Tranquil City: identifying opportunities for urban tranquillity to promote healthy lifestyles

ABSTRACT

Rest and recuperation are fundamental to well-being. Experiencing tranquil spaces can support this need amid stressful urban living. Tranquil Pavement London helps people discover and share tranquil spaces and navigate via low pollution pathways, exploring connections between subjective and objective datasets. This paper discusses our approach, tools and ways forward.

KEYWORDS:

• Tranquillity
• wellbeing
• urban green spaces

Biographical note

Tranquil City is a research collective helping to embrace tranquillity and best practice design that promotes healthy and liveable places within cities, valuing the context of local areas and the people who inhabit them. They engage with local communities, exploring various urban areas and communities to better understand the concept and use their multidisciplinary skills to help integrate tranquillity within cities for the better. Their Tranquil Pavement London is a collaboration with the technology co-operative Outlandish.

www.tranquilcity.co.uk; www.instagram.com/tranquilcityapp; www.twitter.com/tranquilcityapp; www.facebook.com/TranquilCity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the OrganiCity project, which received funding by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme “H2020-EU.2.1.1.3. - Future Internet: Software, hardware, Infrastructures, technologies and services” under Grant number 645198.

Notes on contributors

Grant Waters

Grant Waters is the Founding Director of Tranquil City and is an acoustic consultant specialising in urban soundscapes, architectural acoustics and auralisation modelling at Anderson Acoustics. He has led two successful projects funded by OrganiCity, a European Union Horizon 2020 funded project exploring citizen-led co-creation to address urban challenges, and has experience in leading large scale architectural acoustic projects spanning educational, residential, arts and commercial office developments. His work focusses on our experiential and emotional relationships with cities and how this affects health and wellbeing, as well as to inform practices and measures that promote healthier lifestyles.

Ben Warren

Ben Warren is a founder of Tranquil City. He has twelve years of experience in professional air quality consultancy. He is an Associate Director at Wood and an expert in the monitoring, analysis and prediction of air quality. He is experienced in the dissemination of complex technical findings for diverse audiences. During his career, he has provided technical support to national, regional and local government as well as clients in urban planning.

Eleanor Ratcliffe

Eleanor Ratcliffe is a Lecturer in Environmental Psychology at University of Surrey. She conducts research and teaching on environment-wellbeing relationships, with emphasis on restorative environments, sensory experiences, and place attachment.

Julie Godefroy

Julie Godefroy is a Sustainability Consultant with experience in environmental, health and wellbeing strategies. Julie has been the sustainability advisor on the National Trusts Historic Environment Group for several years and is particularly interested in engaging urban audiences with our environment and architectural heritage, including public spaces.