Place Alliance

This research initiative was established in 2022 to undertake challenge-driven and transdisciplinary research to advance the understanding and implementation of the UN's SDGs.

Overview

The Place Alliance advocates for place quality. It is focussed on the idea that through evidence and collaboration we can establish a culture whereby the quality of place becomes an everyday national and local priority. Place Alliance is open to all and through its work brings together organisations and individuals who share the belief that the quality of our built environment has a profound influence on people’s lives.

Since its inception in 2014, the Place Alliance has increasingly taken on a more active campaigning role to better fulfil our core aim of bringing people, evidence and new thinking together as a means to support the case for place quality, and to actively campaign in favour of investing in a high quality built environment. Primarily this is achieved through the production and dissemination of collaborative research through a series of high-impact reports. These can be found at https://placealliance.org.uk/research/

People

Professor Matthew Carmona, The Bartlett School of Planning
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Valentina Giordano, The Bartlett School of Planning
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Outputs

Place Alliance has been working with its partners to deliver a programme focused on generating a knowledge-based line of research about the quality of the built environment and its delivery. Our aim is to better inform the debate with rigorous empirical (but also digestible) evidence and to encourage its use in practice. The intention is that for this to be an ongoing study programme that monitors the capacity of the country to deliver high-quality urban environments, and tracks how this changes over time. Recent publications include:

• Appealing design, the evidence of planning appeals and the need to reject poor and mediocre housing design https://placealliance.org.uk/research/appealing-design/
• The Design Deficit, Design skills and design governance approaches in English planning authorities https://placealliance.org.uk/research/design-deficit/
• Home Comforts, How the design of our homes and neighbourhoods effected our experience of the Covid-19 lockdown and what we can learn for the future https://placealliance.org.uk/research/research-home-comforts/
• A Housing Design Audit for England https://placealliance.org.uk/research/national-housing-audit/
• Place Value, and the Ladder of Place Quality https://placealliance.org.uk/research/place-value/
• Councillors’ Attitudes to Residential Design https://placealliance.org.uk/research/councillors-attitudes/
• Reviewing Design Review in London https://placealliance.org.uk/research/design-review/
• Design Skills in English Local Authorities https://placealliance.org.uk/research/design-skills/

Related links

Visit the Place Alliance website
Follow Place Alliance on X (formerly Twitter)
Follow Professor Matthew Carmona on X (formerly Twitter)
Follow Valentina Giordano on X (formerly Twitter)
Follow The Bartlett School of Planning on X (formerly Twitter)
Follow The Bartlett School of Planning on LinkedIn

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Photo by Place Alliance