neighbourhoods that enable a “balanced play diet”: A preventative approach to population health

  Amanda Gummer, CEO , FUNdamentally Children, United Kingdom

  

  Amanda Gummer

  CEO , FUNdamentally Children, United Kingdom

  Dr. Amanda Gummer, PhD, is a leading authority on play and child development. She is CEO of Fundamentally Children, home of the Good Play Guide, and Independent Chair of the Association of Play Industries. Amanda has advised government, presented her Balanced Play Model at the European Parliament, and developed accreditation frameworks now adopted internationally, including the Toy Association’s STEAM Toy Accreditation. A Fellow of the RSA and an ambassador for Genius of Play, Amanda is passionate about aligning innovation with child wellbeing, ensuring toys, games and play experiences deliver both commercial success and developmental value.

  Romy Rawlings, Director, DeepGreen Consultancy, United Kingdom

  

  Romy Rawlings

  Director, DeepGreen Consultancy, United Kingdom

  Romy is a chartered landscape architect (fellow) with 30 years’ experience across the built environment. Her career began in design practice and evolved into commercial strategy; throughout this time Romy has contributed to the delivery of numerous high-profile public realm projects in the UK, working alongside design teams to create lasting and impactful environments. Originally trained in horticulture, Romy retains a lifelong belief in the value of the external environment and an absolute conviction that landscape is no longer optional but essential infrastructure in today’s world. Romy is deeply committed to advocating for equity and inclusion within the sector and firmly believes that high-quality landscape design and delivery can significantly enhance societal wellbeing. Now working as a freelance consultant, she works at the intersection of design thinking, commercial strategy, placemaking, and sustainable innovation, helping built-environment organisations (including play equipment manufacturers) communicate complex ideas. A regular speaker and writer, Romy is passionate about advancing sustainable practices and raising awareness of the importance of responsible design in the built environment.

  + View abstract

  Designing neighbourhoods that enable a “balanced play diet”: A preventative approach to population health

  Abstract Copy

  Children’s opportunities for play have changed significantly in recent decades, with declines in independent mobility, reduced access to safe outdoor space, and increasing reliance on structured or screen-based activities. These trends are often framed as parenting challenges, but growing evidence demonstrates the built environment’s role in shaping children’s play behaviours. Health systems are under increasing pressure from preventable physical and mental health conditions established early in life. This creates a strong case for re-examining the public realm from neighbourhood to city scale as a lever for preventive public health.
  
  This paper introduces the concept of a “balanced play diet” as a practical framework for designing neighbourhoods that support healthy child development. It explores how urban planning and design can enable a diverse range of play experiences (physical, social, imaginative, and digital) while also delivering measurable long-term economic and societal value.
  
  The paper draws on an interdisciplinary review of child development research, public health data, and urban design principles, combined with observational insights from community-based play interventions.
  
  Findings indicate that neighbourhoods that enable a balanced mix of play opportunities are associated with increased physical activity, improved social interaction, enhanced wellbeing, and stronger emotional resilience in children. Key environmental factors include access to green space and nature, safe routes for active travel and independent mobility, mixed-use community spaces, and opportunities for low-cost, informal play. From an economic perspective, these environments contribute to reduced long-term demand on health and education services, with indicative modelling suggesting that relatively modest investments in play-supportive infrastructure can offset significantly higher downstream costs linked to inactivity, poor mental health, and delayed developmental outcomes.
  
  Example case studies include:
  • Alfred Place, London – https://www.lda-design.co.uk/kindling/short-read/from-grey-to-green-alfred-place-gardens/
  • Bradford’s JUMP project – https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/23/bradford-jump-project-children-exercise-physical-activity
  • Barcelona’s Superblocks – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50658537
  
  Other international examples of embedding play in the urban landscape can be found here: https://ww3.rics.org/uk/en/modus/built-environment/urbanisation/play-in-cities.html
  
  Implications: Reframing play as essential infrastructure rather than discretionary provision has important implications for planners, developers, and policymakers. The balanced play diet offers a scalable, evidence-informed tool for embedding child-centred design into neighbourhood planning, aligning health, social value, and economic priorities. By integrating play into the fabric of everyday environments, cities can take a more preventive, cost-effective approach to improving population and neighbourhood health.

  Learning Objectives

  • Understanding of the Balanced Play Pyramid model with regards planning and design
  • Understanding of the multi-faceted benefits of playful design
  • Exploring the economic argument for investing in play within community development

  14.25

  Schools as community hubs: Embedding social value and health outcomes in urban development

  Malak Mehta, Real estate advisor, WELL AP, Anculus, The Netherlands

  

  Malak Mehta

  Real estate advisor, WELL AP, Anculus, The Netherlands

  Malak Mehta is a real estate advisor at Anculus, where she contributes to the development of both renovations and new school buildings. Her work emphasises an integrative approach to creating healthy learning environments, alongside supporting project management processes. She also serves as an advisor for the WELL for the Mind concept and is a WELL Accredited Professional (WELL AP), specialising in holistic strategies for healthy buildings. With a background in architecture and urban design engineering, Malak is driven by a passion for creating spaces that support physical, emotional, and social wellbeing. She has a strong interest in placemaking and place attachment, and is actively engaged in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of environmental psychology and the built environment.

  + View abstract

  Schools as community hubs: Embedding social value and health outcomes in urban development

  Abstract Copy

  Schools as community hubs: Embedding social value and health outcomes in urban development
  
  As cities seek to deliver healthier, more inclusive environments, there is growing recognition that social infrastructure plays a critical role in shaping community wellbeing. School buildings, traditionally designed as monofunctional educational spaces, are increasingly being reimagined as community hubs that can generate measurable social value and positive health outcomes at the neighbourhood scale.
  
  This abstract examines how the design and programming of school environments can contribute to community impact by embedding equity, inclusion, and wellbeing into spatial and organisational decision-making. In the Dutch context, many schools face challenges related to spatial quality and accessibility, yet they also represent an underutilised opportunity to support broader social goals. By extending their function beyond school hours and opening facilities to diverse user groups, schools can become active, place-based anchors that strengthen social connection and support local regeneration.
  
  The research presents a comparative analysis of three primary school projects in Utrecht: MKC LEF, the Willibrordschool in Vleuten, and the planned Integral Child Center Groenewoud. These case studies demonstrate how design strategies – such as transparent layouts, shared facilities, and accessible green-blue outdoor spaces – can foster interaction between children, families, and local residents. The concept of integral child centres (ICC), integrating education, childcare, and community-oriented services, illustrates how spatial and programmatic integration can support inclusive use and intergenerational exchange.
  
  A key focus of this research is how social value can be embedded and assessed. Indicators such as accessibility, diversity of use, frequency of social interaction, and perceived sense of belonging are explored alongside spatial qualities. Participatory processes, including engagement with school communities, parents, and local stakeholders, are identified as essential in aligning design outcomes with local needs and empowering communities through co-creation and shared ownership.
  
  The findings highlight that schools designed as open, multifunctional environments can act as catalysts for social cohesion, supporting both physical and mental wellbeing. By integrating indoor and outdoor spaces and creating opportunities for informal encounters, these environments contribute to healthier daily routines and stronger community networks.
  
  This paper argues that repositioning schools as community hubs enables urban development to deliver meaningful social value. As part of a broader healthy city strategy, such place-based approaches can ensure that urban change benefits people and communities, reinforcing schools as essential drivers of inclusive, resilient, and connected neighbourhoods.
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Evaluate school buildings as socio-spatial infrastructure through comparative case study analysis of their impact on social value and health outcomes.
  • Analyse design strategies for equity and inclusion using spatial and programmatic assessment of multifunctionality, shared use, and transitional spaces.
  • Apply and assess methods for measuring community impact, including participatory co-design processes and qualitative and quantitative social value indicators.

  14.45

  Panel discussion

  15.15 - 15.45Video+Poster Gallery, coffee and networking

  + View gallery

  15.45 - 17.00

  Session 24

   - Evidence-based neighbourhood design

  

  Chair: Anna Rose, Director, Space Syntax, United Kingdom

  

  Anna Rose

  Director, Space Syntax, United Kingdom

  15.45

  London’s only Healthy New Town: Planning and delivering green immersion and a wider legacy in health

  Richard Webb, Landscape design director, Stantec UK, United Kingdom

  

  Richard Webb

  Landscape design director, Stantec UK, United Kingdom

  Rich is a landscape architect and associate director who brings creative energy and innovative thinking to all his projects. He has experience working across urban design and landscape disciplines and specialises in bringing the two together. He has been involved in numerous urban regeneration projects and works closely with local authorities, developers, and key stakeholders on projects of all scales to drive understanding alongside testing and evidencing the value generated in green and blue infrastructure. Rich was integral in driving the quality discussions for the development of the Greenkeeper online tool, which helps value urban green space. Today, he uses the tool and his experience to inform site understanding and craft targeted design responses. His recent projects include Barking Riverside, Peterborough Embankment, The Chocolate Factory (Wood Green), and Coventry’s Underpark. Outside of work Rich enjoys music and multiple sports including paragliding (or parawaiting)!

  Sarah McCready, Director of social infrastructure and communications, Barking Riverside, UK

  

  Sarah McCready

  Director of social infrastructure and communications, Barking Riverside, UK

  + View abstract

  London’s only Healthy New Town: Planning and delivering green immersion and a wider legacy in health

  Abstract Copy

  Barking Riverside is one of London’s most ambitious regeneration sites, extending across 443 acres and adding a new settlement the size of Winchester on the banks of the River Thames. Since its designation as a ‘Healthy New Town’ in 2016, Barking Riverside – the master developer – has designed and implemented some of the latest health and social care research and ambition into the evolving built environment design, supported by considerable investment into resident-led health pilots and developing a bespoke model of care for Barking Riverside.
  
  Stantec has been working with the BRL team in realising this new community for over 20 years, but in 2023, Stantec’s landscape designers joined the project to work alongside our masterplanning and town planning teams to achieve a consent for uplift from 10,000 to 20,000 homes site wide, while embedding green infrastructure. The approach adopted draws on research findings from ‘Greenkeeper’, an Innovate UK funded project, alongside the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, that demonstrated the value of immersion and diversity of offer in terms of significant health benefits. By embedding Greenkeeper principles into the spatial DNA of the masterplan, the ambition was to intentionally help the community live well accidentally.
  
  In this session, we will review the progress of specific green interventions that have already been implemented, focusing on core infrastructure elements such as a multi-functional linear park design offering open space, play, trails and spaces for connection and contemplation, with an ambition to deliver a green amenity spine for this future community. Additionally, we will review the emerging design and delivery of the foreshore, which aims to better integrate the River Thames with the homes at Barking Riverside, creating both a destination and an amenity space. Both represent an ambition to create green spaces that are part of daily movement, which soften major arterial routes, and which provide longevity of green immersion.
  
  We will share how this scheme has and is responding to:
  • the reality of design ambition versus long-term new community delivery;
  • the opportunities and challenge posed by successful activation;
  • the need for flexibility and evolution throughout build-out;
  • the need and approach to instilling ownership and responsibility; and
  • the long-term strategy for embedding and monitoring health in such a significant new community.
  
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Delivering healthy New Communities
  • Delivering healthy placemaking at high density
  • Making the case for investment in green infrastructure

  16.05

  Macquarie Park Masterplan: Designing a healthy neighbourhood from first principles

  Matthew Blair, Principal, BVN, United Kingdom

  

  Matthew Blair

  Principal, BVN, United Kingdom

  Matthew is an architect, technologist and Principal at BVN, acknowledged for his cross-sector expertise and his ability to apply current and novel technologies and future of work knowledge to redefine spaces across industries such as health, education, and science. With a career spanning Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, North America, and the UK, Matthew now leads BVN’s UK Studio, bringing a global perspective to his work. Passionate about driving change, Matthew also steers many of BVN’s transformational and innovation initiatives, collaborating with universities, start-ups, and other architectural practices to expand the boundaries of what architecture can achieve. His work reflects a deep understanding of how insights from workplace design can inform and enhance other sectors, from healthcare to life sciences, creating environments that foster collaboration, adaptability, and human connection.

  + View abstract

  Macquarie Park Masterplan: Designing a healthy neighbourhood from first principles

  Abstract Copy

  Background: Macquarie Park in Sydney's north-west is growing fast. Anchored by a major university, a large hospital and a key rail interchange, the precinct faces pressure to deliver significantly higher residential density. Growth at this pace, without a deliberate counter-pressure towards community, tends to produce exactly that: density without belonging.
  
  Purpose: BaptistCare, a not-for-profit care organisation supporting 17,500 people across 75 locations in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, holds a 6.4-hectare landholding at the heart of this precinct. Currently low-scale aged care and retirement living, the site raised a sharper question: what does a genuinely healthy, inclusive and intergenerational neighbourhood look like when the organisation setting the brief optimises for wellbeing rather than return?
  
  Approach: BVN’s design process did not begin with yield or planning requirements. Rather, it began with a Place Strategy grounded in placemaking theory and evidence-based urban design. Six community place directions, developed through engagement with residents, staff and stakeholders, addressed access to light and views, green space, open space connected to housing, diverse amenity, built form, active movement and outdoor safety. These directions drove design decisions rather than merely confirming them. An Indigenous design framework, developed with First Nations consultants, shaped landscape, hydrology and public space. Kikkiya Creek was rewilded as a connected green corridor linking Macquarie University to Epping Road, informed by the eel creation story of the traditional custodians, the Wallumedegal people, who occupied and managed this country for many thousands of years. The completed masterplan proposes mixed-tenure, mixed-use development integrating aged care, retirement living, affordable housing, housing for vulnerable women, student accommodation, retail, a school and significant public open space, all within a traffic-calmed, pedestrian-focused street network.
  
  Results: The masterplan demonstrates that a values-driven brief, paired with rigorous community engagement and genuine First Nations collaboration, can reorient a major urban development towards health and social outcomes. The process also surfaced the difficulty of designing for an ageing population within a high-density growth context: balancing accessibility, amenity, safety and intergenerational activation requires spatial generosity that market-led development rarely delivers.
  
  Implications: Not-for-profit and mission-driven organisations are an underused vehicle for delivering genuinely healthy urban neighbourhoods. The Macquarie Park Masterplan offers a model: start with outcomes not minima, ground the place strategy in evidence and community voice, and treat intergenerational mixed-tenure living as the development's purpose, not a planning concession.
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Examine how evidence-based place strategies, grounded in community engagement and First Nations collaboration, can meaningfully shape urban form, landscape and public space to deliver healthier, more connected neighbourhoods.
  • Understand how urban masterplanning that prioritises health, wellbeing and community outcomes from the outset can deliver neighbourhoods that support belonging, inclusion and lasting social value.
  • Demonstrate how intergenerational, mixed-tenure living can be positioned as the central purpose of high-density development, requiring spatial generosity to balance ageing, accessibility, safety and everyday social interaction.

