A major eight-month investigation has been launched into how good design in public spaces can encourage people to behave better.
Carried out by the Design Commission - a cross-party group of parliamentarians and leading representatives from business and industry - the inquiry will investigate how ‘design-led planning policy can create environments in which individuals and communities thrive’.
It will also call for evidence showing 'how infrastructure can be used to design for "good" behaviours’.
Baroness Whitaker and Professor Alan Penn, Dean of the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London, will chair the group.
The report will be published later this year and make recommendations on how to 'stimulate new thinking in planning policy across central and local government.'
The commission argues that behaviour is directly linked to the designed environments around them. It suggests that recent government use of 'nudge theory principles' in the Cabinet Office and policymaking is a positive step forward and the work can be expanded out to the built environment.
