Skip to main content
UCL Logo Navigate back to homepage

Main navigation

  • Home
  • Study

    Study

    • Study at UCL
    • Prospective students
    • Current students
    • Languages and international education
    • Accommodation
    • Careers
    • Doctoral School
    • Immigration and visas
    • Student finances
    • Support and wellbeing
  • Research

    Research

    • Research at UCL
    • Engage with us
    • Explore our Research
    • Initiatives and networks
    • Research news
  • Engage

    Engage

    • Engage with UCL
    • Alumni
    • Business partnerships and collaboration
    • Global engagement
    • News and Media relations
    • Policy and political engagement
    • Schools and priority groups
    • Give to UCL
  • About

    About

    • About UCL
    • Who we are
    • Faculties
    • Governance
    • President and Provost
    • Strategy
    • UCL's Bicentenary
  • UCL Logo Active parent page: UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment
    • Study
    • Active parent page: Research
    • Our schools and institutes
    • People
    • Ideas
    • Engage
    • News and Events
    • About

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.

Place Alliance logo with text campaigning for place equality

Breadcrumb trail

  • UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment
  • Research initiatives

Faculty menu

  • Current page: Research projects
  • Research publications
  • REF 2021
  • Ethics in the built environment
  • Impact at The Bartlett
  • UCL Royal Academy of Engineering, Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Building Design
  • The Building Envelope Research Network
  • UCL Circularity Hub

Breadcrumb trail

  • UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment
  • Research
  • Place Alliance

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/

Professor Matthew Carmona, The Bartlett School of Planning
Send Matthew an email
View Matthew's profile

Valentina Giordano, The Bartlett School of Planning
Send Valentina an email
View Valentina's profile 

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/

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

Go back to view all research initiatives

Photo by Place Alliance

UCL footer

Visit

  • Bloomsbury Theatre and Studio
  • Library, Museums and Collections
  • UCL Maps
  • UCL Shop
  • Contact UCL

Students

  • Accommodation
  • Current Students
  • Moodle
  • Students' Union

Staff

  • Inside UCL
  • Staff Intranet
  • Work at UCL
  • Human Resources
UCL Logo

University College London

Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7679 2000

UCL social media menu

  • Link to Instagram
  • Link to LinkedIn
  • Link to Youtube
  • Link to TikTok
  • Link to Facebook
  • Link to Bluesky
  • Link to Threads
  • Link to Soundcloud
Here, it can happen.
Back to top

Essential

  • Disclaimer
  • Freedom of Information
  • Accessibility
  • Cookies
  • Privacy
  • Slavery statement
  • Log in

© 2026 UCL