  16.25

  Nourishing neighbourhoods: An approach to designing healthy living together

  Darryl Chen, Partner, urban design sector lead, Hawkins\Brown, UK

  

  Darryl Chen

  Partner, urban design sector lead, Hawkins\Brown, UK

  + View abstract

  Nourishing neighbourhoods: An approach to designing healthy living together

  Abstract Copy

  Framework: “Nourishing neighbourhoods” builds on an interdisciplinary body of research demonstrating how urban environments influence physical and mental health, social cohesion, and overall wellbeing. Despite widespread efforts to define what makes a “healthy neighbourhood,” many frameworks offer clarity in terms of the components that make healthy cities (e.g. greenery, water, conviviality), while designers are left to use intuition to make decisions and foster healthy environments. New insights, shaped by advances in behavioural science, building performance research, and lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, provide the conceptual foundation for testing how neighbourhood form, amenities, and spatial experience can enable healthier lives.
  
  Application: Commissioned to inform the development of the next phases of Eddington in North West Cambridge, the research was conducted by Hawkins\Brown and Max Fordham in collaboration with the University of Cambridge Behaviour and Building Performance Group. It involved translating emerging scientific evidence on health-promoting environments into design principles and tools that could meaningfully support the masterplanning process. Working within an ambitious, sustainability-driven development context, the team examined how specific neighbourhood-scale interventions might shape resident behaviour and wellbeing, testing approaches through resident interviews, case study analysis, and interdisciplinary dialogue.
  
  Outcomes: The research confirms that designers benefit from structured, evidence-backed guidance that complements, rather than replaces, intuitive practice. The process revealed strengths in the design of Eddington Phase 1, including its strong public realm and sustainability ethos, while identifying gaps in capturing experiential qualities that influence daily health-related behaviours. A key finding is that clearly articulated health goals improve alignment across disciplines and enable more consistent design decisions. However, the integration of scientific insights into real-world design workflows remains challenging due to data ambiguity, competing priorities, and the complexity of translating behavioural research into spatial form.
  
  Implications: The project highlights the need for design methodologies that more directly connect scientific evidence with masterplanning practice. Next steps include refining the emerging tools, testing them with broader stakeholder groups, and developing metrics to evaluate health outcomes over time. More broadly, “Nourishing neighbourhoods” demonstrates how future urban development can better support societal wellbeing by embedding behavioural and health research into early design stages, ensuring neighbourhoods are intentionally crafted to nourish the lives of all residents.
  
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Understand how interdisciplinary health and behavioural research can inform neighbourhood design, moving beyond intuition-driven decision‑making toward evidence‑informed practice.
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of translating scientific insights into masterplanning tools, including how neighbourhood‑scale interventions influence resident behaviour, wellbeing, and design outcomes.
  • Identify challenges and opportunities in integrating health-focused research into real-world design workflows, and recognise how clearer health goals and improved methodologies can shape future urban development.

  16.45

  Panel discussion

  End of Healthy homes and neighbourhoods stream

• Smart cities and digital health

  Studio 1

  

  10.45 - 12.30

  Session 25

   - Data-driven design for health

  

  Chair: Tom Benson, Principal, head of the Urban Intelligence Lab; Research affiliate, MIT, UK

  

  Tom Benson

  Principal, head of the Urban Intelligence Lab; Research affiliate, MIT, UK

  Tom Benson is principal and head of the Urban Intelligence Lab, building spatial data science and GeoAI capabilities to understand how cities really function. He works with cities and institutions to harness spatial data from mobility patterns to environmental systems and inform strategy and decision-making. UIL innovates solutions that decode urban complexity and tackle challenges around infrastructure resilience, mobility equity, and climate adaptation across the Gulf, Global South, and Southeast Asia. He spent five years at MIT Senseable City Lab and holds a research affiliate position there, turning applied research on urban systems into practice at scale.

  10.45

  Designing living systems: Integrating health, carbon, and community outcomes at the district scale

  Elisabeth Montgomerie, Director of Climate & Sustainability, Introba UK, United Kingdom

  

  Elisabeth Montgomerie

  Director of Climate & Sustainability, Introba UK, United Kingdom

  Elisabeth Montgomerie is Director of Sustainability at Introba, with over 20 years’ experience delivering sustainability strategy across the built environment. Her work spans the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with a focus on integrating environmental, social and health outcomes into infrastructure and building design. A Chartered Engineer and Chartered Environmentalist, Elisabeth specialises in translating complex sustainability challenges into practical, measurable interventions at both project and organisational scale. She has led multidisciplinary teams on major programmes including NEOM, Nairobi Central Station and the UK Government Property Agency portfolio, embedding approaches to decarbonisation, wellbeing, social value and climate resilience. Elisabeth’s current work explores the intersection between sustainability and public health, with particular interest in how design can support healthier, more equitable urban environments. She is committed to advancing evidence-based approaches that align policy, design and delivery to create places that enable both people and planet to thrive.

  Steve Edge, Decarbonisation Lead, Associate Principal, Introba UK, United Kingdom

  

  Steve Edge

  Decarbonisation Lead, Associate Principal, Introba UK, United Kingdom

  Steve Edge is a senior sustainability and decarbonisation advisor specialising in strategic, portfolio-scale decision-making with 13 years’ experience supporting large, complex organisations to translate sustainability ambition into credible, investable and deliverable programmes. He combines board- and executive-facing advisory capability with deep technical expertise in energy systems, heat decarbonisation, electrical infrastructure, climate risk and estate-wide carbon management. This enables him to provide advice that is strategic, proportionate and grounded in delivery reality, rather than theoretical or compliance-led. Before joining Introba, Steve held a client-side Head of Sustainability role at a UK university, where he was accountable for strategy, governance, budgets and delivery across a diverse, operational estate. This experience gives him a strong understanding of how sustainability decisions are actually taken within accountable organisations, and how to support those decisions under scrutiny. He now advises clients across higher education, public sector and commercial real estate on moving from targets to sequenced, funded and risk-managed sustainability and decarbonisation programmes.

  + View abstract

  Designing living systems: Integrating health, carbon, and community outcomes at the district scale

  Abstract Copy

  Background: Cities face converging crises: climate change, public health inequities, and ageing infrastructure. Traditional building-centric approaches are insufficient to address systemic urban health challenges. Introba’s “Living Systems” approach reframes the built environment as dynamic, interconnected systems that integrate environmental, social, and technological performance.
  
  Purpose: This paper explores how integrated, data-driven design at the district scale can simultaneously deliver net-zero carbon outcomes, improve population health, and enhance community resilience. Especially, how these outcomes can be evaluated using a unified decision-making framework, particularly in the contexts with limited or incomplete data.
  
  Methods: Drawing on international project experience across North America, Europe, and Australasia, this research synthesises case studies where whole-systems design strategies have been applied. Methods include:
  
  • whole-life carbon modelling and performance analytics;
  • health and wellbeing metrics (indoor environmental quality, active design indicators);
  • scenario testing for district energy, mobility, and public realm interventions; and
  • post-occupancy and operational performance insights.
  
  These methods are integrated within a common analytical framework that allows different performance metrics to be evaluated concurrently, supporting prioritisation of interventions under uncertainty rather than isolated optimisation of individual outcomes.
  
  Results: Findings demonstrate that integrated district strategies can:
  
  • reduce operational and embodied carbon simultaneously while improving indoor and outdoor environmental quality;
  • enable active mobility and reduce reliance on high-emission transport systems;
  • enhance resilience to climate stressors (heat, flooding); and
  • deliver measurable social value through improved access to healthy spaces.
  
  Critically, projects that embed health metrics early in design outperform those where health is considered as an add-on. Our analysis will reveal that optimising for a single objective does not consistently lead to optimal multi-objective outcomes, underscoring the need for integrated evaluation.
  
  Implications: The paper proposes a replicable framework for cities, developers, and policymakers to embed health, carbon, and social outcomes into unified design processes. It highlights the need for cross-disciplinary collaboration and performance-based policy frameworks to accelerate adoption. Establishing consistent data inputs, comparable performance metrics, and decision criteria that can be applied across projects, even where data availability varies.

  Learning Objectives

  • Understand how “Living Systems” design integrates health, carbon, and resilience outcomes
  • Learn how digital analytics can support evidence-based healthy city design
  • Identify practical strategies for implementing district-scale healthy infrastructure

  11.05

  Uncovering the drivers of everyday activity through integrated urban data

  Ffion Carney, Senior Data Scientist, AtkinsRéalis, United Kingdom

  

  Ffion Carney

  Senior Data Scientist, AtkinsRéalis, United Kingdom

  Ffion Carney is a Senior Data Scientist in AtkinsRéalis’ Research & Innovation team, specialising in urban analytics, geospatial data and social research. Her work focuses on using data‑driven methods to understand inequalities, mobility patterns and environmental factors shaping everyday urban life, with the aim of supporting more equitable and resilient cities. She holds a PhD in Geographic Information Science from UCL, where her research explored how big data can reveal transport disadvantage, mobility behaviours and social exclusion among older adults.

  + View abstract

  Uncovering the drivers of everyday activity through integrated urban data

  Abstract Copy

  Creating healthier and more active urban environments requires a deeper understanding of the streets, parks and neighbourhoods that people interact with and move through every day. Yet the factors shaping everyday activity are multifaceted, spanning behavioural patterns, social context and the characteristics of the physical environment. Traditional data sources often struggle to reflect this complexity or capture the experiences of groups who are typically under‑represented in planning and health evidence. Integrating real‑world movement data with social insights and spatial indicators offers a powerful opportunity to reveal how people navigate urban spaces, where environments may support or constrain activity, and how neighbourhoods can be better designed to enable healthy, active lives.
  
  Using Salford as a case study, this research brings together three complementary sources of data to examine the drivers of everyday activity at neighbourhood scale: behaviourally rich movement patterns from Intelligent Health’s Beat the Street programme; social and perceptual insights gathered through participant surveys; and spatial datasets capturing the characteristics of the built and natural environment. Beat the Street tends to engage groups often under‑represented in traditional datasets, including residents of higher‑deprivation communities, children, ethnically diverse groups and people living with long‑term health conditions. This provides valuable insight into where environments may not yet be enabling participation as effectively as they could.
  
  Alongside behavioural and environmental data, the study draws on insights from Make Space for Girls and AtkinsRealis’ Child Friendly Urban Environments Framework, offering an enhanced lens on how marginalised groups use and experience streets, parks and public spaces. Bringing these strands together provides a deeper understanding of how environments support or limit everyday activity and highlights areas where design considerations or social interventions may be particularly beneficial.
  
  Early analytical outputs from the Salford case study demonstrate how combining these sources can reveal where environments may encourage or impede active travel, independent mobility or physical activity. The work points to opportunities for place‑based design considerations aligned with active design principles and wider healthy city objectives, and establishes a scalable and transferable analytical approach that can be applied in other cities to understand activity patterns and support evidence‑informed design decisions.

  Learning Objectives

  • Understand how integrating behavioural, social and built environment datasets can provide a more comprehensive picture of everyday physical activity patterns in urban areas.
  • Analyse the ways different groups use and experience neighbourhood environments, and how these experiences relate to activity levels.
  • Evaluate how spatial factors and environmental design influence real-world movement behaviours, and identify opportunities for place-based interventions that promote healthier, more active cities.

  11.25

  Making the case for civic data investment: An economic valuation of public health datasets

  Gary Leeming, Technical director, Civic Health Innovation Labs, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

  

  Gary Leeming

  Technical director, Civic Health Innovation Labs, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

  Gary Leeming is the deputy director for the Civic Health Innovation Labs, based at the University of Liverpool. His work focusses on three main areas of design-led approaches to health data engineering, machine learning and digital avatars for personal and population health, and civic / life sciences data governance and ethics. He leads technical development on projects including the Civic Data Cooperative, the Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre, Children GrowingUp In Liverpool (CGULL), the NHS Data Into Action programme, the Office for Life Sciences-funded Data Action Accelerator and the Civic Health-tech Innovation Zone, with an overall portfolio of over £30 million. Formerly, he was the chief technology officer at the Connected Health Cities programme, developing technology and infrastructure for Learning Health Systems and Trustworthy Research Environments, as well as investigating distributed ledger technologies for management of health data. Previously he was the director of informatics at the Manchester Academic Health Science Network working on digital innovation and health information exchanges, and CTO at NWEH where he led the design and use of routinely collected health data in clinical trials on the GSK Salford Lung Study and other projects.

  Jasmine Kendall, Consultant, Oxford Insights, UK

  

  Jasmine Kendall

  Consultant, Oxford Insights, UK

  Jasmine is a consultant at Oxford Insights, a UK-based consultancy that works with governments and international organisations to harness technology for the public good. She has advised governments in the UK and internationally on designing data-driven public services and evaluating the impact of public-sector interventions. Jasmine has a particular interest in the value of data, having led the mid-term evaluation of Administrative Data Research UK, including work to assess the value of linked administrative data. More recently, in partnership with Lateral Economics, she conducted an independent economic evaluation of the Liverpool Civic Data Cooperative's health data linkage programme, exploring its wider social and economic impact.

  + View abstract

  Making the case for civic data investment: An economic valuation of public health datasets

  Abstract Copy

  Background and purpose: Civic health data is often referred to as priceless or invaluable. However, developing civic health datasets requires real investment in areas such as public engagement, data governance, and data infrastructure. Quantifiable public benefit is needed to justify spending public money in these areas, but the field lacks clear, reusable methods of demonstrating the monetary benefits of shared civic data. Without such methods, civic data infrastructure may suffer from serious underinvestment and fail to realise its promised benefits for the public.
  
  Methods: In this article, we present different methodologies for measuring the monetary value of civic datasets enabled by the Liverpool City Region Civic Data Cooperative. We applied two market-based approaches and one cost-based approach to quantifying the value of these datasets, including developing a novel approach to valuing public health datasets according to market price in the real world data (RWD) industry.
  
  Results: The civic health datasets we assessed achieve high benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) across model types and despite conservative assumptions throughout. Using the novel approach based on the RWD industry, we calculate a BCR of 3.96 for CDC-enabled datasets. Another market-based approach using health data company valuations gave a BCR of 4.74 for CDC-enabled datasets. Alternatively, a cost-based approach provided a BCR of 8.87, meaning that for every £1 invested in the Liverpool City Region Civic Data Cooperative, from £3.96 to £8.87 of value was created from its civic health datasets alone.
  
  Implications: In presenting our findings, we seek to provide a case study of how a public-sector body can model the economic value of its work in a relatively small-scale, repeatable evaluation project. However, our work also points to several open questions requiring further research: How can we capture the broader societal, democratic, and innovation value that civic data enables? And, as AI accelerates demand for high-quality public data, are existing models of civic data ownership and stewardship still fit for purpose?
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Explain the practical challenge of funding civic health data infrastructure and why economic valuation is increasingly required to support investment decisions in smart cities and digital health.
  • Apply and distinguish between three reproducible methods for valuing civic health datasets—including market‑based and cost‑based approaches—using a real-world public sector case study.
  • Assess the strengths and limitations of market valuation for civic data, and identify implications for public benefit, data stewardship, and governance in AI‑enabled urban health systems.

