What Homes England’s new placemaking guidance means for healthy places

Homes England’s latest suite of placemaking guidance brings together a clear set of principles for creating neighbourhoods that support healthier, more connected ways of living. At its heart is a simple idea: successful places are about more than designing good homes. They are shaped by how people move through, use and experience their surroundings, and by the everyday connections between homes, streets, landscape, amenities and community infrastructure.

The guidance – including Building for a Healthy Life, Parking: What Works Where, Delivering Quality Mobility Hubs, Delivering Quality Local Centres and Streets for a Healthy Life – provides a practical framework for putting these principles into action.

Several TateHindle projects, including Beaulieu, Great Kneighton and Darwin Green, feature in the guidance. Each demonstrates our belief that the best places are rooted in their context and designed as a coherent whole, with movement, landscape, homes and amenities working together to create distinctive and resilient neighbourhoods.

As TateHindle Director Mike Jamieson explains: “Our approach to placemaking starts with understanding what makes a place distinctive – its physical character, landscape, heritage and existing connections. The latest Homes England guidance reinforces the importance of thinking about all these elements together. When they are planned as an interconnected network, rather than as separate pieces, we can create neighbourhoods that encourage people to walk, cycle and meet, support health and wellbeing, and ultimately create places where people want to live.”