· New study from Quality of Life Foundation and CityFibre shows extent to which access to online connectivity impacts quality of life.
· A total of 80% of people now say that day-to-day life would be impossible or significantly worse without online connectivity.
· Figures suggest a potential digital divide may be emerging as renters were nearly twice as likely to describe their connection as only average or unreliable compared to those who own their own home.
· Usage overall soared during the pandemic — half of us are now spending at least four hours using the internet each day…
By Dominique Staindl
In the first Quality of Life Foundation Associates workshop of 2021, we asked how a sense of wonder could re-energise places post-lockdown. We discovered that the key lies in doing less, gaining people’s trust and placing value in more than just pounds and pence.
Guests Martyn Evans, U+I and Michael Dale, founder of the Glasgow West End Festival, joined QoLF Associates in May to share how they advocate (and agitate) for culture, play and distinctiveness when bringing people together. Chaired by Jonny Anstead, founding director of TOWN, our guests shared the challenges around their initiatives.
Manchester Mayfield
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Quality of Life Foundation Trustees:
- Health and Wellbeing Expertise
- Financial Expertise
We are looking for two Trustees: one with a specialism in health and wellbeing and the other with financial expertise, preferably with some experience of working with a charity, to join our board of Trustees. We have recently become a charitable organisation and are driven by a desire to improve people’s quality of life by making health and wellbeing central to the way we create and care for our homes and communities.
We believe that if we can improve the built environment — the buildings and neighbourhoods where people…
Nicola Bacon, the Founding Director of Social Life, has spent the past year talking to Londoners about social infrastructure: the spaces, places and supports that underpin our local social life. She shows how crucial this “social glue” has proved to the wellbeing and resilience of people across the capital.
Social infrastructure — the spaces, places and supports that underpin our local social life — is central to our quality of life. It is our social glue. When we are meeting our friends in a café, going to a class at a community centre, taking part in a tenants and residents…
By Sadie Morgan 2 March 2021
First published in Building
Too many homes are still being built without people’s health and wellbeing in mind. We must change that, says Sadie Morgan
The snow has melted and spring is in the air. Primroses, crocuses and daffodils are finally showing their heads and, with all this new life, some of the optimism and hope that has been in short supply at times during this cruel, cold winter returns.
It is with optimism and hope that I am pleased and proud to announce the launch of the Quality of Life Framework, an initiative…
The launch of the Quality of Life Framework took place Thursday 4th March 2021 and saw a stellar list of speakers discuss the newly launched Quality of Life Framework and how it might make a change to how we create and care for our homes and communities. Hosting the event was the Chair of the Quality of Life Foundation, Professor Sadie Morgan, OBE; with the Framework’s principle author, David Rudlin of URBED; Deborah Cadman, CEO of West Midlands Combined Authority; Dan Labbad, CEO of the Crown Estate; and the economist, Bridget Rosewell, CBE.
You can watch the event again here…
We have launched a major new publication — the Quality of Life Framework — which represents the culmination of over a year’s worth of research, discussions and engagement with communities, politicians and wider industry stakeholders to understand how the built environment can improve our physical, social and mental wellbeing.
Despite over 170 thousand new homes having been developed in 2019 1, far too many are being built without people’s long-term quality of life in mind, resulting in developments that are of poor quality, badly designed or built in the wrong place.
An estimated 10 million people are living in 4.3…
Roland Karthaus of Matter Architecture asks whether we can build housing that resolves people’s desire for independence and their need to belong, particularly with regard to ‘intergenerational’ housing.
A sense of belonging is a deep human need, linking us to other people and the places we inhabit. Yet we also prize our independence; our ability to move freely and not be tied to one place throughout our lives. COVID has brought these potentially contrasting desires into sharp focus, as we find support through our communities during lockdown, whilst simultaneously suffering a lack of freedom, highlighting its importance.
Historically, belonging and…
One of the few bright spots in the past year has been Shit Planning, an anonymous Twitter account that offers a “celebration of all the Shit Stuff imposed on our environment”. As we exit one of the shittiest years ever, we thought we would talk to Shit Planning about the year just gone and what’s ahead.
Would you prefer to be called Shit Planning? Mr or Mrs Planning? S.P.?
Shit Planning is fine.
We love your no-nonsense approach to all the Shit Stuff imposed on our environment. …
David Cope, a Trustee of the National Park City Foundation, outlines how the UK city dwellers might benefit from National Park Cities.
If there is one thing we’ve all learnt about in 2020, it is more about our homes and neighbourhoods. Covid restrictions have meant more time at home, living locally and different daily routines. And whether you’ve loved that experience or hated it, it really matters.
Quality of Life Foundation research during the spring of 2020 showed that urban dwellers were less satisfied with their homes than those in the suburbs or rural areas. The Country Land and Business…
The Quality of Life Foundation
Making wellbeing central to the way we create and care for our homes and communities. www.qolf.org
