Urban Habitats has been appointed by The Cambridge Room to support creation of a vision for healthy placemaking in Greater Cambridge.

This vision will address the Greater Cambridge area: South Cambridgeshire and the city of Cambridge which is also the footprint of the Greater Cambridge Local Plan which sets out land use and planning policies beyond 2040.

The City of Cambridge is renowned around the globe and the landscape and ecosystems of Cambridgeshire including the Fens are uniquely important habitats.

Greater Cambridge has many opportunities and challenges: there is a major focus on development, particularly around housing supply and at the same time Cambridge is noted to be the most unequal city in the UK.

The vision will encompass the state of the art in terms of the role of place in supporting health and wellbeing.  It will also address ‘how’ as well as the ‘what’ and that ways of working often underpin delivering on any vision.  Urban Habitats will be engaging with community knowledge, seeking to build on the many wonderful assets that already exist in local places.

This work builds on Urban Habitats’ previous collaborations including through Community Voices and the Public Map Platform and draws on our leading-edge expertise in creating health in place with communities. Urban Habitats will be working with The Cambridge Room throughout coming months and embedding our work through a Researcher-in-Residence approach.  If you are in Cambridge and would like to engage with this work keep an eye on the Cambridge Room website where you can also sign up for email updates.

At this pivotal time to envision what Greater Cambridge will look like in 2040 we are delighted to be working with the Cambridge Room.  It is wonderful to have the opportunity to put our practice values into action.

Dr Mark Drane, Founder & Director

We are really happy to be collaborating with Urban Habitats on this timely report, building on their extraordinary expertise in this area.

Prof. Flora Samuel, Director, The Cambridge Room; Professor of Architecture, University of Cambridge

Urban Habitats is a creative, transdisciplinary research and design practice working internationally in the field of healthy urbanism. Urban Habitats’ work is underpinned by values of: working to address community health; planetary health; reducing inequities; creating with communities; and taking an evidence informed approach.

The Cambridge Room is a a ‘one-stop-shop’ for community consultation creating a ‘shared space’ for various activities and a ‘collective memory‘ for Cambridge. The aim of the Cambridge Room is to raise the quality of the built environment for the benefit of all through collective action. It supports the development of pragmatic, cutting edge research in this area and plays an active role in the development of the UK based Urban Rooms Network. It explores subjects relevant to the built and natural environment locally yet informed by global studies and ideas.