UCL’s national movement for high quality in place design wins national research award

A national movement campaigning for high quality places brought together by University College London has won the Sir Peter Hall Award for Wider Engagement in this year’s RTPI Awards for Research Excellence.

Place Alliance brings together built environment sector organisations with an interest in place design to build consensus around policy that would lead to high quality places. Organisations involved include the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Royal Institute of British Architects, English Heritage and the Prince’s Foundation.

The Place Alliance demonstrates the important role universities can play in providing a neutral setting to engage a range of stakeholders from community-led organisations to national government. This has allowed them to build policy consensus about the importance of high quality planning and urban design. Their work has fed directly into the work of the Select Committee for National Policy on the Built Environment which called for a fundamental shift to a place-led approach to policy.

The Place Alliance was one of 5 winners at yesterday's ceremony, held during the 2016 UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference.

Dr Michael Harris, RTPI’s Head of Research, said: “The winners and highly commended entries have demonstrated how academic researchers can positively reach out to practitioners and policymakers with insights and finding to inform and influence their work. I am pleased these awards have been able to celebrate such impactful, high quality research again this year.