  11.45

  Closing the assumption gap: Using behavioural evidence to strengthen healthy design in planning

  Joshua Dickerson, Director of place (urban lead), BWB Consulting / Deetu, United Kingdom

  

  Joshua Dickerson

  Director of place (urban lead), BWB Consulting / Deetu, United Kingdom

  Josh Dickerson is director of place and urban market lead at BWB Consulting and co-founder of Deetu. He pioneered Deetu’s digitally-led engagement approach, helping organisations make better decisions about regeneration and development using community insight and data. Josh’s background spans healthy placemaking consultancy, digital innovation and stakeholder engagement. He is known for championing evidence-led placemaking, embedding data into business cases, de-risking projects and ensuring interventions such as active travel and public realm investment deliver measurable outcomes. Josh is a chartered geographer, a board director of marketing, Nottingham & Nottinghamshire, and a member of the Institute of Place Management. He previously served on the inaugural National Infrastructure Commission Young Professionals Panel and was recognised as East Midlands Emerging Property Person of the Year.

  + View abstract

  Closing the assumption gap: Using behavioural evidence to strengthen healthy design in planning

  Abstract Copy

  Planning policy increasingly recognises the importance of the built environment in shaping health, wellbeing and active lifestyles. However, translating these ambitions into successful delivery remains a challenge. A key issue is the reliance on assumed patterns of behaviour, particularly around movement, access and use of space, which are rarely tested through robust, representative evidence. Traditional consultation often suffers from "participation inequality," missing the perspectives of seldom-heard groups who are often most impacted by poor health outcomes.
  
  This paper explores how digitally enabled, spatially precise engagement can strengthen planning decisions by providing insight into how communities experience and use places. By lowering barriers to participation, this approach captures a broader demographic cross-section, ensuring that design interventions are grounded in the lived reality of the whole community, not just the most vocal.
  
  The research draws on a series of UK case studies spanning regeneration, masterplanning and active travel. In South Yorkshire, over 4000 geo-located inputs and 12,000 interactions were used to identify barriers to walking and cycling. Findings show that micro-scale design factors, such as crossing design, perceived safety, and route directness, are often decisive in determining whether infrastructure is used.
  
  At Stocking Farm, Leicester, engagement data provided a detailed understanding of footfall patterns and accessibility constraints. Analysis of respondent locations and site topography showed that the original positioning of local amenities would limit use for a significant proportion of residents. This insight directly informed a revised masterplan, relocating key facilities to align with actual patterns of movement.
  
  At Trent Basin, Nottingham, community feedback demonstrated strong support for centralised off-street parking, prioritising people-friendly spaces over on-street provision. This evidence supported discussions with planning officers and enabled the adoption of a more sustainable design solution.
  
  In each case, this approach directly influenced planning decisions, design revisions and delivery outcomes.
  
  Across these examples, engagement moves beyond consultation towards a structured, data-led process that shapes design and delivery creating a stronger evidence base and increased confidence in outcomes.
  
  The paper identifies three key principles. First, engagement data must be spatially explicit and aligned with design and planning frameworks. Second, it must be integrated early and iteratively. Third, clear processes are needed to ensure that insights are translated into action.
  
  The findings demonstrate that enhancing traditional consultation with behavioural evidence can improve alignment between planning intent and lived experience, supporting delivery of healthier, more accessible and more responsive places.
  

  Learning Objectives

  • - Participants will learn to identify the "assumption gap" in traditional planning, where design intent lacks behavioural validation, and understand how this disconnect impacts the health and functionality of the built environment.
  • - Delegates will gain insights into how digitally enabled, spatially precise community data can be integrated into early-stage masterplanning and active travel schemes to improve accessibility and route effectiveness.
  • - Attendees will be able to apply three key principles, spatial alignment, early integration, and structured translation, to convert community insight into measurable planning and design outcomes.

  12.05

  Panel discussion

  12.30 - 13.45Video+Poster Gallery, workshop, lunch and networking

  + View gallery

  13.45 - 15.15

  Session 26

   - Mapping and modelling

  

  Chair: Audrey de Nazelle, Associate professor, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

  

  Audrey de Nazelle

  Associate professor, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

  Audrey de Nazelle is a senior lecturer at the Centre of Environmental Policy. She is co-chair of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) Policy Committee, and outgoing chair and founder of Imperial's Network of Excellence on Air Quality (NExAir). She is an expert in risk assessment and exposure science. Her research is at the intersection of environmental sciences, health behaviour, transportation, and urban planning. Her work aims at guiding decision makers towards health-promoting built environments and policies. It involves novel and holistic approaches to assessing behavioural, environmental and health impacts of urban plans and policies. Dr de Nazelle leads studies on transport and health and on societal engagement through digital technology. She is also a collaborator on the EPSRC-funded project Managing Air for Green Inner Cities (MAGIC), and on MRC-funded projects on active travel (METAHIT and TIGTHAT).

  13.45

  UpGreen: Urban greenery analysis for Copenhagen’s climate resilience: Case study

  Miloslav Kaláb, Lead consultant, ASITIS, Czech Republic

  

  Miloslav Kaláb

  Lead consultant, ASITIS, Czech Republic

  Miloslav Kaláb is a climate resilience consultant at ASITIS, working at the intersection of urban greenery, climate adaptation and data-driven planning. With a background in horticulture and experience in green infrastructure projects, he focuses on helping cities better understand how trees and green spaces contribute to climate resilience, liveability and long-term urban health. His work combines practical knowledge of vegetation with GIS, satellite data and climate analytics, translating complex environmental information into clear outputs that support strategic decision-making by municipalities. Miloslav is particularly interested in how urban greenery can be planned, monitored and managed as critical infrastructure for healthier and more resilient cities.

  + View abstract

  UpGreen: Urban greenery analysis for Copenhagen’s climate resilience: Case study

  Abstract Copy

  Copenhagen faces hotter summers, drier spells, and heavier rainstorms. Projections indicate average temperatures could rise over 3°C by end of century. Trees and parks help cool the city, absorb stormwater, and improve urban comfort. The 3-30-300 rule guides healthy green cities: three trees visible from home; 30 per cent tree canopy cover; and everyone within 300 metres of a green space. UpGreen provides a data-driven greenery audit of the entire city.
  
  UpGreen used recent aerial and satellite images with U-Net deep learning to map every tree crown larger than 30m², identifying over 280,000 trees across Copenhagen. For each tree, it calculated the Enhanced Vegetation Index over the growing season to assess productivity – how green and photosynthetically active each tree is. A composite stress index considered drought, heat exposure, and proximity to roads. Survival capacity combined productivity and stress: prospering, resilient, stable, vulnerable, or endangered. Cooling effect quantified shade and evapotranspiration in °C reduction. Carbon sequestration was estimated in tonnes CO₂.
  
  One-fifth (20 per cent) of Copenhagen's trees have below-average productivity; roughly half showed very low or no productivity. Only 0.48 per cent of trees (1300) face high/extreme stress, and these are concentrated in Bispebjerg Nordvest and Østerbro Nordhavn. Some 18,563 trees (6.6 per cent) are defined as vulnerable or endangered – with the highest shares (>10 per cent) in Østerbro, Indre By, and Vesterbro-Kongens Enghave, which also have the lowest tree densities. These central districts provide minimal cooling (0.03-0.04°C) versus Amager Vest's 0.19°C, storing 4500 tonnes of CO₂ citywide.
  
  UpGreen identifies priority neighbourhoods for tree renewal, maintenance, and new planting of drought-tolerant species. It guides water management, species selection, and green infrastructure like pocket parks where space is tight. Copenhagen now has an evidence baseline to achieve 3-30-300 targets, boost ecosystem services, and prepare urban forests for climate change. The same methodology used in Copenhagen can be applied across the whole of Europe.

  Learning Objectives

  • How satellite tree audits quantify productivity, stress and survival to target greening
  • Role of EO data in mapping cooling/carbon services and 3-30-300 equity.
  • Scaling data-driven urban forestry across Europe for resilience and health.

  14.05

  UrbanCare: Structuring multi-scale pedestrian health cases for evidence-based public space development

  Alvaro Valera Sosa, Director and R&D lead, BHL Building Health Lab UG, Germany

  

  Alvaro Valera Sosa

  Director and R&D lead, BHL Building Health Lab UG, Germany

  Alvaro Valera Sosa is director and R&D lead at Building Health Lab (BHL), a Berlin-based practice advancing evidence-based approaches to urban health and sustainable city design. His work integrates spatial analysis, public health, and climate-responsive strategies to address walkability constraints, stormwater management, urban heat, and biodiversity loss. He is the creator and lead developer of the UrbanCare framework and its digital applications, a practical workflow for assessing and designing healthier urban environments, currently implemented across multiple European contexts through the Erasmus+-funded U-CARE project. His work focuses on translating research into actionable planning and design solutions, with particular attention to vulnerable urban populations. Alvaro is senior editor at Cities & Health and teaches in the Urban Management Program at TU Berlin, contributing to academic research, education, and international knowledge exchange on healthy city development.

  + View abstract

  UrbanCare: Structuring multi-scale pedestrian health cases for evidence-based public space development

  Abstract Copy

  Urban health, climate resilience, and local economic performance are deeply shaped by the quality of public space, yet planning and design processes continue to struggle to address these sustainability pillars in an integrated way. Current approaches rely on coarse city-level datasets, fragmented institutional responsibilities, and segregated design practices that fail to capture the cumulative health risks, climate stressors, and resulting economic costs generated at the street and neighbourhood levels. This paper argues that four upstream degradation mechanisms are foundational in producing these burdens: walkability constraints; surface runoff; urban heat; and biotope loss. While their impacts are well documented across the sustainability literature, they are rarely assessed and addressed as interrelated conditions within a unified project cycle.
  
  To address this gap, the paper introduces "pedestrian health" as a composite outcome of urban health. Pedestrian health is defined as the condition produced by the combined effects of the four degradation mechanisms on people moving through urban environments, particularly slower-paced and vulnerable groups at the street level. The paper further proposes spatial Inequity as the analytical approach for identifying where these burdens accumulate and how they are unevenly distributed across pedestrian environments, informing urban projects across multiple scales.
  
  Building on this conceptual grounding, the paper presents UrbanCare as an operational framework for structuring multi-scale pedestrian health cases through three integrated phases: spatial inequity research (SIR); sustainable pedestrian planning (SPP); and integrated pedestrian design (IPD). These phases address the primary implementation barriers identified in current practice: the data quality gap; governance misalignment; and design segregation. UrbanCare enables the use of input, outcome, and output indicators within a digital platform environment that integrates data collection, analysis, and visualisation to support co-ordinated decision-making across scales, stakeholders, and project phases.
  
  The framework has been validated through the structuring of four European urban cases developed within the Erasmus+ U-CARE project, covering distinct climatic and institutional contexts in Gothenburg, Berlin, Florence, and Nicosia. These cases demonstrate how UrbanCare organises research, planning, and design evidence within a coherent methodology, and supports the integrated mitigation of pedestrian risk.
  
  This paper presents UrbanCare as a transferable framework for cities seeking to align public space intervention with health equity, climate adaptation, and evidence-based urban development.

  Learning Objectives

  • Recognize Pedestrian Health and Spatial Inequity as an analytical lens for assessing cumulative risks and opportunity costs by identifying uneven environmental burdens across urban public spaces, including streets.
  • Understand how walkability constraints, surface runoff, urban heat, and biotope loss function as interconnected upstream mechanisms that shape ecosystem services and drive health, climate, and economic outcomes.
  • Learn how the UrbanCare framework structures urban health cases through research, planning, and design phases (SIR, SPP, IPD) to address climate and health challenges at the neighborhood level and inform evidence-based city-level planning.

  14.25

  A pioneering approach to measure neighbourhood prosperity

  Will Temple, Senior associate director, PRD, United Kingdom

  

  Will Temple

  Senior associate director, PRD, United Kingdom

  Will is a senior associate director at place and economy consultancy PRD, specialising in supporting the public sector to respond to social and economic changes. Will has worked on a range of high-profile strategies, visions, and plans focused on making places more prosperous, resilient, and inclusive. Will’s approach brings together robust evidence insights, with a deep understanding of local government to develop deliverable and impactful strategies. At the heart of this approach is ensuring that evidence more accurately captures lived experience, while being grounded in a client's ability to act. Will is experienced at using theory of change to create better policies and strategies. He has recently used theory of change approaches to produce an outcomes framework Hackney Council’s Economy Regeneration and New Homes service division, and develop the council’s new Economic Plan. Last year, Will led research to support the work of Waltham Forest’s independent Affordable Housing Commission. This combined new quantitative data with resident insight to inform a root and branch review of the council’s approach to housing and development and was subsequently retained to deliver the Council’s housing strategy. Responding to the recommendations of the Commission, the strategy positioned a good home being the a foundation for a happy and healthy life. Centred on a set of long-term outcomes, the strategy sought to take bold action to address both the supply-side root causes of housing unaffordability, as well as the secondary health-related impacts of the housing crisis.

  Paul Honeyben, Strategy director: financial resilience and growth, London Councils, United Kingdom

  

  Paul Honeyben

  Strategy director: financial resilience and growth, London Councils, United Kingdom

  Paul is a strategy director at London Councils, leading work on borough financial resilience and growth. He oversees policy and strategy relating to local government finance, the economy, skills, and infrastructure. He has been a member of the corporate management team since 2020, having held a range of roles since joining London Councils in 2012. His work has included developing the London business rates pool, which piloted greater retention of growth and generated £600m of additional funding between 2018 and 2020. He co-ordinated London Councils’ response to the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, helping ensure councils were compensated for the £3bn impact. In 2025, he led London Councils response to the Fair Funding Review, successfully lobbying for housing costs to be fully recognised within the Index of Multiple Deprivation. He oversaw London Councils work to co-produce the 2025 London Growth Plan and the 2026 London Infrastructure Framework with the GLA. Paul sits on the London Growth Mission Delivery Group and is a member of the Data for London Board. Prior to joining London Councils, Paul spent four years at the Audit Commission delivering national value-for-money studies. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Management.

  + View abstract

  A pioneering approach to measure neighbourhood prosperity

  Abstract Copy

  The London CPI offers new insight into the prosperity of London's places. Developed by UCL's Institute for Global Prosperity, London Councils, and PRD, it uses ward-level data to identify the neighbourhoods where quality of life is highest and where residents face the greatest barriers to prosperity. The theoretical perspective is that prosperity, not just deprivation, is a social determinant of health, drawing on the beyond-GDP and capabilities literature. The CPI brings together a citizen-derived index to identify where the conditions for health and prosperity exist: pinpointing where communities can access the building blocks for a good life.
  
