Category Archives: Conferences & symposia

‘Hard facts’ conference rounds off fantastic year of collaboration with Swedish university

On 30th November 2017, Catharine Ward Thompson will give a keynote lecture on greenspace, health and quality of life as part of the ‘Hard facts about soft values’ conference in Stockholm.

Organised by the Movium network at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), the conference is primarily aimed at policymakers and civil servants at a range of levels, from local to national and international.

> Access presentations from the conference, including Catharine’s

The event rounds off a great year for our relationship with SLU, where Catharine received an Honorary Doctorate in October, gave a public lecture which was streamed live online, and was interviewed by Arkitekten journal.

SLU have said “Catharine’s publications on green environments are used extensively in SLU’s landscape education and have also had a big impact in practice. Her research is an inspiration and knowledge base for our own research on the importance of green environments for health and wellbeing, and she is a long-term collaborator with SLU researchers, for example in co-authored publications and in postgraduate education.”

> Watch Catharine’s Honorary Doctorate public lecture online 

Catharine receiving her Honorary Doctorate.

Catharine receiving her bespoke Honorary Doctorate’s hat at SLU. The moment was marked by a ceremonial trumpet flourish! Image © Jenny Svennås-Gillner/SLU

This year is a particularly special one for SLU, as it celebrates its 40th anniversary.

It is fitting, then, that 2017 has also seen the announcement of the Stockholm Declaration on Sustaining Resilient and Healthy Communities at the 10th European Public Health Conference which took place in the Swedish capital earlier this month.

Speaking at the conference alongside Kevin Lafferty of Forestry Commission Scotland and George Morris, formerly of NHS Health Scotland, Catharine again outlined the links between greenspace, health, wellbeing and resilience in a workshop on Public Landscapes for Public Health.

This was an excellent opportunity to share emerging findings from our research on Woods In and Around Towns, as well as to showcase the development of Scotland’s Natural Health Service – an example of innovative collaboration between the environment and health sectors in Scotland.

Find out more about Scotland’s Natural Health Service

It’s not just one way traffic! This month, OPENspace is delighted to have hosted a group of urban planners from Sweden awarded a grant from the Swedish Association of Transportation Planners to study the walkability of Edinburgh.

The group were particularly keen to know more about the Mobility, Mood and Place (MMP) project, which looked at older people’s mobility outdoors and its impact on health and wellbeing.

In findings we’ve shared through a short animation, MMP has found that older people walking between different types of urban environments show changes in their emotional response to place based on brain activity patterns. Green spaces seem to be restorative, offering a respite from the tiring demands that busy urban places make on our directed attention.

Reinforcing what we have found in earlier work, such as Inclusive Design for Going Outdoors (I’DGO), we have found that, when it comes to walkability, the mundane matters and the commonplace counts! Everyday things, such as pavement quality, benches and street lighting, can make all the difference as we get older.

> Watch our short animation on Mobility, Mood and Place

 

 

OPENspace research featured in new WHO Europe Action Brief on Urban Green Spaces

The European Regional Office of the World Health Organizaton (WHO) has launched a new Action Brief on Urban Green Spaces, building on extensive research in the field, including a number of studies by OPENspace.

The Action Brief is a beautifully-illustrated suite of practical guidance on how to maximise the health benefits of urban green spaces.

Designed for urban practitioners, it is based on, and summarises, two recent technical reports by WHO Europe:

‘Urban Green Spaces and Health: A review of evidence’ (2016), which cites a number of OPENspace research papers, and has a chapter co-authored by Professor Catharine Ward Thompson and Dr Eva Silveirinha de Oliveira.

‘Urban Green Space Interventions and Health: A review of impacts and effectiveness’ (2017), which includes our I’DGO and Woods In and Around Town (WIAT) projects as examples of how to assess the health benefits of environmental interventions.

Front cover of WHO publication

Having been cited by the WHO in its 2007 guidance on Global Age-friendly Cities, OPENspace has become a respected source of evidence for the organisation.

As well as citing our research in publications, WHO has invited Catharine to participate in a number of pan-European meetings and conferences, the most recent of which was the fourth European Conference on Biodiversity and Health in the face of Climate Change (Bonn, June 2017) at which she gave a plenary presentation and was interviewed by MDR, together with Bundesamt für Naturschutz (BfN) President, Beate Jessel.

 

Check out some of the visuals from the publication below, or access the document in full…

> Download the WHO Europe Action Brief on Urban Green Spaces

Download Urban Green Spaces and Health: A review of evidence

> Download Urban Green Space Interventions and Health: A review of impacts and effectiveness

 

Photo of a jogger in a park

Photo of an urban parkPhoto of an urban streetPhoto of two women gardening

Photo of a tram

Photo of a coastal path

OPENspace (and friends) at #RGSIBG16

It’s time for the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society, which is held in collaboration with the Institute of British Geographers.

The theme for 2016 is ‘nexus thinking’, a way of addressing the interdependencies, tensions and trade-offs between different environmental and social domains.

OPENspace is involved in five papers at this year’s conference, which you can follow on social media using the hashtag #RGSIBG16.

