Applied Healthy Placemaking: How Prior + Partners is creating health through planning and design

Empowering Healthy Places

Prior + Partners is proud to announce publication of ‘Empowering Healthy Places: Unveiling the powers and practices of local councils in fostering healthy neighbourhoods‘ for the Local Government Association (LGA).

The guide, which Prior + Partners developed alongside the Quality of Life Foundation, explores powers spanning planning, to public health and environmental health, and sets out a series of recommendations for both local government and national government on how to improve local health and wellbeing outcomes. This includes four case studies, exploring how councils are currently working to create healthy neighbourhoods in different ways. It seeks to build upon work such as the LGA and TCPA’s Developing Healthy Places report from 2018 which sets out how councils can work with developers to deliver healthy places.

Shaun Andrews, Director at Prior + Partners, comments:

“As we seek to realign planning with public health, restoring its original purpose, this guide seeks to unlock the power of planning to create health and wellbeing through excellent place shaping. Healthy places can in turn unlock productivity and boost economic growth so I hope that the guide will prove valuable for local authorities seeking to empower healthy and prosperous places. It provides clarity on the mechanisms available to councils and the case studies included demonstrate real-world applications of these principles, making the guide both practical and inspirational.”

Underpinning the guide is recognition that many of today’s health problems are the result of societal, environmental and economic issues that are influenced, for example, by the quality of our homes, access to social infrastructure as well as neighbourhood design and walkability. In line with the recommendations of the recent Lord Darzi report, Instead of relying on the NHS to treat the symptoms of poor health, we should instead shift our focus on how to use our skills as planners and designers to shape places that “create health’”. This is defined by Lord Crisp as “providing the conditions in which people can be healthy and helping them to be so”. This ranges from designing neighbourhoods where people can easily access what they need by walking, wheeling and cycling, to delivering quality and affordable homes that are resilient to the effects of climate change.

The full guide for the LGA can be viewed here.

The guide for the LGA is Prior + Partners latest commission where health, and how it’s influenced by where we live, is brought to the fore. As a placemaking practice comprising urban designers, planners, economists and data scientists, we continue to deepen our understanding of shaping healthy places through evidence gathering and its spatialisation, developing locally specific principles and, fundamentally, successful application, with our portfolio spanning from research to practice, both in the UK and internationally.

This portfolio includes our recent commission to prepare and launch ‘Creating health and wellbeing: A partnership approach to evidence-led planning and design in our cities, towns and villages’. Again authored in collaboration with the Quality of Life Foundation, this graphic document sets out how planning authorities can seamlessly effectively incorporate health and wellbeing into all stages of the planning process, and highlights the importance of an evidence led approach to planning and design as well as setting out the wider partnerships required for delivery. The work has been developed through research and in-depth interviews with councils who are leading the way at approaching planning through a health and wellbeing lens, including via corporate strategies, local plans, design codes and masterplans.

The full guide can be viewed here.

To apply Prior + Partners learning from research and the principles developed in practice, our team has been utilising GIS and data analytics to understand the local spatial conditions and demographics with the aim of improving health and wellbeing in the centre of Blackburn, North West England. A town which faces several significant challenges, our analysis of demographic, socio-economic and health trends has been conducted to understand the unseen opportunities, prevailing issues and needs. This has pointed to the benefit of focused attention towards the local communities around the main retail area in the vicinity of King William Street, with network accessibility analysis and predictive modelling used to test scenarios to deliver targeted spatial interventions along the street and enhance the quality of the place and promote healthy behaviours.

Prior + Partners also specialise in the preparation of place visions and strategies for local authorities, which collaboratively help define the future aspirations of a place. A recent example includes Huntingdonshire, where our place strategy, developed alongside the local council, embedded health as a key theme for the future of the district. To achieve this potential, one proposed approach emerging from the strategy is to prioritise happiness in decision making, with a recommendation to the Council to develop a framework whereby internal projects and programmes are required to demonstrate how they will improve the happiness of local people. Other approaches include taking steps to make it easier to live healthily, reducing the experience of loneliness and improving the mental health of children and young people.

Internationally, Prior + Partners has worked closely with the Royal Government of Bhutan since 2019, leading an inter-disciplinary consultant team including ARUP and Gerald Eve to develop a vision and future spatial strategy for the capital, Thimphu. The project brought together the country’s Buddhist philosophy of Gross National Happiness with the socio-economic framework Doughnut Economics, helping to frame a future for the city that strikes a balance between essential human needs, our social foundation, and the planet’s ecological limits. This has been translated into a plan which prioritises improving the quality of life of all residents in a way that protects the city’s unique Himalayan context.

Meanwhile, over in Silicon Valley, USA, Prior + Partners are working for Google to transform their existing 468-hectare monocultural business estate into a new world-class Eco-Innovation District, Moffett Park. The wider area is characterised by poor public health, including barriers in access, income inequality, lack of housing availability and choice and pollution exposure. In response to these challenges, we have carried out intensive research and benchmarking to deliver a masterplan that introduces 10,000 much needed new homes alongside new work, leisure and recreation spaces, as well over 35 hectares of new ecological landscape. These are key to promoting Moffett Park as a place that invites and creates something of value for everyone via vibrant, mixed-use walkable neighbourhoods with easy access to nature, world-class sustainable buildings, a varied economy, and public realm designs that prioritize the health and well-being of residents, workers and visitors.

Moving forwards, next month Prior + Partners will be at the Healthy City Design Congress in Liverpool, 15th and 16th October 2024, where we are a knowledge sponsor.

As part of our involvement, we will present two papers that highlight our work within creating healthy places. The first, “Creating health and wellbeing at the local level”, will set out how to leverage planning and design processes in England to improve health and wellbeing, and how we believe this could be improved. The second will showcase our international insight, “Designing for healthy choices first: Changing behaviour in cities from California to Bhutan”.

For potential clients and organisations interested in learning more about Prior + Partners research, and how we can support your planning and design of healthy places, please get in touch via newbusiness@priorpartners.com.