Light exposure has important effects on human health and wellbeing, regulating our sleep/wake cycles, and influencing our mental and physical health. Advances in our understanding of the role of light in health, and emerging lighting technologies, now present opportunities to adjust lighting to promote optimal physical and mental health and performance. In this blog, Professor […]
Incorporating health and wellbeing into housing developments
Despite the health, social and environmental benefits of high-quality housing developments, delivering healthy and sustainable homes and neighbourhoods remains a challenging task. In this blog, Caglar Koksal outlines how housing developers and local authorities can work together to create healthy, high-quality homes while also addressing long-standing health and housing inequalities. High-quality developments deliver positive public […]
The Child of the North: Building a fairer future after COVID-19
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, growing evidence has shown the effects of the disease, and measures to contain it, have not been felt equally across the UK, with the North of England one of the hardest hit regions. Even before the pandemic, the North suffered from higher levels of poverty, poor health, and inequality compared to […]
The retrofitting challenge in Manchester
During January-March 2020, Mateusz Ziembla, together with Dr Elvira Uyarra and Professor Jonatan Pinkse, undertook a study for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), funded by Research England, aimed at analysing the challenges associated with improving the energy efficiency of existing housing stock in order to articulate recommendations for policy action. Cost-effective decarbonisation of domestic […]
Build in haste, repent at leisure? Post-pandemic planning at the precipice
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to discussions on what shape planning should take post-crisis. Here, Prof Iain White, Prof Graham Haughton, and Dr Nuno Pinto outline how current regulations have exacerbated difficulties for some people in lockdown, discuss how opportunistic developers or politicians may seek to hijack the policy responses, and suggest solutions to ensure […]
Is the Immigration Act 2016 a racist policy against BME citizens in the housing market?
Dr William Shankley, a research associate at the Centre of Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), examines the impacts of the Immigration Act 2016 on black and minority ethnic (BME) citizens within the housing market and asks if it is a measure to further the government’s hostile environment. There is a long history of BME households facing […]
Whiteness, class, and cohesion
The absence of extremism is not automatically evidence of ‘cohesive’ communities. Recent research identifies possibilities for intervention and political change which involves both reframing the problem of ‘cohesion’ and expanding its scope. For a number of years there has been growing interest in the disadvantage experienced by ‘poor white British’ communities. Over a decade since […]
Manchester has its housing problems – but comparisons to London are off the mark
Tom Arnold, a postgraduate researcher of economic development in Northern England, examines current housing policy in Greater Manchester and the challenge to develop a housing strategy which supports its growing economy whilst simultaneously tackling homelessness and deprivation. Housing policy in Manchester is under scrutiny and campaign groups are concerned that the city centre is becoming […]
Learning from the draft Greater Manchester Spatial Framework process
Graham Haughton, Professor of Urban Planning at The University of Manchester outlines 12 lessons from the recent debates around a new Spatial Framework for Greater Manchester. The Greater Manchester Spatial Framework (GMSF) is a 20 year strategic plan for the city region. The draft GMSF was planned for what should have been an election free […]
What is it that we actually want and how are we going to get it?
Resident of Manchester Dr Sophie King, from the University of Sheffield, blogs on her experiences of recent political events in Manchester and discusses her disappointment in proceedings so far. Here she highlights a lack of viable policy proposals and looks at what can be learnt from small scale initiatives elsewhere in the city, as well […]