  Relationship to existing perspectives:
  
  Most indices rely on expert-selected indicators and assume relevance across all places. The CPI's five domains were developed through extensive citizen-science research with communities across London and measure:
  
  • foundations of prosperity;
  • opportunities and aspirations;
  • power, voice and influence;
  • belonging, connections and leisure; and
  • health and healthy environments.
  
  The London CPI scales this by harnessing 'Understanding Society' – the UK's largest longitudinal household panel survey – to map each domain across the city's 679 wards.
  
  Unlike the Indices of Multiple Deprivation, which identifies need, the CPI assesses the relationships between material and non-material drivers of prosperity – providing insight into how financial security, health, and social belonging interact.
  
  It also provides an absolute prosperity measure, enabling it to track changes over time. Because it draws on Understanding Society's annually released data, the CPI offers a baseline to assess prosperity changes without waiting a decade for new Census releases.
  
  Contribution: The CPI has multiple applications and the potential to scale nationally. It can be used to:
  
  • Deliver social impact: The CPI gives public, private, and civil society stakeholders a shared baseline to identify how social value initiatives can tap into community strengths and meet genuine local need – moving beyond top-down assumptions about what communities require.
  • Support public service reform: Neighbourhood health is a key principle of the NHS's Ten-Year Health Plan. The CPI complements existing local health data by providing a robust baseline on perceived prosperity – giving health services, local government, and communities the evidence to collaborate on tackling the social determinants of health.
  • Understand area change: There is a lack of consistent approaches to measuring how changes in the built environment affect communities' quality of life. The CPI fills this gap by providing a baseline that bridges physical built environment outputs with prosperity outcomes in neighbouring communities.
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Understanding the link between prosperity and health
  • Tracking neighbourhood prosperity over time to monitor the impact of interventions
  • Developing a scalable citizen-derived measure of deprivation

  14.45

  Panel discussion

  15.15 - 15.45Video+Poster Gallery, coffee and networking

  + View gallery

  15.45 - 17.00

  Session 27

   - AI-driven planning for urban health

  

  Chair: Andy Miah, Chair of science communication and future media, University of Salford, UK

  

  Andy Miah

  Chair of science communication and future media, University of Salford, UK

  Professor Andy Miah, PhD is chair of science communication and future media at the University of Salford, where he is also the academic champion for the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Professor Miah also provides research leadership for the Innovate UK funded MediaCity Immersive Technologies Innovation Hub. His research investigates the ethical, legal, social and cultural questions concerning technological change and his publications draw on ideas from science, technology, art, and media culture. Author of ten books and more than 200 academic articles, Professor Miah has been at the forefront of debates about how humanity is moving beyond conventional evolutionary processes and towards evolution by technology. His research on the Olympic Games has involved advising cities for over 25 years on their regeneration goals and how to integrate healthy living into mega-events. He holds advisory roles for the UK Government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the World Technology Games, the Global Esports Federation, and the British Esports Federation. His recent works have focused on artificial intelligence, esports, digital health, and the metaverse. He regularly interviews for a range of major media companies and has appeared in more than 300 outlets, including Audible, Fortune, Vogue, BBC, and The Conversation.

  15.45

  Local aspirations: Generating common visions and solutions for urban health through structured decision-making

  Audrey de Nazelle, Associate professor, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

  

  Audrey de Nazelle

  Associate professor, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

  Audrey de Nazelle is a senior lecturer at the Centre of Environmental Policy. She is co-chair of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) Policy Committee, and outgoing chair and founder of Imperial's Network of Excellence on Air Quality (NExAir). She is an expert in risk assessment and exposure science. Her research is at the intersection of environmental sciences, health behaviour, transportation, and urban planning. Her work aims at guiding decision makers towards health-promoting built environments and policies. It involves novel and holistic approaches to assessing behavioural, environmental and health impacts of urban plans and policies. Dr de Nazelle leads studies on transport and health and on societal engagement through digital technology. She is also a collaborator on the EPSRC-funded project Managing Air for Green Inner Cities (MAGIC), and on MRC-funded projects on active travel (METAHIT and TIGTHAT).

  + View abstract

  Local aspirations: Generating common visions and solutions for urban health through structured decision-making

  Abstract Copy

  Urban environments influence the physical and mental wellbeing of their populations. While the World Health Organization recommends health and health equity should be core to urban governance, health is missing in narratives that shape urban development in the UK. Urban health is a complex system, with interconnected challenges and stakeholders, uncertainties and inequities. Particularly challenging is ensuring that meaningful, impactful actions that avoid unintended consequences when such varied stakeholders and processes are at play. The boom in digital technologies, including AI, creates opportunities for innovative approaches to transitions towards healthy, equitable and sustainable neighbourhoods. We propose structured decision-making as a tool for systems thinking insights, allowing understanding of areas of alignment between stakeholders’ objectives and the barriers and opportunities in trying to address them. The AI4Urban-Health project applied structured decision-making to identify local needs and aspirations, and generate ideas on how AI could help promote healthy communities.
  
  We designed and undertook two place-based structured decision-making workshops in Bradford and London, UK, in January-February 2026. A diverse array of stakeholders (n=43) working in areas related to urban health and its determinants first collaboratively created an objectives hierarchy to demonstrate where there was alignment or discord in what they were trying to achieve. With their fundamental objectives in mind, they then generated potential solutions and discussed barriers and opportunities to action. Stakeholders were asked to think big and ambitious (“blue sky”) rather than focus on their perceptions of what AI could do.
  
  Health was shown to be unanimously fundamental to their objectives, with most stakeholders also evoking with societal wellbeing, equity, climate, and environmental sustainability. The most prominent types of solutions identified related to improving decision-making and planning processes, such as shared data systems, community partnership and developing shared narratives. Other salient solutions revolved around better built environment practices, with a focus on transport and green space. Common barriers identified related also to processes, especially around societal engagement and public perceptions.
  
  The structured decision-making workshops revealed strong agreements on general visions stakeholders hold for their local communities, and a clear need to focus on the 'how' rather than the 'what to implement' to reach common goals. As part of the AI4Urban-Health network, these insights will next be shared with AI specialists who will be challenged with producing AI solutions to improve processes and address other barriers and opportunities highlighted by local stakeholders.
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Understanding how technological innovation can be informed by local needs and aspirations
  • Understanding areas of alignment between stakeholder's objectives and the barriers and opportunities in trying to address them
  • Identifying potential solutions and opportunities areas that align with stakeholder objectives

  16.10

  Breakdown or breakthrough? AI, environmental exposure, and health equity in African cities

  Abigail Oppong, Subject Matter Expert, Data Visualization, AI, and Emerging Technologies, UrbanHealth 360, Ghana

  

  Abigail Oppong

  Subject Matter Expert, Data Visualization, AI, and Emerging Technologies, UrbanHealth 360, Ghana

  Abigail Oppong is a young, distinguished professional who is celebrated for advancing AI ethics, particularly in addressing biases in NLP and health systems. She was honored as one of the 100 women in AI ethics by Women in AI Ethics in 2023. Her passion for science, technology, and nature drives her to explore how new developments can advance humanity. Abigail’s work includes evaluating biases in NLP and health systems and enhancing fairness in AI technologies, especially for underserved communities. She has contributed significantly to projects through collaborations, focusing on creating responsible AI systems that meet local and regional ethical standards. Abigail’s professional journey includes a stint as a Research Consultant working with Academia, Industry, and NGOs. She has spoken at international conferences published in prestigious forums like CHI and EMNLP and spoken as a panelist at the Royal Society, where she advocates for the need to build more inclusive health technologies. She has been part of an engagement with an expert group on quantum science at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, where she champions the need for more inclusion in the discovery of science. community-based solutions. Her data science, machine learning, and AI ethics skills make her pivotal in shaping AI governance and ethical standards, particularly in Africa. Abigail’s interdisciplinary approach and previous experience in the nonprofit sector enrich her contributions to AI ethics, emphasizing the importance of localization, trust, culture, and representation in technological development. During her leisure time, she likes giving back to the community. She has co-founded several initiatives to promote Unity, good health, and community development. Her passion for community development influenced her research journey to investigate how local organizations can be empowered in the age of emerging technologies.

  Yonette Thomas, Founder and CEO / Visiting associate professor, Urban Health 360, United States

  

  Yonette Thomas

  Founder and CEO / Visiting associate professor, Urban Health 360, United States

  Dr Thomas is the founder and CEO of UrbanHealth360, an INGO focused on bridging the divide between the science of urbanisation, health, and wellbeing and the involvement and activities of local communities. In addition to leading UrbanHealth360, Dr Thomas is the founder and chief strategist of Strategic Transitions LLC, an organisation established to provide professional development and strategic leadership training to professionals and academics at every level. She is currently a visiting associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Justice at the Rutgers University School of Public Health. She was a dean’s senior scholar at the University of Memphis School of Public Health. She was a founding board member and inaugural executive director of the International Society for Urban Health, science advisor for urban health to the New York Academy of Medicine, vice-president for research compliance at Howard University, and the chief of Epidemiology at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health. She held academic positions in the Department of Public Health, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences and the School of Pharmacy at Howard University. She is a member of the boards of US-based Women’s Economic Imperative (WEI) and the Kenya-based LVCT Health. Her scholarly publications range in focus from the social epidemiology of drug abuse to urbanisation and health and the intersection of environment, social context, and health dynamics.

  + View abstract

  Breakdown or breakthrough? AI, environmental exposure, and health equity in African cities

  Abstract Copy

  This panel will focus on the relationship between environmental exposure, urban inequality, and health decision-making. The main question is how AI can be used to better understand and address environmental health risks in African cities, where exposure, vulnerability, and access to support are often unequally distributed. Currently, there appears to be a breakdown in collaborative action between decision makers and communities. The use of AI tools offers a breakthrough opportunity to engage, inform, and guide collaborative community action.
  
  In many African cities, health outcomes are shaped not only by access to health services but also by housing quality, sanitation, transportation systems, food environments, flooding, heat, air and water pollution, and extractive or industrial activity. The focus continues to be on access rather than local development, community awareness, and access to information. Yet many AI tools and analytic assumptions used in urban health continue to rely on datasets, indicators, and modelling logics developed in very different contexts. This raises a critical question: are current AI systems helping African cities make better decisions, or are they reproducing forms of invisibility by failing to capture the realities of underrepresented urban populations? This concern aligns with the Healthy City Design Congress’s broader emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration across research, planning, design, development, and public health. Rather than focusing on a single health outcome, this panel will take a broader view of urban health in African cities. It will examine how AI might support more context-sensitive responses to child and maternal health risks, respiratory illness, nutrition, water-related disease, heat stress, and other conditions shaped by everyday urban environments. It will also ask what kinds of data are missing, which exposures are poorly measured, and how health indicators can be interpreted more carefully within local ecological and social conditions.
  
  Bringing together perspectives from AI, urban design, environmental health, and public health, the panel will explore what it would take to move from technical prediction to equitable action. The goal is not simply to promote more data-driven systems but to ask how such systems can become more grounded, just, and useful for healthier-city planning. In doing so, the session contributes a needed African urban perspective to current debates on healthy city design, while opening a practical discussion on how AI can support fairer and more responsive health decision-making in cities under pressure.
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Understand how environmental exposure and urban inequality interact to influence health outcomes
  • Explore how AI can support decision-making in healthy African city planning and urban public health.
  • Identify key risks and limitations of using AI in unequal urban settings

  16.35

  Panel discussion

  End of Smart cities and digital health stream

• Mixed-used and working environments

  Studio 1 & 2

  10.45 - 12.30

  Session 28

   - Sustainable places for living and working

  

  Chair: Rosie Cade, Founder, Rising Tide, UK

  

  Rosie Cade

  Founder, Rising Tide, UK

  Rosie is a respected voice in built environment transformation, with 20+ years’ experience spanning housing, development, and finance. Building on senior roles at global advisory firms and regeneration specialists, she established Rising Tide as a pan-European strategic advisory practice for pioneers in the built environment navigating change, supporting founders and management teams to reshape strategy, clarify their positioning, unlock investment and scale impact. Rising Tide’s partners are leading networks, funders and businesses, including C40 Cities, Common Projects, Built by Nature, the Circular Buildings Coalition, Dark Matter Labs, European CLT Network, and Wood Knowledge Wales.

  10.45

  Material health benefits: Advancing health through bio-based design in the TimberHaus project

  Rebecca Sawcer, Senior associate, Waugh Thistleton, United Kingdom

  

  Rebecca Sawcer

  Senior associate, Waugh Thistleton, United Kingdom

  Rebecca Sawcer is an associate at Waugh Thistleton Architects and an experienced project leader specialising in sustainable timber design, technical co-ordination and project delivery. She leads WTA’s research on Timberhaus, a four-year EU Horizon project exploring how timber construction can support regenerative design, circularity, health and wellbeing. Rebecca combines research insight with practical delivery experience across commercial, residential and education projects and the EU-funded Build in Wood programme. At the conference, she will present WTA’s Timberhaus research into the role of timber in supporting health, wellbeing and flourishing communities.

  + View abstract

  Material health benefits: Advancing health through bio-based design in the TimberHaus project

  Abstract Copy

  As cities respond to the dual pressures of climate transition and rising public health challenges, attention is shifting towards the role of the built environment in shaping long-term wellbeing. The TimberHaus project, a Horizon Europe research programme, investigates whether timber-rich internal environments can measurably influence human health, with a particular focus on stress regulation, recovery, and long-term allostatic load.
  
  Drawing on a comprehensive review of 126 academic, policy, and industry sources, the project synthesises current evidence across physical, psychological, and physiological domains. It situates timber and bio-based materials within a broader paradigm shift in both public health and urban design – one that understands health not merely as the absence of illness but as the conditions that support long-term human flourishing. This perspective strongly aligns with the conference’s themes of healthy city design and planning, healthy homes and neighbourhoods, and population and neighbourhood health.
  
  Given that people spend approximately 90 per cent of their time indoors, the qualities of internal environments – light, air, acoustics, temperature, and material surfaces – play a critical role in shaping health outcomes. Timber, experienced visually, tactually, acoustically, and even olfactorily, contributes to multisensory environments that are increasingly associated with improved stress recovery, cognitive function, and emotional wellbeing. The TimberHaus findings suggest that bio-based materials can support healthier indoor conditions while also advancing sustainability goals, reinforcing connections between sustainable infrastructure and public health.
  
  The project also identifies key evidence gaps, particularly the need for more longitudinal and interdisciplinary research to better understand causal relationships and long-term impacts. Addressing these gaps is essential to embedding health considerations more firmly within planning, design, and regulatory frameworks.
  
  In response, TimberHaus proposes a set of recommendations and calls to action. For city planners, this includes integrating health and wellbeing metrics into design codes and procurement processes. For regulators, there is a need to expand building standards to account for material health impacts alongside energy and carbon performance. For public health stakeholders, the findings highlight the importance of engaging with the built environment as a preventive health system, including through cross-sector collaboration and the use of post-occupancy evaluation and monitoring tools.
  
