Playing with Place at the National Urban Design Conference
I took Playing with Place: Co-designing Greener, More Resilient Communities to the National Urban Design Conference in Glasgow, exploring how water, nature and people can work together to create better places.
Through hands-on model-making, collaborative design and unexpected challenges, participants explored different perspectives and made ideas tangible. The workshop created space to experiment, share ideas and consider how playful approaches can support urban design, placemaking and climate resilience.
The models built by attendees provided a starting point for wider conversations about the places we create and the communities we design them with. Alongside the ideas and insights, there were plenty of laughs — including a very Glasgow minifigure sporting a traffic cone!
A huge thank you to everyone who took part and embraced the process, and to the Urban Design GroupUrban Design Group for the invitation.
Playing with Place demonstrates how creative, hands-on approaches can bring people together, encourage new perspectives and support collaborative thinking about greener, more resilient communities.
Interested in using playful, participatory approaches to urban design, placemaking or climate resilience? Get in touch.
What could local government reform mean for planning?
The Scottish Government’s proposal for regional authorities and new community-level authorities represents a major shift in how planning decisions could be organised. Areas such as housing, strategic planning and some aspects of transport may move to regional bodies, while community authorities could take on householder planning applications, community planning and greenspace management
The central question for planning is how decisions at different scales will connect. Strategic planning needs regional coordination, but good planning also depends on local knowledge, community priorities and an understanding of what makes places distinctive. The proposal emphasises subsidiarity and strengthened community participation, suggesting a more deliberate relationship between regional strategy and community influence.
The reform is still at an early stage. Howevever, it opens a space to rethink how regional strategy, local knowledge and community participation can work together to shape better places.
Joining the Highland Adapts Advisory Panel
Selected to join the Highland Adapts Advisory Panel for 2026–2027, contributing planning and place-based expertise to work focused on building a more climate-resilient Highland.
The Advisory Panel brings together expertise from across the public, private, third and community sectors to help turn climate risk assessment into action, including priorities such as the Highland Resilience Fund
Learn more about Highland Adapts →Selected for the Eklipse Expert Working Group
Selected for an international expert working group exploring how games and game-based approaches can strengthen the science–policy interface.
This work brings together expertise from across Europe to explore how creative approaches can support evidence-informed decision-making, knowledge exchange and collaboration between researchers, policymakers and practitioners through creative participatory approaches.
Learn more about the Eklipse Expert Working Group →New publication: Gamifying Flood Resilience
Published research led by Dr Sarah Crowe exploring how serious games, playful placemaking and blue green infrastructure approaches can support participatory planning and climate resilience.
The paper examines how creative and collaborative methods can help communities, practitioners and researchers explore complex environmental challenges and develop more inclusive approaches to flood resilience.
View publication →