NLA Expert Panel on Wellbeing

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Editor, NLQ and New London Weekly

The inaugural meeting of the newly formed NLA Expert Panel on Wellbeing took place this week. The panel made up of 14 industry experts was tasked with setting an agenda for the year ahead with the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown underpinning the discussion.

How to maximise our effectiveness was the first question the panel faced and there was clear response: a collective desire to impact on policy formation and planning law that can bring about societal change. There was an understanding that tactical wellbeing initiatives were not sufficiently ambitious. Put bluntly, “Post-Covid wellbeing has to be more than new cycle lanes and wider footpaths.”

There was a recognition that the pandemic and the emerging, often raw, political climate had highlighted inequalities - especially in cities and urban communities. Spatial inequalities, transport and healthcare access, and contact with nature – key elements in fostering a sense of wellbeing – were all raised. The panel asked, how can they be overcome, and significantly, what has our own industry done to make matter worse. We agreed a way forward: take a reflective approach, assess why positive change is patchy and fragmented – find out why whole rafts of people and businesses are often left untouched by successful projects.

There was a consensus that we need to review how society’s needs have changed. The panel asked: “What does wellbeing looks like post lockdown?” As well as accepting there is so much more to do, the panel concluded that the pandemic had also seen wellbeing-related improvements – for example, the benefits of getting to know your neighbours - and that these needed to be logged, retained and enhanced where possible. Additionally, the potential for biophilic design and behavioural change interventions to transform our collective health, were both cited.

Mental health will also form a significant element of this panel’s agenda, particularly as pressures grow in uncertain economic times. We asked: What impact does architecture and urban design have on how we feel? The challenge of implementing a people-centric approach to delivering wellbeing and how we can push beyond initiatives such as ‘more green open spaces’ and ‘active travel’ was raised. There was sense too that less trodden enablers and disablers of wellbeing – social prescribing and means of building social resilience into communities and societies will need to be considered more fully. Naturally, how we finance such a deeply integrated wellbeing strategy hovered over the discussion.

An evidence-based approach to wellbeing was prescribed and, on several occasions, panellists referred to the need to take a tough, honest, and more scientific approach to assessing effective wellbeing within the built environment. In a period where society values the NHS perhaps more than ever before, we need to review how our sector is or isn’t supporting the nation’s health. Where planning supports the conversion of commercial space to residential units of 14m²do we know with certainty what the impacts of micro-living at this scale has on our mental and physical health?

The notion of the smart city came up. We asked, given the lockdown, what role is our increased dependence on the internet to provide what were once physical encounters – from food shopping to workplace meetings – actually doing to us, individually and collectively?

We concluded on a point that everyone agreed upon: recognising what we cherish is central to our sense of wellbeing.

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Expert Panel members:

Jenny Buterchi, Partner, PRP
Michael Dariane, Senior Sustainability Consultant, Hilson Moran
Wendy de Silva, Mental Health Lead, IBI Group
Ruth French, Associate, Ryder Architecture
Heath Harvey, Project Play Lead, Argent LLP (Chair)
Olaide Oboh, Director of Partnerships, First Base
Rory Olcayto, Writer and Critic, Pollard Thomas Edwards
Stephen O'Malley, Founding Director, Civic Engineers
James Matthews, Senior Consultant, Avison Young
Alan Siggins, Managing Director, Airflow
Natalie Thomson, Director, Head of Strategy, Buckley Gray Yeoman
Amanda Whittington, Partner, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
Lisa Woo, Head of Placemaking – Meridian Water, LB Enfield

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David Taylor

Editor, NLQ and New London Weekly