  By reframing material choice as a determinant of health, TimberHaus contributes to an emerging agenda in which bio-based design supports not only low-carbon cities but also healthier, more resilient urban populations.

  Learning Objectives

  • Interpret emerging evidence on biobased materials and health within urban contexts
  • Critically assess the potential role of biobased materials in population health and sustainable infrastructure
  • Identify research gaps and policy implications for advancing healthy city agendas

  11.05

  Workplace design for human flourishing: Evidence from a purpose-built, health-promoting corporate headquarters in Thailand

  Linda Tomasso, Research Associate, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, United States

  

  Linda Tomasso

  Research Associate, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, United States

  Dr. Linda Powers Tomasso brings deep disciplinary expertise and a passion to promote nature access, biodiversity conservation, and human health promotion at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Her professional roles have spanned policymaker, practitioner, university instructor, published researcher, and consultant. She has spent a dozen years at Harvard, as a project manager at Harvard School of Public Health’s Center for Health and the Global Environment; as an independent consultant for environmental and non-profit clients; and is subcommittee head of the national Nature and Health Alliance, advancing nature and human health. Most recently, she has worked across Harvard schools to co-created tools that offer nature-based solutions for climate mitigation in communities impacted by urban heat islands and change equity of nature access. Her mixed-methods approach to exposure assessment brings qualitative insights into a discipline typically determined by quantitative factors to learn what motivates nature-seeking behavior, what barriers exist to nature engagement, and how these factors affect equity of nature access and climate adaptation. An MS from Georgetown, MA from Harvard in Environmental Management, and an early career with the U.S. State Dept shaped Linda’s research lens toward policy translation. Her favorite places to be in nature are the snowy woods and deep under water.

  Dorota Weziak-Bialowolska, Professor, Kozminski University, Poland

  

  Dorota Weziak-Bialowolska

  Professor, Kozminski University, Poland

  Dorota Weziak-Bialowolska is a professor at the Centre for Evaluation and Analysis of Public Policies, Faculty of Philosophy. She received her master’s degree in Quantitative Methods (2003), her doctoral degree in Economics (2008) and post-doctoral degree (habilitation) in Sociology (2016). Her research interests are in methodology, including impact assessment and evaluation as well as psychometrics, composite scales, and indicators. Her recent focus is on positive health and human flourishing. From 2017 to 2021, she was a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. From 2011 to 2017, she worked for the European Commission Joint Research Centre (in Italy) as a post-doctoral researcher and a research fellow. Between 2010 and 2012, she was appointed an assistant professor at the Educational Research Institute (in Poland). Between 2003 and 2015, she held an academic appointment at the Warsaw School of Economics, as an assistant professor as well as research and teaching assistant. In her career, she has had an opportunity to work with policymakers, international organisations (UN, OECD, WIPO), European Commission agencies (four European Commission Directorates General), foundations (European Cultural Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), and non-profit international organisations (ENCATC; Sustainable Society Foundation) on multiple interdisciplinary projects. She also served as a scientific advisor for the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) in ‘the Quality of life in major European cities’ project. To date, she has published more than 90 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 15 book chapters, and two books.

  + View abstract

  Workplace design for human flourishing: Evidence from a purpose-built, health-promoting corporate headquarters in Thailand

  Abstract Copy

  This study examines how physical workspace transitions to a purpose-built, health-promoting, employee-centric corporate headquarters alongside the emergent expectations of workplace flexibility affect employee wellbeing, work engagement, self-perceived productivity, and satisfaction with indoor environmental quality conditions. The study is situated in Thailand, a country with unique climate challenges, including high temperatures, humidity, and seasonal air pollution, all of which place additional demands on IEQ systems. Evidence from such contexts remains limited.
  
  Utilising a mixed-methods before-and-after longitudinal design, we assess workplace outcomes from three waves of data collection within a large corporate organisation in Bangkok, Thailand. Our study spans pre-pandemic office work across eight dispersed worksites (2019), remote work-from-home during Covid-19 (2021), and post-pandemic hybrid work phase (2023) following employee relocation to a newly constructed campus headquarters. This consolidated, state-of-the-art corporate campus was intentionally designed with biophilic and employee-centric elements to promote health and wellbeing, physical activity, and work team collaboration, thus creating a rare opportunity to observe outcomes resulting from a decisive transition to a purpose-built, health-oriented corporate environment.
  
  Office relocation was associated with substantial improvements in employee satisfaction with all examined IEQ domains, with the largest gains observed for indoor air quality (β =1.25 (1.13, 1.37), p < 0.001), views (β = 0.85 (0.743; 0.955), p < 0.001), and noise (β = 0.75 (0.653; 0.856), p < 0.001). Higher satisfaction with IEQ was consistently linked to better employee wellbeing and, to a lesser extent, to improved concentration, worker engagement, and perceived productivity, with noise control emerging as the most robust predictor across outcomes. However, extended commuting times to the new location tempered some of the positive impacts, with many employees expressing reluctance to return on-site full-time. Increased commuting burden emerged as a critical contextual factor, with over 63 per cent of employees experiencing longer commutes that offset some wellbeing and sleep-related benefits. Qualitative findings underscored the importance of hybrid work in fostering autonomy, trust, and community, while also revealing nuanced tensions between flexibility and managerial oversight.
  
  Study outcomes provide insights into the complex interplay between built environment and employee flourishing. Our findings highlight the need for holistic workplace strategies that integrate thoughtful design, location, and flexibility to support employee flourishing, a key performance indicator of the 21st-century work environment. While health-promoting building design can enhance employee experience, its real-world impact depends on alignment between building quality, commuting, work organisation, and employee expectations.
  

  Learning Objectives

  • Employee well-being as a key performance indicator of the building environment
  • Investments in healthy buildings are part of a long-term human capital strategy
  • Modern hybrid work environments require alignment between health-promoting building design, commuting burdens, organizational support, and employee expectations

  11.25

  Transforming the health of city life through the design and build of an urban farming network: Lessons from operating a network of 100+ farms growing healthy and sustainable food in city building

  Patrick Dumas, Founder and CEO, Square Mile Farms, United Kingdom

  

  Patrick Dumas

  Founder and CEO, Square Mile Farms, United Kingdom

  Patrick is the founder and CEO of Square Mile Farms, a pioneering urban farming company that works with leading employers and property managers to create healthier, happier and more sustainable places to live and work. Under his leadership, Square Mile Farms has grown rapidly, won multiple industry awards, and helped redefine occupier experience in commercial buildings. Patrick is a regular speaker on workplace design, wellbeing and sustainability and his work has been featured by the BBC, the Times, the Telegraph and the FT. Previously, Patrick was a partner at EY, advising executives and governments on business strategy and implementation. His experience includes COO of EY Global Ventures and delivering major international transformation programmes, developing commercial strategies for advanced technology platforms and overseeing large consulting sales and delivery functions.

  + View abstract

  Transforming the health of city life through the design and build of an urban farming network: Lessons from operating a network of 100+ farms growing healthy and sustainable food in city building

  Abstract Copy

  This presentation examines how Square Mile Farms is transforming city life through the design, build, and operation of a distributed urban farming network embedded in commercial buildings across the UK. Drawing on the experience of operating more than 100 farms in partnership with major corporates, facilities managers, and landlords, it explores how food production can be reimagined as critical urban infrastructure – delivering not only fresh, healthy produce but also tangible, measurable environmental and social value.
  
  A central learning is that proximity fundamentally changes behaviour. Locating farms inside workplaces and shared spaces reconnects individuals with food in a way that traditional supply chains cannot. This visibility drives engagement, increases awareness of nutrition and sustainability, and fosters stronger community connections within buildings. The presentation highlights that designing for interaction, not just production, is key to achieving lasting impact.
  
  Operational experience at scale has also revealed the importance of standardisation balanced with flexibility. While each site must respond to the specific constraints of a building and its users, a repeatable model combining modular hydroponic systems, data-driven growing protocols, and a “Farming-as-a-Service” delivery model enables consistency, efficiency, and scalability across a diverse portfolio. The lesson is that successful urban infrastructure must function as a network, not a collection of isolated assets.
  
  Another key insight relates to stakeholder alignment. Embedding farms in commercial real estate requires clear value creation for all parties: enhancing ESG performance for landlords, supporting employee wellbeing and retention for occupiers, and delivering tangible sustainability outcomes. The presentation demonstrates that urban farming succeeds when it is positioned not as an amenity but as a strategic asset integrated into building design, operations, and experience.
  
  The environmental and nutritional performance of the network further reinforces its viability. Significant reductions in water, land use, and emissions, combined with improved nutrient density, show that hyper-local production can outperform conventional systems. However, a critical learning is that impact is maximised when these outcomes are visible, measurable and communicated effectively to users.
  
  Ultimately, the presentation argues that transforming city life requires a shift from centralised, invisible food systems to decentralised, participatory networks. By integrating farming into the fabric of buildings and aligning commercial, environmental, and human outcomes, urban farming can become a catalyst for healthier, more sustainable, and more connected cities.

  Learning Objectives

  • Share learnings about how growing fresh, healthy and sustainable food as a network or farms across a city can deliver significant social value.
  • Share insights about a practical real world application for hydroponics farming that can fundamentally transform the design of cities for good.
  • To answer questions of the audience on the practical applications and the observed and measured benefits of urban farming as a transformative way to think about urban design.

  11.45

  Designing healthy working environments through circular principles: A case study approach

  Shreya Aneja, Sustainability specialist, White Arkitetker, United Kingdom

  

  Shreya Aneja

  Sustainability specialist, White Arkitetker, United Kingdom

  Shreya Aneja is an environmental designer and sustainability researcher at White Arkitekter, specialising in building physics, circular design, net zero pathways, whole life carbon, and regenerative design. Her work spans the full project lifecycle — from early-stage sustainability strategy through to delivery — translating climate ambitions into practical, evidence-based design decisions, with a particular focus on the relationship between circular material strategies and occupant health outcomes across office and healthcare environments. Her practice spans office, healthcare and urban design, including active involvement in the new Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff — one of the most ambitious sustainable healthcare projects in the UK — where her work encompasses holistic sustainability measurement, clinical design integration, and pilot testing as part of the current UKNZCBS. Beyond practice, Shreya contributes to the wider industry as a researcher, speaker, and co-author of sector frameworks, with presentations at international conferences including PLEA 2024 and CATE 2023 and being an active member of the white research lab at White Arkitekter.

  + View abstract

  Designing healthy working environments through circular principles: A case study approach

  Abstract Copy

  The physical working environment exerts a measurable influence on occupant health, productivity, and wellbeing, yet the design strategies that deliver these outcomes, particularly within sustainability constraints, remain underexplored. The central hypothesis of this paper is that circular design strategies, applied with people-centred intent, can contribute as significantly to occupant health and wellbeing as any dedicated wellness specification, and can do so at lower environmental and financial cost than new-build alternatives. In an era of mounting pressure on ageing commercial stock and growing awareness of work-related health and wellbeing, this proposition carries direct relevance for architects, employers, and workplace policymakers.
  
  This paper presents an original comparative post-occupancy study conducted across two office buildings designed and occupied by White Arkitekter: the London office at Farringdon, a circular retrofit of a 1960s concrete-framed building completed in 2023, and Magasin X in Sweden, a large, LEED Platinum-certified, mass timber office building. The two cases share overlapping circular and biophilic design principles but differ significantly in climate, construction, and scale, enabling comparison of the relative contribution of material choice, spatial strategy, and environmental performance to occupant health outcomes. Data collected include occupant surveys, environmental monitoring, and structured interviews, measuring indoor air quality, acoustic comfort, thermal satisfaction, daylighting, and self-reported focus, creativity, and mental wellbeing.
  
  Findings show both environments demonstrate measurable improvements in occupant wellbeing relative to benchmarks, with notably strong performance in acoustic comfort and self-reported mental wellbeing in the mass timber environment at Magasin X. The Farringdon retrofit demonstrates that circular fit-out can be achieved at 40-per-cent below standard cost and could meaningfully improve occupant satisfaction and sense of belonging without new-build material specification. Cross-case analysis reveals that biophilic material presence, daylighting quality, and spatial adaptability are the strongest predictors of positive wellbeing outcomes across both settings.
  
  The results suggest that circular design and natural materials constitute a replicable, cost-effective route to healthier working environments: applicable across public and commercial office estates with constrained budgets. The paper contextualises these findings against a practice-based case study: Lumi in Uppsala, a third workplace where adaptive reuse of a former government headquarters addressed original health failings — poor daylight, inflexible floorplates, inadequate street connection – to great success (99/110 points in LEED). Together, the three cases build a compelling argument for embedding circular design principles and natural materials in UK workplace standards and planning policy as a mainstream public health measure, not a premium design aspiration.

  Learning Objectives

  • Identifying the balance between cost and environmental impact with the focal point of health and well being
  • Applied design principles through case studies
  • Real time evaluation of the effect of natural materials on occupant well being

  12.05

  Panel discussion

  12.30 - 13.45Video+Poster Gallery, workshop, lunch and networking

  + View gallery

  13.45 - 15.15

  Session 29

   - Health-promoting workplace design

  

  Chair: Esme Banks Marr, Strategy director, BVN, UK

  

  Esme Banks Marr

  Strategy director, BVN, UK

  Esme is strategy director at BVN. She specialises in the intersection of human behaviour and the built environment. With a career spanning design, research, communications, and business intelligence, she translates data into actionable insights that shape the future of spaces and places. Esme has worked across diverse sectors, exploring how strategic briefing influences outcomes at every scale – from individual wellbeing to system-wide efficiency. Her expertise lies in bridging gaps between disciplines, ensuring environments are not just functional but deeply responsive to human needs. She is passionate about understanding how people interact with space and how this, in turn, impacts experience. A recognised commentator on the built environment, Esme has contributed to global conversations and publications on design and strategy, the future of work, sustainability and regeneration, and digital transformation. Committed to breaking down industry silos, Esme integrates research, data, and strategy with design, to create holistic and future-focused environments. Her work ensures that the built environment evolves in a way that enhances both human experience and organisational outcomes.