Here’s where you can find out more about two of our current research projects: Mobility, Mood and Place (which looks at older people’s mobility outdoors); and Woods In and Around Towns (which explores urban woodlands and quality of life in deprived communities).

RGS-IBG conference papers on Mobility, Mood and Place

Wednesday 31st August 2016

Measuring Wellbeing (11:10-12:50)      
Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 207 

Mapping brain imaging as a measure of emotional wellbeing in older people walking in different urban spaces.

Dr Steve Cinderby* of The University of York will be presenting this paper, which has been co-authored by Dr Sara Tilley of OPENspace and colleagues at the Universities of Edinburgh, York, Heriot-Watt and University College London.

Thursday 1st September 2016

Everyday geographies of ageing (1): (im)mobility, independence and ageing ‘well’ (09:00-10:40) 
Sherfield Building, Room 10  

Living in the moment or experiences of a lifetime? Considering environmental influences past, present and future on mobility in older age

Professor Jamie Pearce of the The Human Geography Research Group at the University of Edinburgh will be presenting this paper, which has been co-authored by Professor Catharine Ward Thompson, Professor Jenny Roe, Dr Katherine Brookfield and Dr Sara Tilley at OPENspace, and colleagues at the Universities of Edinburgh, York, Heriot-Watt and King’s College London.

RGS-IBG conference papers on Woods In and Around Towns

Thursday 1st September 2016

Greenspace Justice for Health and Wellbeing (16:50-18:30) 
Royal School of Mines, Room G.06

Exploring parents’ perceptions and visits to local urban woodlands in deprived communities

Dr Sara Tilley of OPENspace will be presenting this paper, which has been co-authored by Dr Eva Silveirinha de Oliveira and Professor Catharine Ward Thompson.

On Friday 2nd September, Sara will also be chairing the first session on ‘Time at the nexus: mobility and modal choice’which she co-convenes with Dr Julie Clark of the University of Glasgow, and presenting her PhD research in the second session (again co-convened with Julie) in a paper entitled Understanding the Multi-Level Forces Affecting Mobility Trends.

* Steve will also be talking about MMP at the annual ‘research into policy’ event co-hosted by the Transport Geography Research Group and UK Department for Transport (DfT). This pre-conference event takes place at the DFT on Tuesday 30th August 2016. Steve’s presentation is entitled Interactions between urban infrastructure design and use on older people’s mobility and well-being: evidence from three UK case studies.


> Browse other conference papers given by OPENspace team members

Shifting the ground of environmental design evidence

This week, we’re at one of the most important conferences of the year for us, the 47th conference of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA).

Logo for E D R A conference

Since its formation in the late 1960s, EDRA has used its annual congress to bring together design professionals, social scientists, students, educators, and facility managers.

For EDRA47, the Association has ‘come home’ to its birthplace of North Carolina, where its very first conference was convened by Henry Sanoff in June 1969, sponsored by NC State’s School of Design and UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning.

Under the theme of Innovation : Shifting Ground, the aim of EDRA47 is to take a global look at the driving force of innovation in environmental design.

Catharine Ward Thompson’s plenary on environmental design evidence

Catharine (Director of OPENspace) is one of EDRA47’s six keynote and plenary speakers.

In her plenary, she is focusing on environmental design’s potential to help address current global health crises (such as cardio-vascular disease, rising levels of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and mental illness) and growing inequalities in health and wellbeing.

Catharine’s presentation explores what kinds of approaches are needed if environmental design, and landscape design in particular, is to be taken seriously by public health policy makers and planners as both health-enhancing (salutogenic) and reducing of health inequalities (equigenic).

It therefore considers the importance of working across and between disciplines, the use of innovative of methods (such as biomarkers and mobile neural imaging), the particular challenges involved in longitudinal studies to research design interventions, and the opportunities offered by natural experiments.

Insights from current and recent OPENspace research

In Catharine’s plenary presentation, she will draw on research from large-scale, collaborative projects such as Mobility, Mood and Place (MMP), GreenHealth, and Woods In and Around Towns (WIAT).

Over the course of the four-day conference, which runs from Wednesday 18th to Saturday 21st May 2016, these projects will also be presented in a series of papers by OPENspace researchers including Dr Sara Tilley, Dr Eva Silveirinha de Oliveira and Professor Jenny Roe.

The themes covered by the papers include Longitudinal Studies and Natural Experiments; Childhood Experience, Adult Perceptions and Visits to Woodlands; Timescales in Environmental Influences on Mobility in Older Age; Older People’s Brain Activities and Self-Reported Experiences of Short Urban Walks; and Experiences of Outdoor Environments by Women with Postnatal Depression.

Colleagues from collaborating research centres, such as the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York, will also be presenting.

PhD candidate scoops EDRA Great Places Award

We’re delighted to end this post by announcing that PhD researcher, Matluba Khan, has won the EDRA Great Places Award in the Place Design category for her project, An Outdoor Learning Environment for Children.

Announced on the first day of the EDRA conference, the Award was given to Matluba for a “submission [which] truly exemplifies the concern for human factors in the design of the built environment, and a commitment to promoting the links between design research and practice”.

