top of page


Healthy Happy Places – a collaborative initiative in the Northeast of England
There’s an area in the northeast of England where planners, health providers, arts organisations and local government are collaborating...
Feb 5, 20257 min read


Building an environment to age well in
With a new year comes a media spotlight on self-improvement, “healthy ageing” and “longevity” feature highly in both social and...
Jan 25, 20254 min read


Build for Health
Happy new year! Here’s hoping that sincere wishes for happiness and prosperity in 2025 are met with acknowledgment of some significant...
Jan 10, 20255 min read


Infrastructure is more than bricks & mortar
On April 15, 2019 the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was severely damaged in a devastating fire – and this week, five years on, its...
Dec 5, 20243 min read


World Toilet Day: Launching the London Loo Alliance
On Tuesday this week, World Toilet Day was celebrated across the world – laugh if you want, but it’s a long-established event led by...
Nov 21, 20243 min read


Health and Housing – are we at an inflection point?
Earlier this month the British Medical Journal published results of a survey by the Royal College of GPs on time spent on non-clinical...
Oct 26, 20243 min read


Changing Places: the Life Sciences industry in London
The Life Sciences industry is comprised of companies and organisations that research, develop and manufacture pharmaceuticals,...
Sep 10, 20243 min read


Planning is messy – but reducing it to binary choices will not give us the sustainable places we need
Earlier this year I visited Singapore and wrote about how government interventions have led to some remarkable outcomes on housing,...
Aug 14, 20244 min read


Where health meets planning – lessons from Wales
As the new government tries to reconcile how to grow the economy by accelerating investment in new housing with a commitment to public...
Jul 29, 20244 min read


Private finance, public infrastructure
Our new government has pledged to limit tax rises while at the same time promising to invest in our NHS, education and energy...
Jul 16, 20245 min read


Supermarkets and Healthy Placemaking
Earlier this month, Asda unveiled plans for a “transformational Mixed-Use Redevelopment of its ten-acre Park Royal site in North West...
May 29, 20243 min read


The cost of adversarial practice
Earlier this month, the Home Builders Federation revealed that over the last three years, more than £50 million of taxpayer money was...
May 17, 20243 min read


Vulnerable in the city
“Vulnerability” comes from the Latin word for wound – vulnis. It’s the state of being open to injury, or appearing as if you are. Feeling...
Apr 25, 20243 min read


Infrastructure First
Along with wet weather, April came in with a blast of Nimby v Yimby hot air. So far this month, we’ve learned that Keir Starmer has...
Apr 12, 20245 min read


Notes from a Blue Zone
I spent last week in Singapore which, along with many other accolades, has been designated the world’s sixth Blue Zone, and the world’s...
Mar 4, 20244 min read


Life in a parallel universe
A parallel universe, also known as an alternate universe, parallel world, parallel dimension, or alternate reality, is a hypothetical...
Feb 16, 20244 min read


Improving Health through the Built Environment – panel discussion at the NHS ICS/ICB Congress
The GIANT Health event, now in its tenth year, took place earlier this week, and I was invited to convene a panel for the NHS ICS/ICB...
Dec 8, 20234 min read


Borrow some medical practice to build healthy homes and places
This past year has seen real progress in demonstrating how our built environment - the homes & places where we live – impacts our...
Oct 12, 20234 min read


Connecting generations through houses & places
Earlier this week I came home to find on my doormat a “special invitation” from Audley Villages to visit a newly developed “luxury...
Sep 29, 20234 min read


We need to talk about Toilets
When I wrote over a year ago about the need to rethink public toilets, a journalist I know told me that the issue would not attract wider...
Aug 24, 20233 min read
Blog
bottom of page