  13.45

  Healthy cities require healthy sectors: Cultural intelligence as infrastructure for urban wellbeing

  Marsha Ramroop, Founder director and author, Unheard Voice Consultancy, United Kingdom

  

  Marsha Ramroop

  Founder director and author, Unheard Voice Consultancy, United Kingdom

  Marsha Ramroop is a global award-winning organisational inclusion strategist, Founder Director of Unheard Voice Consultancy Ltd and author of Building Inclusion – A Practical Guide to EDI in the Built Environment, which won accolades at Business Book Awards. She has been named in the Top 100 Inspirational D&I Leaders of 2025 and in The Built List of Top 100 influencers in the Built Environment. She has formulated a culture and behaviour change methodology which has been recognised as successful with international prizes, from the International Federation of Training and Development Organisations, and with two Brandon Hall HRD Gold Medals. As well as running Unheard Voice, which was shortlisted for D&I Consultancy of the Year 2024, Marsha works part-time as the Executive Director of EDI for Building People CIC, a hub that’s pulling together EDI resources and insight, as well as career pathways for underrepresented groups in the built environment. Marsha originally had a 30-year career in broadcasting, including 20 years at the BBC. While working at the BBC, she led inclusion efforts across the Midlands and developed a pioneering inclusive recruitment pilot for presenting staff, and an inclusive reporter scheme. She was the inaugural director of inclusion and diversity at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) where she ran RIBA Radio, a live week of radio programming about inclusion for the profession reaching 10,000 listeners worldwide. Building Inclusion: A Practical Guide to EDI for Architecture and the Built Environment came out in Autumn 2024. Published by Routledge, it is the first book of its kind for the sector and was awarded Highly Commended in the Business Book Awards 2025, and was a Finalist award at the Goody Business Book Awards 2025. She wrote and was lead facilitator behind the Diversity & Inclusion Charter for the motorsport, Formula 1, delivered through the Royal Academy of Engineering. She works with the Cultural Intelligence Center, the global headquarters of cultural intelligence (CQ) as one of their published and highlighted thought leaders on impactful organisational change, as well as a worldwide trainer and facilitator. Marsha is a chartered member of the CIPD (Chartered MCIPD). She holds the Ministerial Public Appointments of Non-Executive Director at both the Joint Nature Conservation Committee – which seeks to protect the biodiversity of the UK, and the Marine Management Organisation – which protects the UK's seas. She was also the vice-chair and is a fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals (FIEDP), an institute that strives to verify and set standards for the growing vocation of EDI practitioners. She also sits on the International Advisory Council of the Institute of Business Ethics, and is also a life fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA).

  + View abstract

  Healthy cities require healthy sectors: Cultural intelligence as infrastructure for urban wellbeing

  Abstract Copy

  Healthy City Design 2026 asks whether cities will face breakdown or achieve breakthrough. While much focus is placed on housing quality, transport, density and green infrastructure, less attention is paid to the behavioural and cultural conditions within the built environment sector itself. Workforce culture directly shapes psychological safety, inclusive design decisions, procurement behaviours and community trust. Persistent issues undermine both healthy working environments and the delivery of social value.
  
  Purpose: This paper argues that healthy cities cannot be delivered by unhealthy systems. It proposes Cultural Intelligence (CQ) as core behavioural infrastructure, enabling sector-wide culture change that strengthens workforce wellbeing and community impact.
  
  Methods: Drawing on the Attract-Retain-Create-Engage model developed in Building Inclusion (Ramroop, 2024) and applied across UK built environment organisations, the paper synthesises organisational development theory, behavioural science and inclusion practice. It reframes healthy working environments not as HR initiatives but as structural risk management, integrating inclusive leadership standards, workforce data transparency and community-linked talent pipelines.
  
  Results: Healthy working environments emerge where inclusive leadership and psychologically safe cultures convert diversity into sustained capability. At Mamou-Mani, structured bias-mitigating decision systems and explicit organisational values produced a culture in which all four CQ capabilities operate simultaneously, actively disrupting institutionalised inequality.
  
  Community impact and social value increase when engagement is structurally connected to workforce pathways, procurement standards and measurable inclusion outcomes. At Heathrow, inclusion principles embedded in supplier contracts through the Balance Scorecard shifted supply chain behaviour around equitable safety. At Convent Way, Hounslow, Beyond the Box CIC integrated young people directly into the design process, paid at London Living Wage, building skills, agency and connection to place.
  
  Delivery quality improves as inclusive culture translates into safer sites, better design decisions and long-term economic resilience. At the TNG Youth and Community Centre in Lewisham, ten years on, every young person involved in co-design went on to education, employment or training. Motionspot's decade of practice confirms that inclusive design embedded as a golden thread through every RIBA stage produces buildings that perform better for everyone.
  
  Implications: If health is foundational to urban prosperity, sector culture is foundational to health. Policymakers, investors and city leaders must treat cultural intelligence and inclusive governance as core urban infrastructure. Without systemic behavioural reform, health-led regeneration risks becoming rhetorical. With it, cities can achieve breakthrough: environments that are equitable, resilient and economically productive because the systems that build them are psychologically safe, socially just and structurally accountable.

  Learning Objectives

  • Cultural Intelligence is structural urban infrastructure, not a soft skills intervention.
  • Inclusion produces measurable outcomes only when procurement, workforce and community systems are connected, not siloed.
  • The business case and the social case for inclusive practice are the same case, evidenced across architecture, infrastructure and community development.

  14.05

  A duty of care to caregivers: A new standard for healthcare workplace design

  Jing Zhi Tan, Senior architect, Sheppard Robson, United Kingdom

  

  Jing Zhi Tan

  Senior architect, Sheppard Robson, United Kingdom

  Jing Zhi Tan is a healthcare architect with a strong focus on therapeutic interior environments and evidence-based design that promotes mental, physical and social wellbeing. Her portfolio spans mental health facilities, acute hospitals and specialist clinical settings, including the £150m Tolworth Hospital mental health redevelopment, the £450m West Suffolk Hospital New Hospital Programme scheme, and the Sowenna CAMHS inpatient unit in Cornwall. Jing's considered approach to interior finishes and spatial design within clinical environments is further demonstrated through refurbishment projects at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and the Grade I listed St Bartholomew's Hospital. She is currently contributing to the North Manchester General Hospital campus regeneration and has worked on the specialist cancer treatment clinic at the £1.1bn Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford. Jing joined Sheppard Robson in 2024. She has worked on a range of projects in the UK from medium to large-scale buildings, mainly for public-sector clients. She has previously worked on large commercial and residential projects in Abu Dhabi and refurbishments of commercial and workplaces in Beijing. Jing’s primary focus lies in the integration of mental, physical, and social wellbeing in the healthcare sector.

  Benjamin Wall, Associate, Sheppard Robson, United Kingdom

  

  Benjamin Wall

  Associate, Sheppard Robson, United Kingdom

  Ben Wall has experience in healthcare architecture with strength in clinical fit-out and interior design within live hospital environments. His portfolio includes the £18m Canary Wharf Private Diagnostics Centre, the £4.5m Chelsea Women's Health Centre, and multiple department reconfigurations at Guy's and St Thomas' and London Bridge Hospital. His sensitive approach to interior environments is further evidenced by his dementia-friendly ward project at Cambridge University Hospital, which prioritised patient wellbeing through considered design. Ben also contributes to the £1.5bn North Manchester General Hospital campus regeneration and has delivered new-build schemes, including a £60m modular surge centre at Cambridge University Hospital. Ben joined Sheppard Robson in 2024 as an associate. He has worked on a range of Health + Care projects from inception to completion, with over 15 years’ experience in acute and private healthcare. He has a track record of working with live hospital environments to create people-centred spaces that place the patient first and enable clinical flows and complex technical requirements to be achieved. A proponent of designing with empathy, Ben has authored a research paper on design and early pregnancy miscarriage and has spoken at IHEEM and Design in Mental Health on dementia design and acute environments.

  Sejal Mistry, Associate, Sheppard Robson, United Kingdom

  

  Sejal Mistry

  Associate, Sheppard Robson, United Kingdom

  Sejal is an associate interior designer at Sheppard Robson with a wealth of experience and a passion for creating inspiring and functional workplaces. Since joining the practice in 2018, she has made significant contributions across numerous typologies with a specialism in offices, healthcare, and higher education. Sejal has transformed workplaces into dynamic and collaborative environments highly regarded for blending functionality with aesthetic appeal, fostering productivity and wellbeing. Her notable projects include the new 20,000m2 Clatterbridge Cancer Care Hospital, Liverpool, 90,000m2 Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, London, the refurbishment of the Grade II listed Pall Mall Court in Manchester, and the innovative office spaces at Wellington Place, Leeds.

  + View abstract

  A duty of care to caregivers: A new standard for healthcare workplace design

  Abstract Copy

  Background: NHS vacancies as of 31st December 2025 were 100,165, with analysis by the King’s Fund reporting "44 per cent are dissatisfied with staffing levels, 29 per cent often think about leaving, 42 per cent reported feeling unwell due to work-related stress, and 30 per cent often experience occupational burnout". With current health policy undergoing a "left shift" towards population wellness and ill-health prevention, we do not see the environment for those who deliver care needs to keep up, with potential benefits not just for themselves but for their patients, their own families and their wider communities, and not least their employer: the NHS.
  
  Hypothesis: With no current NHS standards for healthcare workplace design, we look towards commercial office certifications such as WELL or BREEAM. As experts in workplace design who have worked frequently with these certifications on industry-first applications, we observe a healthcare workplace inequity that risks patient safety and contributes to the ill health of NHS workers. An opportunity exists to move beyond these "office-first" models to reflect the broader and more complex healthcare workplace requirements and impacts, and deliver a step change in support for the 1.5 million staff who call a hospital their workplace.
  
  A commercial workplace perspective: Certifications such as WELL and BREEAM demonstrate positive, measurable outcomes for staff and organisational performance, after adopting a range of design and operational features. As we embark on the biggest new hospital building programme in the history of the NHS, we make the case for capturing and embedding design and operational features from commercial workplace design into a new standard for hospital workplace design.
  
  A new staff-centric Health Building Note (HBN) would define staff environments as “healthcare workplaces” instead of "clinical support spaces" and represent a strategic pivot to healthcare workplace design standards that match the ambitions set out in ‘Our NHS People Promise’ and the upcoming DHSC Staff Standards (April 2026).
  
  Contribution and Impact: Setting the clinical, environmental and physiological requirements of the frontline workforce into a recognisable and mandatory HBN framework would contribute to an increase in individual and organisational performance, reduction in patient safety risk, increase retention of current staff, and improve attraction of new staff. The HBN would affirm the NHS’s duty of care to its staff, the UK’s largest workforce, appeal to a competitive global skills market, and deliver a legacy of both clinical and human sustainability.

  Learning Objectives

  • Understand what is meant by ‘workplace’ design and how current healthcare design standards compare with commercial workplace design standards
  • Identify where lessons from commercial workplace design standards can help address short term NHS issues (staffing crisis), improve patient safety and provide equality in workplace wellbeing for NHS workers
  • Explore opportunities for a workplace-based approach to healthcare design and what a mechanism to achieve this might look like.

  14.25

  London Institute for Healthcare Engineering: Designing healthy, high-performance workplaces

  Philip Watson, Chair, head of design, HLM, UK

  

  Philip Watson

  Chair, head of design, HLM, UK

  Philip has led HLM’s design culture as chair since April 2024, championing the practice’s ‘Thoughtful Design’ ethos and belief that great design can positively impact people and society. With extensive experience spanning education, workplace, residential and masterplanning sectors, he is recognised for creating people-centred, sustainable environments. Philip is a respected industry speaker and contributor, regularly sharing insights on wellbeing, social value, client engagement, modern methods of construction (MMC) and sustainability. A visiting professor at the University of Leeds and fellow of the RIBA, he also serves on the University Design Forum Research Group and Design Yorkshire Review Panel.

  + View abstract

  London Institute for Healthcare Engineering: Designing healthy, high-performance workplaces

  Abstract Copy

  This session will explore how workplaces can be designed, delivered, and managed to actively support health, wellbeing, and productivity, drawing on the award-winning London Institute for Healthcare Engineering (LIHE), winner of the Health & Life Sciences category at the European Healthcare Design Awards 2025, as a leading exemplar of innovation and excellence in design.
  
  Situated on the banks of the Thames and embedded within Guy’s and St Thomas’, LIHE brings together clinicians, researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs in a shared environment that accelerates medical innovation. The session will demonstrate how evidence-based design, thoughtful planning, and collaborative engagement can create workplaces that are not only functional, but genuinely supportive of the people who use them every day.
  
  Attendees will gain insight into HLM Architects’ design-led approach, which integrates architecture, interior design, landscape, and masterplanning to deliver adaptable, future-proofed workplaces. The session will unpack the use of the Thoughtful Design Toolkit in understanding user needs from stable temperatures, ventilation, and daylight, to biophilic connections and access to nature and translating these into spatial strategies that enhance wellbeing and productivity. Practical examples will show how design decisions, such as the helix staircase inspired by DNA, foster collaboration, chance encounters, and informal knowledge-sharing, promoting both social connection and active movement within the building.
  
  The session will also highlight how flexible workplace design supports evolving ways of working, critical in environments where research, clinical practice, and commercial innovation intersect. Attendees will learn how adaptable lab layouts, communal spaces, and carefully considered circulation routes can accommodate changing team structures, new technologies, and evolving operational requirements, without compromising user comfort or performance.
  
  Additionally, participants will explore the broader benefits of integrating biophilic design, natural materials, and human-centred interior strategies to reduce stress, improve cognitive function, and support inclusivity. By combining spatial intelligence with evidence-based wellbeing principles, the session will demonstrate how healthcare and research workplaces can create environments that attract and retain talent, support collaboration, and encourage healthier behaviours day-to-day.
  
  Through LIHE as a case study, the session will provide practical takeaways for designing workplaces across healthcare, education, public sector, and commercial contexts. Attendees will come away with strategies for applying research-led insights, embedding adaptability, and integrating wellness and collaboration into the design of high-performance environments.

  Learning Objectives

  • Understand practical strategies for designing workplaces that actively support health, wellbeing, and productivity.
  • Learn how to integrate flexibility and adaptability into complex environments to accommodate evolving ways of working.
  • Explore how biophilic and human-centred design features can foster collaboration, inclusion, and positive workplace behaviours.

  14.45

  Panel discussion

  15.15 - 15.45Video+Poster Gallery, coffee and networking

  + View gallery

  15.45 - 17.00

  Session 30

   - Social environments: Culture, nature and sport

  

  Chair: Carlo Castelli, Founder, Urban Purpose, UK

  

  Carlo Castelli

  Founder, Urban Purpose, UK

  Carlo Castelli is an architect, masterplanner and city solutions expert with more than 25 years’ experience delivering innovative urban solutions and the founder of Urban Purpose. Carlo is passionate about the purpose of cities. He leads and advises on major international and interdisciplinary urban projects at various scales, with particular expertise in integrated spatial and socio-economic strategies, underpinned by transport and infrastructure oriented development. He is a strategic advisor on purposeful visions for cities, capacity development and international co-operation between cities and local governments. He advocates a ‘purpose case’ approach to city-making, which aims to put quality of life and wellbeing at the core of the holistic integration of economic, social, environmental and cultural values. Carlo has recently acted as the chief technical advisor of the UNDP capacity-building and strategic urban advisory programme with the Riyadh Regional Municipality in Saudi Arabia. He has voluntary roles such as the co-chair of the ULI Europe Urban Regeneration Council and the LSE Global Real Estate Group’s Executive Committee. Carlo publishes on social media and speaks regularly in international conferences, as well as providing strategic advice and leadership for some of the world’s most interesting urban contexts and projects, including the New London Agenda with the NLA; a regeneration project in Newham, London; the Edinburgh City Centre Transformation Plan (with Jacobs); the Strategic Process towards the Development Agreement for the Scali Ferroviari in Milan with Sistemi Urbani, (with AECOM); Al Mouj Muscat, Oman (with AECOM); the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop (with Jacobs); Meridian Water regeneration project in London (with Jacobs); and the KKIA Concept Masterplan in Riyadh (with AECOM).