Matluba’s project is the co-design and build of outdoor learning and play space at a rural primary school in Bangladesh. Her PhD is co-supervised by Dr Simon Bell and Dr Eva Silveirinha De Oliveira at OPENspace, and Dr Sarah McGeown of Moray House School of Education.

In 2014, Matluba won Overall Best Paper Award at the 45th EDRA conference in New Orleans.

The annual Great Places Awards are a collaboration with the global organisation, Project for Public Spaces. Chaired by  John Shapiro of the Pratt Institute, this year’s jury included Kofi Boone (North Carolina State University), Jill Pable (Florida State University), Michael Mehaffy (Sustasis Foundation) and Katie Roden (Centerbrook Architects and Planners).

Two researchers with an award

Find out more about EDRA47 on the Environmental Design Research Association website

Katherine and Sarah at Active Living Research 2016

This week, two of our researchers are at ALR2016 in Florida, USA.

The Active Living Research Annual Conference brings together researchers and active living champions from over 30 disciplines to advance knowledge and action around active communities.

The 2016 conference theme, Equity in Active Living, explores opportunities to ensure that all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, economic background, level of education, age, sexual orientation, gender identify, physical and/or cognitive ability, have access to safe and enjoyable places to be physically active.

Katherine Brookfield and Sara Tilley are delivering two of the three papers in the Conference session on Older Adults; only 20 academics papers were accepted to the conference overall (in addition to 20 by practitioners), so the team have done exceptionally well.

And they won’t miss this gorgeous January weather in Edinburgh…

Edinburgh in the rain

Introducing our fourth international conference…

We are delighted to announce an international conference on Habitats for Happy and Healthy Ageing.

The conference will take place in Edinburgh on 11th – 14th October 2016.

This is the first announcement of the call for presentation and poster abstracts.

The call, and details of online submission, will be forthcoming later in January 2016.


The conference themes are:

Theme 1: Healthy, happy and active ageing

How can we realise healthy, happy and active ageing for all?

We invite abstracts that consider diverse factors including exercise, nutrition, service provision, assistive technologies and adaptations, income and benefits, social isolation and participation.

Theme 2: Co-design and the built environment

What makes an environment age-friendly? How can we better involve user groups in the design of our built environment?

We invite abstracts on the physical design of age-friendly environments at a range of scales, from individual homes to the neighbourhood and the wider community, as well as on innovative methods of co-design, particularly those engaging older adults.

Theme 3: Experiencing mobility

What does mobility mean for older adults? How is it experienced and perceived?

We invite abstracts on various aspects of ageing and mobility including mobility behaviours and practices, aids and barriers to mobility, what motivates mobility, and older people’s experiences and perceptions of outdoor mobility.

Theme 4: Lifecourse of health and place

Does an individual’s place of birth, and the places in which they have lived, influence their health in later life? What might the introduction of a lifecourse perspective bring to our understanding of the relationship between health and place?

We invite abstracts on the relationship between health and place as conceived through a lifecourse perspective. This could be through the use of historical environmental data, or other approaches.


We are delighted to confirm the following keynote speakers:

  • Professor Billie Giles-Corti, Director, McCaughey VicHealth Community Wellbeing Unit Centre for Health Equity, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
  • Professor Gloria Gutman, Vice-President, International Longevity Centre Canada and Professor/Director Emerita, Simon Fraser University Gerontology Research Centre
  • Professor Richard Sennett, Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University
  • Professor Sarah Wigglesworth, Director, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects and Professor of Architecture, University of Sheffield

The Welcome Address will be given by Dr Heidrun Mollenkopf, Vice President of AGE Platform Europe and Member of the AGE Universal Accessibility and Independent Living Expert Group.


To register your interest and receive future conference announcements, please email OPENspace@ed.ac.uk



Logo for Open Space People Space conference series
The conference is the fourth in the international Open Space : People Space (OSPS) series. Previous OSPS conferences have taken place in Edinburgh in 2004, 2007 and 2011.
Find out more about previous OPENspace conferences

 

OPENspace at EUROCITIES 2015

We’re at the EUROCITIES 2015 conference in Copenhagen / Malmo, where Catharine Ward Thompson is bringing a focus on the pedestrian environment to a roundtable on urban mobility.

It’s a pleasure to be in such esteemed company. Sitting to Catharine’s right (in the blue scarf) is Hella Dunger-Loeper, Permanent secretary and State of Berlin Delegate to the Federation and former Permanent Secretary for Building and Housing at Berlin’s Senate Department for Urban Development…Catharine Ward Thompson speaking at the Eurocities conference

… and in this photograph, taken after the roundtable, she is pictured with panellist Klaus Bondam, Director of the Danish Cyclists’ Federation and former Chair of the EUROCITIES Mobility Forum…

Photo of Catharine Ward Thompson at Eurocities

Máire Cox also attends the conference to promote OPENspace research to policymakers within 130 of Europe’s largest cities.

And finally… we’re delighted to share the news that the City of Edinburgh won a EUROCITIES award at the conference for community participation in making the city more attractive and sustainable.

Logo for EUROCITIES 2015

More about EUROCITIES 2015, the focus of which was ‘sustainable growth and quality of life’