Space Syntax Laboratory Secures £1.2 million Grant for Healthy Urban Places Research

A landmark funding award of £8.6 million from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will bring together The Bartlett School of Architecture, Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR) and researchers across the north of England for a population health improvement study.

Over £1.2 million of the funding will be allocated to The Bartlett’s Space Syntax Laboratory to investigate what makes a healthy place for communities in Bradford and Liverpool, and how healthy urban places change over time. The four-year project started on 1 April 2024. Professor Laura Vaughan, Director of the Space Syntax Lab, is Deputy Director for the ‘Healthy Urban Places’ project and will lead the local team. Dr Kimon Krenz, an architect and spatial data scientist within the lab, will co-lead the project’s longitudinal spatial and health data infrastructure.

‘Healthy Urban Places’ is a partnership between the BIHR based at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UCL, the Universities of Liverpool, York, Leeds and Bradford, Imperial College London, the Bradford Council Health Determinants Research Collaboration and Barcelona Institute for Global Health. It will involve local communities and decision-makers and will harness existing major research initiatives including the Born in Bradford and Children Growing Up in Liverpool cohorts. The formation and funding of the project builds on several years of collaboration between The Bartlett’s Space Syntax Lab and the BIHR, home to the landmark Born in Bradford research programme through two projects: the ActEarly research consortium, and the Connected Bradford project.

Commenting on the funding, Prof Vaughan said:

Working with BIHR’s Professor Rosie McEachan and Professor John Wright, the team will examine how population health is affected by features of the urban environment such as walkability, air quality, housing, public transport, access to schools, parks, social and community assets, healthy food and health services. This research theme is one of four projects funded as part of a £35 million Population Health Improvement UK (PHI UK) investment by UKRI to improve the health of communities across the UK, reduce health inequalities and develop and evaluate effective, long-lasting and environmentally sustainable interventions.

Prof Vaughan and Dr Krenz will recruit two postdoctoral fellows with health research experience to join the project – one with expertise in spatial data and another in space syntax.

Healthy Urban Places

There are key aspects of where and how you live that affect people’s health. Even within a single city, life expectancy can vary dramatically. This research theme will examine how population health is affected by urban environment features such as walkability, air quality, housing, public transport, access to schools, parks, social and community assets, healthy food, and health services. The research aims to influence decisions that can make cities healthier and happier places to live.

Taking a systems approach to health improvement, the goal is to provide a step change in understanding how best to harness the power of local urban places as tools for population health. Uniting multiple disciplines spanning medical, health, economic, social, built and natural environment, biological, engineering, archaeology and humanities, and combining quantitative and qualitative methods (including co-production, spatial mapping, urban data science, biochemistry, epidemiology, quasi-experimental methods, intervention development and evaluation, economic analysis and knowledge translation), this research will elucidate how and why local environments influence population health, directly influencing implementation of place-based changes in the North of England. It will build interdisciplinary research capacity between decision-makers, communities and researchers. 

More information

• View Professor Laura Vaughan’s profile
• View Dr Kimon Krenz’s profile
• Find out more about the Space Syntax Laboratory
• Find out more about Prof Vaughan and Dr Krenz’s research into the built environment and population health
• Space Syntax: Architecture & Cities MSc/MRes
• Architectural Space & Computation MPhil/PhD
• Architectural Computation MSc
• Read the UKRI funding announcement

Image: 'Pub Lunch' – Two mobility scooters parked outside the Drum Winder public house, Bradford, by Marcus Rattray