  15.45

  Designing for dignity in healthy cities: A toolkit for addressing the complex and human realities of urban space

  Lauren Decent, Senior sustainability consultant, Hoare Lea, United Kingdom

  

  Lauren Decent

  Senior sustainability consultant, Hoare Lea, United Kingdom

  Lauren Decent is a senior sustainability consultant focused on the relationship between people, place and sustainability within the built environment. She supports client, design and delivery teams on multidisciplinary projects across public, commercial, residential and healthcare sectors, embedding sustainability from early design through to in-use performance. Lauren is a qualified BREEAM assessor and AP, BREEAM residential assessor, WELL AP, SKA HE assessor and registered environmental practitioner (REnv). Her work includes leading sustainability assessments and certifications, developing sustainability strategies, and advising design teams to embed environmental performance and wellbeing outcomes. Lauren has experience in post-occupancy evaluations, using insights to assess the relationship between design intent and lived experience. Her work is informed by academic and practice-based research into health, sustainability and the built environment, alongside experience evaluating how buildings perform in use and support occupants. She recently contributed to the Design in Mental Health Network's Dignity by Design publication as part of the Design with People in Mind series. Her approach focuses on designing for people, bringing together environmental performance, design intent and lived experience to support more informed and practical outcomes within buildings and urban environments.

  Carl Walker, Community Psychologist, Head of Societal Insights, Hoare Lea, United Kingdom

  

  Carl Walker

  Community Psychologist, Head of Societal Insights, Hoare Lea, United Kingdom

  Dr Carl Walker is a chartered community psychologist with over 25 years’ experience in academia, community engagement, community coproduction of wellbeing services, community food infrastructure, local authority strategic development and industry. Carl is a community psychologist, a member of the British Psychological Society National Community Psychology Section committee and a visiting lecturer at the University of Brighton. His work has involved leading action research projects on community wellbeing and coproducing community initiatives to address mental health and wellbeing needs. He has used a range of social science methodologies to engage in collaborative, multi-stakeholder initiatives in the fields of health, mental health and wellbeing, disability, care and community food infrastructure. He has published widely in the field of mental health and community activism with 9 books and over 70 peer reviewed publications. Carl has also been a Borough Councillor for several years and in recent years has been the Deputy Leader of Worthing Borough Council where he has been the strategic lead for communities and young people portfolio on the council, including covering participatory democracy, community coproduction of services, cost of living, community-led food infrastructure development and community wealth building. Carl has also run a number of local community food organisations over the last 20 years and his recent research on hunger trauma and moral injury in community food staff and workers led to his co-founding the Alliance for Dignified Food Support,a national coalition of community food organisers, local food partnerships, academics, and activists interested in promoting dignified food support. He has drawn on this broad experience to develop innovative approaches to social sustainability in the built environment that use genuine cocreation with communities to maximise the social, economic, environmental and public health impacts that the built environment can deliver. His current work is focused on advising on community engagement, co-production, social impact and providing empirically supported theoretical insights in relation to the human and social aspects of sustainability. He is working on a range of active projects which cover Masterplanning, assets, datacentres and portfolios and is leading the implementation of a new social impact framework that puts public health, social inequalities and cocreation with communities at the heart of the built environment.

  + View abstract

  Designing for dignity in healthy cities: A toolkit for addressing the complex and human realities of urban space

  Abstract Copy

  Cities are never neutral environments. For designers and placemakers, this creates a responsibility to remove barriers to autonomy, agency and dignity. Dignity is not an abstract ideal; it has direct consequences for physical health, mental wellbeing and social participation. These dynamics become particularly visible in healthcare settings. Hospitals, as part of the city’s infrastructure, often intensify social pressures and power relations found in urban public space.
  
  This paper focuses on everyday journeys through buildings, where people encounter spatial conditions that shape experience in spaces that are neither fully public nor private, yet remain socially coded, surveilled and emotionally charged. It situates dignity as a critical design concern. Even when buildings have clear functional purposes, users are navigating far more than functional tasks; they bring complex personal, social and emotional realities into the spaces they move through. Yet design processes often overlook this dimension, creating a gap between institutional expectations, user realities and the spatial responses required to uphold dignity. The research highlighted how informal adaptations and user-led workarounds emerge in response to these gaps, indicating opportunities for more responsive and inclusive design approaches.
  
  To address this, we introduce a dignity centred design toolkit that offers a novel approach to auditing how spaces support, or undermine, dignity across five key dimensions: autonomy, spatial justice, lived experience, difficult realities and belonging, through which dignity can be assessed and embedded. By shifting from designing for function to designing with lived experience, it enables those involved in shaping space to create more dignified spaces. The toolkit makes visible how dignity is often treated as incidental within design processes, reframing it as an intentional and proactive consideration embedded in spatial decision-making. It is designed for use by practitioners involved in placemaking, including designers, planners and other built environment professionals working across healthcare and wider urban environments.
  
  The toolkit supports practitioners in identifying where dignity is at stake across everyday journeys and transitional spaces, particularly where spaces create spatial inequalities, expose vulnerabilities and shape human experience, especially during early strategic and concept stages. It enables these insights to be translated into strategic actions, supporting reflection and continued development across project phases, including construction, handover and occupancy. The approach is intentionally adaptable, encouraging practitioners to move beyond conventional design assumptions and processes and question established practices. It challenges the tendency to replicate familiar solutions, promoting a more human-centred, dignity-focused approach to shaping space.

  Learning Objectives

  • Recognise how lived experience shapes how people move through and experience urban environments, and why it must be proactively embedded within design processes.
  • Understand how dignity can be intentionally designed into space, and how a dignity-centred toolkit can be used to identify where spatial conditions support or undermine user experience.
  • Apply a dignity-centred toolkit to identify and respond to issues of autonomy, spatial justice, lived experience, difficult realities and belonging across different contexts, including new developments and existing environments.

  16.05

  Supercharging communities through sport-led regeneration

  Jonathan Seebacher, Principal, Ryder Architecture, United Kingdom

  

  Jonathan Seebacher

  Principal, Ryder Architecture, United Kingdom

  Jonathan joined Ryder in 2003 and has a wealth of experience across masterplanning, sport, civic, residential and office sectors. He has been instrumental in growing Ryder’s portfolio across the UK and was part of the team that established Ryder’s Hong Kong office. Jonathan led on our portfolio of buildings at Newcastle Helix, an exemplar of sustainable urban development which combines prestigious commercial and residential space with first-class research and education facilities in the heart of Newcastle. Jonathan has extensive experience of working internationally and is board member for Okana, our pioneering global built environment consultancy, placing visionary thinking alongside economic viability. Jonathan is part of the British Council for Offices (BCO) northern committee and mentors for the BCO in the North and London. He has been a RIBA awards panel member and is a graduate of the Common Purpose Meridian senior leadership programme, the CBI executive education programme and sits on the CBI infrastructure committee. Jonathan also sits on the CBI Outside of work, he enjoys travel, time with his family and friends and is a keen sports fan.

  + View abstract

  Supercharging communities through sport-led regeneration

  Abstract Copy

  Our submission explores how sport-led regeneration can act as a catalyst for healthier, more inclusive and resilient cities. Moving beyond the traditional model of single-use venues, we analyse how sport-led regeneration can be integrated into healthy city masterplanning and identify measurable social and economic indicators, including supporting active living, strengthening communities and generating long-term value.
  
  At an international scale, the transformation of Independence Park in Kingston reimagines a national icon. The project shifts the stadium from an intermittent destination into a vibrant, everyday place. It supports wellbeing, encourages physical activity and reinforces Jamaica’s global identity, contributing to a more resilient urban fabric. When complete, the stadium and masterplan will generate over $100 million in GDP annually and attract over 1 million visitors.
  
  Nationally, Red Bull’s strategic intervention into Newcastle Falcons rugby club demonstrates how private-sector partnerships can stabilise at-risk civic assets. By evolving traditional sport venues into multifunctional regional hubs, this model extends impact beyond elite performance to serve broader health mandates. The focus shifts to long-term resilience, creating structured pathways for youth and women’s participation to tackle physical inactivity for the region. It illustrates how mobilising external investment can secure the future of local social infrastructure, ensuring spaces remain inclusive, accessible drivers of regional wellbeing. By leveraging the Red Bull global brand, interest and participation has increased.
  
  Regionally, the work of the Newcastle United Foundation highlights the impact of sustained, grassroots engagement. Reaching about 70,000 people annually across the North East of England, the Foundation delivers free, accessible programmes for children, young people, families and older adults. Its targeted outreach supports disadvantaged and hard-to-reach groups, including those not in education or employment, people with disabilities and low-income communities. With a significant social return on investment, it demonstrates how sport can directly improve health outcomes, reduce inequalities and empower neighbourhoods – supported by an expanding network of community facilities linked to wider regeneration plans.
  
  Together, these case studies illustrate complementary approaches across different scales: city wide transformation, regional investment in an established asset, and local engagement in targeted areas. Each prioritises active living and measurable wellbeing outcomes, through distinct models of delivery – from community-led regeneration to brand-driven activation.
  
  Our submission highlights the role of sport in shaping healthier cities and presents transferable lessons for integrating physical activity, social value and community empowerment into future urban development.

  Learning Objectives

  • Analyse how multi-scale sport infrastructure - from national stadiums to local foundations - can be integrated into healthy city masterplanning.
  • • Evaluate different delivery models (brand-led vs. community-led) and their efficacy in reaching marginalised or "hard to reach" demographics.
  • • Identify measurable social and economic indicators, such as Social Return on Investment used to justify sport led regeneration to policy makers.

  16.25

  Healthy spaces: Connecting people, nature, and culture for preventative health

  Lucy Bawden, Cultural strategist and founder, Pocket Creatives, United Kingdom

  

  Lucy Bawden

  Cultural strategist and founder, Pocket Creatives, United Kingdom

  Having worked in local council culture teams, in-house for major property developers, and with individual artists and cultural organisations, Lucy Bawden brings a practical, creative approach to embedding culture into urban spaces. Passionate about nature, environment, and storytelling through culture – in all its senses – she sees carefully designed, future-proofed infrastructure as the foundation for welcoming, creatively distinctive, and community-owned spaces. Her work bridges creative vision and operational delivery, shaping strategies and programmes that promote creativity, social connection, and long-term value while celebrating the identity and lived experience of local communities. Recent projects include cultural and placemaking initiatives across London, the UK, and France where she integrated arts and nature into regeneration programmes, supporting creative infrastructure and economic development for public realm projects that combine wellbeing, heritage, and community participation. Lucy is particularly interested in the intersection of culture, nature, and wellbeing, helping ensure that everyday places – streets, parks, and shared spaces – are designed for engagement, creativity, and connection.

  Ewan Oliver, Freelance public realm development manager and chartered landscape architect, Placeshaper UK, United Kingdom

  

  Ewan Oliver

  Freelance public realm development manager and chartered landscape architect, Placeshaper UK, United Kingdom

  Ewan Oliver is a senior public realm development manager and chartered landscape architect and with over 25 years’ experience shaping liveable, regenerative places where people and nature thrive. Working across the property and construction industries, he brings a rare combination of creative place strategy, technical expertise and delivery-focused leadership. Ewan’s recent client-side roles have included leading the public realm for the Earls Court Masterplan, a 40-acre, £10bn landscape-led mixed-use development in West London, and the supervision of public realm delivery for Thames Tideway Tunnel, a £5bn infrastructure project helping to improve water quality and reconnecting London to its river. Previously, he led the design and delivery of the public realm at Elephant Park for Lendlease. In a previous role at Arup, Ewan was involved in the delivery of the 2012 London Olympic Park amongst other major infrastructure projects, prior to which he worked across local authority and private practice as a landscape architect. Ewan is passionate about the role of planting, nature and ecology in supporting healthier places – enhancing biodiversity while improving wellbeing. Known for his collaborative approach, he builds strong partnerships to deliver places that respond to environmental challenges and support social connection.

  + View abstract

  Healthy spaces: Connecting people, nature, and culture for preventative health

  Abstract Copy

  We explore how healthier urban spaces are shaped not just by design but by early decision-making – embedding nature and culture from the outset to support preventative health outcomes.
  
  Health professionals increasingly recognise culture and nature as contributors to wellbeing, with social prescribing linking creative activity and nature-based interventions to improved mental and physical health, reduced loneliness and stronger community resilience – often framed within creative health. Research also highlights the benefits of engagement with the natural world: contact with plants and soil is associated with improved gut health and reduced anxiety and depression, while cultural participation supports cognitive function, co-ordination and social connection, fostering a sense of belonging rooted in heritage and identity.
  
  While larger urban regeneration schemes often enhance biodiversity, we identify ongoing inconsistencies across the sector in how development supports everyday health, with spaces to gather, play, create and engage with nature often underdesigned and treated as non-essential. A wider disconnect persists between individuals and nature, communities, and the sectors shaping our places. Health-led initiatives are rarely aligned with delivery, while cultural and green infrastructure – planned, valued, and funded through similar lenses – remain constrained by viability and fragmented responsibilities, reflecting a wider undervaluing of their social, educational, and economic contribution.
  
  Drawing on case studies and cross-disciplinary insight, we examine international greening approaches and cultural infrastructure planning, including Elephant Park, London, showing how nature and culture can function as integral infrastructure for environmental quality, social interaction, and community connection. This paper advocates integrating culture and nature from the outset, leveraging local knowledge and participation. It stresses early collaboration between health professionals, designers, developers, and communities, where informed decisions can make spaces healthier and more usable through shared tools and design thinking.
  
  This is supported through delivery models that prioritise long-term stewardship and shared responsibility. Central to this is the role of local ambassadors – ‘local genius’ rooted in lived experience and cultural knowledge – who help shape and sustain spaces. Mechanisms such as timebanking and earned-volunteering support ongoing engagement, alongside tools guiding healthier design.
  
  In conclusion, improving health through nature and culture does not rely on a single breakthrough, but on stronger connections – between people, disciplines and systems. It calls for a more collective, multidisciplinary approach, where culture and nature are understood not as separate amenities but as interconnected systems. It contributes a cross-disciplinary framework linking built environment design, cultural and green infrastructure, and community-led ownership to support healthier, more resilient communities.

  Learning Objectives

  • Understand and Leverage Culture + Nature as health infrastructure - Recognise how both cultural participation and access to nature contribute to mental, physical, and social health, and how they intersect to create more resilient urban communities.
  • Identify Opportunities to Embed Assets Early and Collaboratively - Discover strategies to integrate cultural and green infrastructure from the outset of projects, engaging health professionals, designers, and communities to shape spaces that truly meet peo
  • Future-Proof Through Practical Design and Stewardship - Explore simple, informed design choices and delivery models—like shared stewardship, timebanking, and community participation—that sustain engagement, usability, and long-term health impact.

