About this session
This session explores how neighbourhood environments shape access to everyday services and, in turn, influence health and inequality. Grounded in the University of Glasgow’s OPTIMA (Orienting Policy Towards Inequality Minimising Action) project, it introduces a population-scale approach to understanding “local living” across the UK.
Using the 20-minute neighbourhood as a guiding framework, the project maps access to key amenities—such as healthcare, food, and green space—across Great Britain and examines how these patterns vary across levels of deprivation. The session invites participants to reflect on how place-based planning can better support equitable, healthy communities.
Areas of Exploration
Themes we will explore in this session include:
- Local living – What does it mean for a neighbourhood to support daily life within 20 minutes, and how does this vary across contexts.
- Service and amenity access – How access to essential resources is distributed spatially, and where gaps or clustering occur.
- Health inequalities – How differences in local environments may reinforce or mitigate existing social and health inequalities.
- Co-produced in research – including community systems mapping workshops, a Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement group, and public engagement projects at the Glasgow Science Festival to inform, shape, and disseminate the research.
You might like to have a look at the OPTIMA StoryMap before you join the session. However, this is entirely optional. Do also feel free to just turn up and find out more.
Click on this link register for your free place.
About Research Rooms
The Research Rooms series is a collaboration between national charity The Glass-House Community Led Design and The Open University’s Design Group. These events share learning, resources and anecdotes from the many research projects we have done together. In some sessions, we also invite others to co-host and share findings from their own projects, creating space for them to reach new audiences.
Research Rooms are informal online spaces for discussion with members of the research team from academia, practice and communities. Those attending can learn about the projects, their outputs and outcomes and the influence they have had on those involved. There will also be space to share your own experience and explorations of the project themes.
More about the OPTIMA Project
This work forms part of a broader research programme investigating how the 20-minute neighbourhood policy may impact health inequalities. By combining spatial data with health and socioeconomic indicators, the project develops a scalable framework for identifying and comparing local access patterns.
Explore more:
- Visual overview of project and findings: OPTIMA StoryMap
- Interactive dashboard: OPTIMA Dashboard
- Research project page: University of Glasgow OPTIMA project
- Policy context: National Planning Framework 4
About our Co-host
Reese Green is a researcher at the University of Glasgow. She holds a master’s in data analytics and previously worked as an analyst for a non-profit focused on equitable benefit enrolment in the US. Her research explores social determinants of health and health inequalities using GIS and data visualization.