Understanding the 20-Minute Neighbourhood:Making opportunities for people to live well locally

About this guide: Neighbourhoods where people can pop out to a shop, cycle to their doctor or walk children to school are places that many people have enjoyed in the past. But, given planning and urban design practices since the proliferation of the car, being able to do this cannot be taken for granted today. As local authorities look to tackle climate change, air pollution and promote healthier lifestyles, they are also looking to develop places where people can live well locally.Some towns and cities already offer their citizens this style of living. For others, there is a widespread ambition to see 20-minute neighbourhoods widely woven into existing urban, suburban and rural life, so that people there can ‘live well locally’. In Scotland, for example, the government has committed itself to implementing 20-minute neighbourhoods nation-wide alongside its actions and ambitions for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. A major attraction of the 20-minute neighbourhood is that it appears straightforward and easy to grasp. But this is an illusion. Behind this seemingly simply idea lies a great deal of complexity, making it difficult to achieve in practice. Many post-war neighbourhoods have been designed around the car. Creating a 20-minute neighbourhood requires bringing together many strands, not all of them in the gift of the local authority, and many beyond the control of planners and urban designers. Implementing them may require overcoming a degree of fear and scepticism from local stakeholders. So what are the necessary ingredients to create a 20-minute neighbourhood? How do you bring them together? And how do you get the necessary buy-in from stakeholders?This is what the guide seeks to explain. It is intended for anyone who wants to improve their understanding of the meaning and implications of 20-minute neighbourhoods. This includes politicians, policymakers, local council officers and councillors, developers, planners, designers, NGOs, local businesses, community groups and residents’ associations. And urban designers and planners will find it useful too. The guide takes readers through key considerations for a 20-minute neighbourhood strategy. This includes the following ideas. • Understanding and articulating the desired outcomes that politicians, planners, architects, urban designers and other decision makers want to achieve. • Correctly assembling the means - mechanisms, levers, triggers and causal factors – necessary to produce a 20-minute neighbourhood.• Setting out the changes and behaviour required to support the successful operation of a20-minute neighbourhood (essential even where the ends and means can be achieved). It’s worth noting, a ‘20-minute neighbourhood’ defies clear definition. There is no single paradigm around which to organise thought and action. Instead, there are competing viewpoints about how best to deliver 20-minute neighbourhoods, and how much priority should be given to each of their component parts. Each case or project has its own specific context and circumstances. What may work in designing a new urban neighbourhood may not apply when retrofitting an existing one. We hope that armed with the knowledge and advice in this guide, both professionals and lay people seeking to develop 20-minute neighbourhoods will feel better informed and more confident about if and how to rollout the concept to suit their local circumstances.Special thanks are given to sponsors and contributors Urban Design Group, Sustrans, ADAM Architecture, Corstorphine & Wright Architects, Hilson Moran, and Proctor & Matthews Architects © The Authors 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY 4.0.For citation please use: AlWaer, H., & Cooper, I.(2024). Understanding the 20 Minute Neighbourhood: Making opportunities for people to live well locally. University of Dundee. https://doi.org/10.20933/100001289For More Information Contact Dr. Husam AlWaer [email protected]

Operationalising the Bellagio STAMP using selected neighbourhood sustainability assessment frameworks

The 21st century has heralded a plethora of Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessment Frameworks through which a proposed neighbourhood development can be evaluated against an array of Sustainability Indicators (SIs). As these assessment tools continue to become the definition of a sustainable neighbourhood in different context due to their wide acceptance, it is essential to establish a global methodological framework for Sustainability Assessment at the neighbourhood level. This paper operationalises the Bellagio STAMP using the BREEAM Communities; LEED ND V4; PCRS; and the Green Star Communities. This is with the aim of arguing for a consensus approach to Sustainability Assessment at the neighbourhood level. Coupled with this, is to critically review if these selected assessment frameworks could lead to more sustainable neighbourhoods as envisaged. Findings from the study revealed that some of the selected assessment tools align partially with the Bellagio STAMP in their development as discussed in the paper. This study recommends that the Bellagio STAMP could be adopted to offer helpful guidelines and procedure in conceptualising Sustainability Assessment at the Neighbourhood level especially in developing countries where such a framework is yet to be conceived

Intelligent or smart cities and buildings: a critical exposition and a way forward

In the last decade, there has been an undoubtedly rising interest in the field of intelligent and smart built environments from design and construction to management, operational and governance perspectives. These recent endeavors, observed at both academic and professional levels, can be classified into city, neighborhood and building scales. In this context, understanding what we really mean by the word intelligent and smart is crucially important. This technical note attempts to clarify and further explore how intelligence differs from smartness in this context. Having intelligence as the main umbrella embracing other interrelated smart subsets is one way of thinking as supported by previous debates, while there are also other lines of thinking with more preference on the smartness as the core concept

What is an intelligent building? Analysis of recent interpretations from an international perspective

In recent years, the notion of intelligent buildings (IBs) has become increasingly popular due to their potentials for deploying design initiatives and emerging technologies towards maximized occupants’ comfort and well-being with sustainable design. However, various definitions, interpretations, and implications regarding the essence of IBs exist. Various key performance indicators of IBs have been proposed in different contexts. This study explores the notion of IBs and presents an analysis of their main constituents. Through a comparison of these constituents in different contexts, this study aims to extract the common features of IBs leading to an evolved definition which could be useful as a reference framework for design, evaluation, and development of future IBs. Findings also scrutinize the long run benefits of IBs, while demonstrating the constraints and challenges of the current international interpretations

Sick building syndrome: are we doing enough?

Health and well-being are vitally important aspects of people centric building design and are the roots of productivity. Sick building syndrome (SBS) is a collection of factors that can negatively affect physical health in several ways. Besides physical health is also related to psychological well-being because the human body is one interactive biological system. This paper focuses on reviewing the current state of knowledge on building sickness syndrome which has been prevalent as a building illness since the 1970s especially in offices and schools. While the concepts of intelligent, smart and sustainable buildings have gained considerable attention during recent decades, there is now increasing attention being given to designing healthy buildings. This study provides a review about SBS symptoms. Several negative effects of SBS are identified and potential solutions are advocated. Finally, the study stresses the role of built environment and concludes that ongoing research towards tackling SBS and developing healthy indoor environments should not be limited to a single formula as any health-related building design approach is dependent on several interacting factors

Changing the Focus: Viewing Design-Led Events within Collaborative Planning

Design-led planning events typically seek to involve stakeholders in collaborative decision-making about their built environment. In the literature, such events are often treated as one-off or standalone. In this paper, which draws on a survey of the experience of stakeholders involved in them, design-led events are seen in the context of, and in relation to, the collaborative planning process as a whole. Such events are portrayed as being critically affected by how they are instigated; how they are framed; how they are conducted; and, just as importantly, how they are implemented. Three separable strands of activity in collaborative planning processes are identified—design, stakeholder management, and event facilitation—along with the roles played in each of those by those responsible for initiating and then maintaining the engagement and enrolment of participating stakeholder groups in collaborative decision-making. Based on the captured experience of those who have participated in them, the value of design-led events is portrayed not as standing alone but as being crucially dependent on (a) prior decisions made long before any participants gather to engage in them and (b) subsequent decisions made long after the participants have departed. The originality of this paper lies in a desire to begin to construct an empirical base that can be employed for discussing and recommending improvements to collaborative planning processes. The three strands of activity identified by event participants—design, stakeholder management, and facilitation—may individually be relatively weak. But their contributions to collaborative planning can be strengthened by being bound tightly together into a more integrated and coherent whole