  16.45

  Panel discussion

  End of Mixed-used and working environments stream

• Workshop stream

  Pier Eight

  10.45 - 12.30

  Session 31

   - 

  

  Chair: Dawn Jenkin, Consultant in public health, West Midlands Combined Authority, United Kingdom

  

  Dawn Jenkin

  Consultant in public health, West Midlands Combined Authority, United Kingdom

  Dawn is an experienced consultant in public health, and a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health. She leads the central team of the Mayoral Regions Programme, which supports English Mayoral Regions to improve health and reduce inequalities through regional level action on many of the wider determinants of health, such as employment opportunities, transport and planning. Dawn has a special interest in addressing structural inequalities through effective placemaking approaches that intentionally build health through home, neighbourhood and high street. She has led the development of a spatial planning and health framework for Nottinghamshire, which has been used to support local planning policy and practice. She has also pioneered use of creative narratives centred on the building blocks of health, to gain system-wide buy-in to action on place-based health determinants.

  10.45

  Health at the heart of place: How can multidisciplinary approaches and visionary public-sector reform in England unlock strategic spatial planning and improve health for generations to come?

  Dawn Jenkin, Consultant in public health, West Midlands Combined Authority, United Kingdom

  

  Dawn Jenkin

  Consultant in public health, West Midlands Combined Authority, United Kingdom

  Dawn is an experienced consultant in public health, and a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health. She leads the central team of the Mayoral Regions Programme, which supports English Mayoral Regions to improve health and reduce inequalities through regional level action on many of the wider determinants of health, such as employment opportunities, transport and planning. Dawn has a special interest in addressing structural inequalities through effective placemaking approaches that intentionally build health through home, neighbourhood and high street. She has led the development of a spatial planning and health framework for Nottinghamshire, which has been used to support local planning policy and practice. She has also pioneered use of creative narratives centred on the building blocks of health, to gain system-wide buy-in to action on place-based health determinants.

  Simon Hall, Senior delivery manager – wellbeing and prevention, West Midlands Combined Authority, UK

  

  Simon Hall

  Senior delivery manager – wellbeing and prevention, West Midlands Combined Authority, UK

  Simon Hall is the senior delivery manager (wellbeing and prevention) at the West Midlands Combined Authority. His portfolio includes health in all spatial planning and housing policies as well as physical activity, WM as an Outdoor Region, culture and heritage. His background is in health, physical activity and economic growth working local authorities, Sport England, Active Partnerships and sub-regional economic partnerships.

  Helen Forman, Urban design manager, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, United Kingdom

  

  Helen Forman

  Urban design manager, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, United Kingdom

  Helen is an architect with a career spanning the public, private and third sectors. The urban design lead at West Yorkshire Combined Authority, she also chairs the Yorkshire and Humber Place Advocates Network. Helen has expertise in the impacts of housing development on health and physical activity, particularly in children and older people. Her research for Playing Out CIC explored the link between residential layouts and children’s freedom to play and roam safely. Helen worked with the University of Leeds to research women and girls’ perceptions and experience of safety in parks, and brought partners together to create Safer Parks guidance as a result. She also led the West Yorkshire Mayor’s Dementia-ready Housing Taskforce, exploring the personal experience of those with dementia in West Yorkshire and developing a set of criteria for dementia-ready homes, which has been adopted by the West Yorkshire Housing Partnership.

  Carrie Shipley, Policy officer, The Health Foundation, UK

  

  Carrie Shipley

  Policy officer, The Health Foundation, UK

  Carrie Shipley is policy officer at The Health Foundation.

  Nadia Inglis, Director of public health, Walsall Council, United Kingdom

  

  Nadia Inglis

  Director of public health, Walsall Council, United Kingdom

  Dr Nadia Inglis is the director of public health at Walsall Council. In this statutory role, she acts as principal advisor on public health to elected members and senior officers, and leads the development of evidence-based strategies to improve and protect population health and wellbeing across the borough. Nadia is a qualified medical doctor and fellow of the Faculty of Public Health. She has held senior public health leadership roles across local government and has extensive experience spanning health protection, inequalities, mental wellbeing, substance misuse, and the wider determinants of health. Her work focuses on using policy, place-based approaches and partnership working to tackle the root causes of ill health and improve outcomes across the life course. Alongside her local authority role, Nadia is chair of the West Midlands ADPH, West Midland Tobacco Control lead, and also chairs the Health Sub group for the West Midlands Spatial Development Strategy (SDS). In the latter capacity, she facilitates cross-sector collaboration between public health, planning and regional partners to ensure health and health equity are embedded as core outcomes of strategic spatial planning.

  Shaun Andrews, Director of UK Planning Strategy, Prior + Partners, United Kingdom

  

  Shaun Andrews

  Director of UK Planning Strategy, Prior + Partners, United Kingdom

  Shaun Andrews is a highly regarded urban planner and Director at Prior + Partners, where he leads the firm’s Applied Healthy Placeshaping capability and co leads the Strategic Planning Group (SPG). Shaun draws on extensive experience across both the private and public sectors, having held senior roles in local authorities, central government departments, development corporations, and leading consultancies. His expertise spans complex regeneration projects and the planning of new communities, including the preparation of strategic planning frameworks, Spatial Development Strategies (SDSs), and masterplans that help shape the future of neighbourhoods and urban centres. Through the Strategic Planning Group, Shaun has played a central role in shaping national thinking on the next era of strategic planning. The SPG’s landmark report, Planning Positively for the Future, sets out clear recommendations for embedding SDSs at the heart of a reformed, plan led system. Shaun and colleagues are now advising councils across England on how to develop highly strategic, digitally enabled strategies focused on delivering homes, jobs, infrastructure, and health equality. https://www.priorandpartners.com/spg-recommendations-published Shaun is passionate about championing built environment principles and practices that prioritise healthy, inclusive, and equitable places.

  + View abstract

  Health at the heart of place: How can multidisciplinary approaches and visionary public-sector reform in England unlock strategic spatial planning and improve health for generations to come?

  Abstract Copy

  Spatial planning is a powerful tool for creating healthier, fairer and more resilient communities, yet its potential is often constrained by fragmented policy and governance. This interactive workshop explores how England’s new Spatial Development Strategies and statutory Health Duty for Mayoral Authorities provide an opportunity to embed health at the heart of regional planning, economic growth and regeneration.
  
  Drawing on the Mayoral Regions Programme and its Health in All Policies toolkit, the session will showcase practical examples, including the West Midlands Combined Authority’s Spatial Development Strategy, Hertfordshire’s Healthy and Safe Places Framework, the West Midlands Design Charter, and West Yorkshire’s inclusive design principles.Through facilitated discussion, participants will examine how planners, public health professionals, developers and regional leaders can work together to integrate health across planning systems, translating strategic ambitions into healthier homes, neighbourhoods and places for current and future generations.

  Learning Objectives

  • To develop and understand the opportunity for Spatial Development Strategies to integrate health at the heart of English strategic planning policy.
  • To consider how multiple disciplines at different levels of spatial planning can provide coherent leadership which drives regional health and growth as interdependent goals.
  • To explore a range of tools and approaches that can be used to enable coherent systematic and region-wide consideration of health through planning.

  12.30 - 13.45Video+Poster Gallery, workshop, lunch and networking

  + View gallery

  13.45 - 15.15

  Session 32

   - Nourishing urban wellbeing: Community action for health and sustainability

  

  Chair: Rob Creber, Director of social impact, Therme UK

  

  Rob Creber

  Director of social impact, Therme UK

  “I’ve always believed that, just like individuals, businesses have a real opportunity and responsibility to make a positive difference in people’s lives and for our environment. So much of that comes down to the choices we make, and being true to our values” Rob has worked in the events and experiential industry for over 30 years and joined Therme Group in 2021 to lead the operational planning for our new UK resorts. He now leads social value and partnerships for Therme in the UK, focused on the delivery of the opportunities that will positively impact individual, community, and environmental wellbeing. A career focused on the planning, delivery and operation of major events, within roles at owner organisers, venues and suppliers, Rob was part of the team that planned, opened and operated ExCeL London, which transformed the area around the Royal Docks. The next step was a role in the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Organising Committee, joining very early in the planning phase for the Games. Working in the venue development team, he was responsible for managing teams to plan, deliver and operate a cluster of Olympic and Paralympic competition venues. Since the Games, he has worked across major events in the b2b and b2c sector, in addition to working for central government on the events re-start programme during the Covid response.

  

  Chair: Amanda Curtis, Sustainability advisor, Therme, UK

  

  Amanda Curtis

  Sustainability advisor, Therme, UK

  

  Chair: Ben Dutson, Director of food and culinary experience, Therme, UK

  

  Ben Dutson

  Director of food and culinary experience, Therme, UK

  13.45

  Nourishing urban wellbeing: Community action for health and sustainability

  Rob Creber, Director of social impact, Therme UK

  

  Rob Creber

  Director of social impact, Therme UK

  “I’ve always believed that, just like individuals, businesses have a real opportunity and responsibility to make a positive difference in people’s lives and for our environment. So much of that comes down to the choices we make, and being true to our values” Rob has worked in the events and experiential industry for over 30 years and joined Therme Group in 2021 to lead the operational planning for our new UK resorts. He now leads social value and partnerships for Therme in the UK, focused on the delivery of the opportunities that will positively impact individual, community, and environmental wellbeing. A career focused on the planning, delivery and operation of major events, within roles at owner organisers, venues and suppliers, Rob was part of the team that planned, opened and operated ExCeL London, which transformed the area around the Royal Docks. The next step was a role in the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Organising Committee, joining very early in the planning phase for the Games. Working in the venue development team, he was responsible for managing teams to plan, deliver and operate a cluster of Olympic and Paralympic competition venues. Since the Games, he has worked across major events in the b2b and b2c sector, in addition to working for central government on the events re-start programme during the Covid response.

  Amanda Curtis, Sustainability advisor, Therme, UK

  

  Amanda Curtis

  Sustainability advisor, Therme, UK

  Ben Dutson, Director of food and culinary experience, Therme, UK

  

  Ben Dutson

  Director of food and culinary experience, Therme, UK

  Tom Ross, Leader of the Council, Trafford City Council, UK

  

  Tom Ross

  Leader of the Council, Trafford City Council, UK

  + View abstract

  Nourishing urban wellbeing: Community action for health and sustainability

  Abstract Copy

  Healthy food is fundamental to healthier, more resilient communities, yet many people still face barriers to accessing affordable, nutritious and sustainable food.This interactive workshop, led by Therme Manchester, explores how community organisations, local authorities and the private sector can work together to strengthen food and nutrition as part of a broader vision for urban wellbeing. Building on Therme’s mission to transform urban wellbeing at scale, participants will share practical examples of community-led food initiatives, urban growing, education, social prescribing and neighbourhood partnerships that improve health while supporting environmental sustainability.
  
  Through interactive discussion and shared learning, the workshop will explore how communities, local authorities and the private sector can work in partnership to create places where healthier choices become the easier choices. Participants will share practical ideas, learn from local initiatives and identify new opportunities to support healthier lifestyles, stronger neighbourhoods and greater community wellbeing. Together, the session will demonstrate how collaboration at every level can help transform urban wellbeing while creating healthier, more sustainable places for future generations.

  End of Workshop stream stream

Closing keynote plenary

Quays Theatre

17.00 - 17.45

Session 21

 - Closing keynote: The road to 2027: The next Healthy City Design destination

Chair: Prof Jeremy Myerson, Academic director and co-founder, Healthy City Design; Professor emeritus, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art, UK

Prof Jeremy Myerson

Academic director and co-founder, Healthy City Design; Professor emeritus, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art, UK

Jeremy Myerson has been academic, author and activist in design for more than 40 years. He co-founded the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design in 1999, and was its director until 2015. Last year, he received emeritus professor status at the RCA, and he continues to direct his own venture, the WORKTECH Academy, which provides a forum for academics and practitioners to share new ideas on the future of work and workplace. He is the author of more than 20 books on a wide range of subjects in art, design and architecture, and he has curated many national design exhibitions. He has been at the helm of the Healthy City Design Programme Committee since the Congress’ inception in 2017.

17.00

The road to 2027: The next Healthy City Design destination

Max Farrell, Chair, Healthy City Design; Founder and CEO, LDN Collective, UK

Max Farrell

Chair, Healthy City Design; Founder and CEO, LDN Collective, UK

Max is the new Chair of the Healthy City Design Congress, guiding its next chapter at a pivotal moment for health, place, and public policy. In this role, Max will bring valuable knowledge, expertise and an extensive network of developers, investors, planners, designers, public health professionals, policymakers, and community leaders to strengthen the Congress as the leading interdisciplinary platform for evidence-led debate, collaboration, and action in the creation of healthier cities. Max’s interests and expertise closely align with the ambitions of the Congress. With a background in urban planning and strategic communications, he has long championed people centred placemaking, social value, and the integration of health into the planning, design, and delivery of the built environment, with a particular focus on improving quality of life and reducing inequalities through better places. Alongside his role as Chair, Max is Founder and CEO of the LDN Collective, a network of built environment specialists working to improve people’s lives and the planet’s prospects. The Collective brings together expertise in placemaking and urban design, social value and co design, branding, communications, and engagement. Current projects include major regeneration initiatives, new communities, and innovative approaches to public realm, retrofit, and reuse across the UK and beyond. Max is Immediate Past President of the LAI Land Economics Society, London chapter, Chair of Built Environment Policy for West London Business, Lead Judge for the Healthy City Design Awards, and a Fellow of the RSA. He was Project Lead and Author of the Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment, commissioned by the UK Government, which made 60 recommendations, many of which have since been implemented. He advises a number of organisations working at the intersection of health, place, and policy, including Demos, Urban Design London, the Place Alliance, the Urban Room Network, and the Quality of Life Foundation.

Vicky McDermott, Director of housing and communities, Newcastle City Council, UK

Vicky McDermott

Director of housing and communities, Newcastle City Council, UK

17.30

Closing remarks

Prof Jeremy Myerson, Academic director and co-founder, Healthy City Design; Professor emeritus, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art, UK

Prof Jeremy Myerson

Academic director and co-founder, Healthy City Design; Professor emeritus, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art, UK

Jeremy Myerson has been academic, author and activist in design for more than 40 years. He co-founded the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design in 1999, and was its director until 2015. Last year, he received emeritus professor status at the RCA, and he continues to direct his own venture, the WORKTECH Academy, which provides a forum for academics and practitioners to share new ideas on the future of work and workplace. He is the author of more than 20 books on a wide range of subjects in art, design and architecture, and he has curated many national design exhibitions. He has been at the helm of the Healthy City Design Programme Committee since the Congress’ inception in 2017.