Catch-Up
23 Apr 2026
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Aewell: Measuring How Urban Landscapes Boost Health, Wellbeing & Community

Healthy places

Well-designed urban landscapes bring people closer to nature, promote happiness, health, and can reduce stress and inequalities. Despite the wealth of evidence that backs up why urban nature is good for us, there is little evidence on how specific landscape designs and green spaces provide value to local communities.

The Aewell impact assessment framework and toolkit builds long-standing evidence on how your landscape designs, green spaces, and nature engagement activities can deliver health and wellbeing benefits to the local community in the short, medium, and long term. It has been designed by Tranquil City in partnership with the University of Surrey’s Environmental Psychology Research Group, and supported by Natural England, Innovate UK and the British Academy.

In this webinar recording, learn how to apply the toolkit to your projects, helping you provide robust evidence on how your designs support health, wellbeing, and nature connection at the individual and community level. By doing so, you can demonstrate to your clients how your designs deliver on their social value, ESG and public health policy aims, whilst also providing a clear return on investment.

Learning outcomes

Get the latest evidence on how good landscape design can support inclusive nature spaces and wellbeing outcomes in urban areas
How to systematically collect important information on physical, engagement and subjective experience of your landscape designs
An overview of the framework, it’s themes, measures, assessment cycle and how to apply it to your projects
Key drivers and policies on why clients are taking social value and ESG reporting seriously
How this systematic evidence can demonstrate causality between your landscape design and wider social and environmental outcomes, at the local, regional and national level

Speakers

Dr Eleanor Ratcliffe

Dr Eleanor Ratcliffe is an experienced researcher and academic in Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey, with expertise in the design and experience of environments that support psychological wellbeing, especially places in nature. She examines how these places can improve mood and reduce stress, improve cognitive performance, and enhance community connectedness.
Ellie is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey and part of the Environmental Psychology Research Group (EPRG) and joined Tranquil City as a British Academy Innovation Fellow for 2024-2025. The fellowship developed and co-designed impact assessment methods with local communities and urban design practitioners.

Grant Waters

Grant Waters is a Director at Tranquil City. He has extensive experience in coordinating multidisciplinary innovations that bridge gaps between research, practice and positive impact. He has a background in acoustic consultancy with expertise in urban soundscapes and has led projects for governmental bodies, including Defra, Natural England, Transport for London, European Commission, as well as projects with architectural and urban planning practices, local authorities, NGOs, business improvement districts and technology companies.