Heritage, health and place:The legacies of local community-based heritage conservation on social wellbeing

Geographies of health challenge researchers to attend to the positive effects of occupying, creating and using all kinds of spaces, including 'green space' and more recently 'blue space'. Attention to the spaces of community-based heritage conservation has largely gone unexplored within the health geography literature. This paper examines the personal motivations and impacts associated with people's growing interest in local heritage groups. It draws on questionnaires and interviews from a recent study with such groups and a conceptual mapping of their routes and flows. The findings reveal a rich array of positive benefits on the participants' social wellbeing with/in the community. These include personal enrichment, social learning, satisfaction from sharing the heritage products with others, and less anxiety about the present. These positive effects were tempered by needing to face and overcome challenging effects associated with running the projects thus opening up an extension to health-enabling spaces debates

The impact of heritage investment on public attitudes to place: evidence from the Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI)

This paper is concerned with public perceptions and attitudes to heritage townscapes, and how these might be influenced by investment in such places, focused on their public realm, and building restoration and improvement as a catalyst for urban regeneration. It draws on a ten-year study of the impact of the Townscape Heritage Initiative, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, on a sample of 16 cases across the UK. By comparing an analysis of changes in townscape quality over this period, with changes in public perceptions (captured through the use of a household survey in all 16 cases at three points in the ten-year period), it draws empirically grounded conclusions about the influence of heritage investment on attitudes and perceptions to the quality of the local environment. The findings from the research suggests that public attitudes are positively influenced by programmes of investment in the built heritage, but that this influence is complex and is not as robust as the physical regeneration itself. The paper also reflects on the relative influence of the post-2008 economic recession on public attitudes to place compared with the influence of heritage investment

Heritage Quay: What Will You Discover? Transforming the Archives of the University of Huddersfield, Yorkshire, UK

The Heritage Quay project is changing how archive services at the University of Huddersfield are delivered. This article examines how the Staff/Space/Collections dependency model and Customer Service Excellence framework have been used, and what lessons can be drawn for other archives

Biodiverse perennial meadows have aesthetic value and increase residents’ perceptions of site quality in urban green-space

We used photo-elicitation studies and a controlled perennial meadow creation experiment at ten urban green-spaces in southern England (five experimental sites and five control sites) to assess green-space visitors’ responses to urban meadows. Multiple meadows, which varied in their structural diversity (height) and plant species richness, were created at each experimental site. Photo elicitation demonstrated that meadows were generally preferred to herbaceous borders and formal bedding planting. Moreover, our experimental meadows had higher preference scores than a treatment that replicated mown amenity grassland, and meadow creation improved site quality and appreciation across a wide range of people. Meadows that contained more plant species and some structural diversity (i.e. were tall or of medium height) were most preferred. The magnitude of these preferences was lower amongst people that used the sites the most, probably due to a strong attachment to the site, i.e. sense of place. People with greater eco-centricity (i.e. those who used the countryside more frequently, had greater ability to identify plant species and exhibited more support for conservation) responded more positively to meadow vegetation. Crucially a wide range of respondents was willing to tolerate the appearance of meadows outside the flowering season, especially when provided with information on their biodiversity and aesthetic benefits and potential cost savings (from reduced cutting frequencies). Re-designing urban green-spaces and parks through the creation of species rich meadows can provide a win–win strategy for biodiversity and people, and potentially improve connections between the two

Children’s use of public spaces and the role of the adult – a comparison of play ranging in the UK, and the leikkipuisto (Play Parks) in Finland

This paper compares the use of public space in the UK and Finland (Leikkipuisto). This is considered with regards to Playranging in the UK and the Ohjaaja in Finlan

Mind the gap: Does what we know about greenspace and wellbeing change what we do?

This chapter addresses questions of the decision-making processes con- cerning investment in urban green spaces. It considers how evidence is deployed in processes of governance, and how nuanced understandings of costs and wellbeing benefits are backgrounded as evidence becomes a bargaining chip in a struggle for resources. Calling on empirical research conducted in the city of Sheffield, this chapter examines these issues through the lens of the everyday work of practitioners and professionals. The chapter highlights the importance of logics of action and inaction, revealing the effects of stakeholders’ reasons for choosing not to take actions that strengthen the links between green spaces and mental wellbeing

Access and quality of parks and associations with obesity: A cross-sectional study.

Public health is increasingly engaging with multi-faceted obesity prevention efforts. Although parks represent key community assets for broader public health, they may not be distributed equitably and associations with obesity are equivocal. We investigated park access and quality relative to deprivation and obesity with individual-level data from the Yorkshire Health Study. Compared to the least deprived areas, the moderately and most deprived areas had a greater park access and park quality in terms of features and amenities. However, parks in the moderately and most deprived areas also had the most safety concerns and incivilities. Although deprivation was associated with obesity, contrary to current policy guidance, both park access and quality appear less important for understanding variations in obesity within this study. Although sub-group analyses by deprivation tertile revealed that low quality park amenities in highly and moderately deprived areas may be important for understanding obesity prevalence, all other associations were non-significant

New opportunities for the heritage Consultation document

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