At Greengage, we’re working with forward-thinking partners to embed sustainable masterplanning principles into projects across the UK. From city-wide visions to neighbourhood regeneration, our approach considers the needs of people, nature, and future climate realities in creating sustainable places to live, work and play.

People – designing for healthy communities

Visions and masterplans often focus on the physical fabric of a place – its buildings, streets, and infrastructure – but sometimes to the exclusion of the people who actually live there. The result risks being disconnected from real community needs.

In our work with the City of Hull and Planit, we developed a social sustainability strategy for the city’s 20-year City Centre Vision. A detailed socioeconomic baseline and discussions with the Council informed the engagement strategy to include unrepresented groups. We connected with the local community to better understand their experiences and identified gaps in social infrastructure in the proposed neighbourhoods.

This approach shaped a vision with a strong focus on:

• Child health and wellbeing – creating active, healthy spaces within the planned “Child Friendly City”.
• Inclusive opportunities – especially for women and girls, by providing safe, accessible spaces for education, skills-building, and community activities.
• Accessibility and connectivity – ensuring the city centre is welcoming for people of all abilities, with easy-to-use public transport, new clear walking and wheeling routes and green public spaces for all to use.

As part of the 20-year vision, we’re developing a bespoke Social Value Framework with the City Council to drive and measure the social, economic, and environmental outcomes as projects progress. It will also ensure that future initiatives stemming from the Vision support and strengthen community health and quality of life.

Ecosystems – using nature to support regenerative places

The natural world is critical for managing extreme weather and is responsible for our food and resource production. It is fundamental to our health, wellbeing and community resilience. Yet access to high-quality green space is still limited – only 15% of people have doorstep¹ access to green space in the England according to recent Natural England data².

Our masterplan approach assesses existing green and blue infrastructure—its type, quality, and accessibility—alongside ecological habitats, using an Ecological Constraints and Opportunities Plan to inform where green space enhancement will provide the most significant benefits for people and nature.

Supporting biodiversity and ecosystems to thrive creates vibrant spaces for activity and connection. Greening strategy aligned with stakeholder input supports health and wellbeing goals, enhances nature, and contributes to wider environmental aims such as improving air quality and managing heat and flood risk.

We prioritise nature-based solutions, such as:

• Community green spaces like allotments that encourage social connection, learning about growing and healthy eating.
• Travel routes that are green corridors, creating opportunity for active, healthy lives and biodiversity growth.
• Reconnecting towns and cities to their local watercourses; ‘daylighting’ streams and culverts, regenerating industrial river edges, and introducing clean open water to create travel corridors and connected green spaces for humans and nature, which can support flood management.

Evidence shows that spending just two hours a week in nature can have significant health benefits³. It’s therefore important that masterplans include green space in the right quantity and quality. Our sustainable development briefs include ecology and biodiversity as an integral part of place making proposals, using tools like the Environmental Benefits of Nature framework to measure and communicate their impact.

Understanding the climate risks

Climate change is already affecting our health, infrastructure, and economy. Extreme weather events, such as the four heatwaves in summer 2024 that caused over 1,300 heat-related deaths in England⁴, will become more frequent and severe without urgent action. Elderly people are more vulnerable and the ageing population in the UK puts people further at risk.

Climate risk stems from environmental changes and shifts in policy, technology, and regulation. These risks—and their significant health, environmental, and financial impacts—must shape sustainable planning. Understanding the current situation is important, but long-term visions need to look further ahead. At Greengage we assess the probability and impact of future risk along with a cost assessment of that risk to inform an adaptation plan and brief for future development. For example:

• With a major housing association, we’re assessing the physical climate risk of their assets including flooding and extreme temperatures. Understanding the implications for occupant health and organisational finances helps inform the case for action in retrofit and public realm improvements.
• Work with Grosvenor demonstrated the positive impact of green infrastructure interventions in Central London on temperature.

By understanding future risk, we help ensure places remain safe, healthy, and investable over the long term. Without this, limits are set on how successfully places can develop. Cities and towns lacking strategies to mitigate and adapt to heat, flooding, or drought risk harming population health and future investment opportunities.

The broader benefits of sustainable masterplanning

Healthy, resilient places that support nature benefit everyone, from young children to older generations. They strengthen community cohesion, boost employment, reduce inequalities and ease the burden on public services. At the same time, they deliver environmental and financial resilience, enhance biodiversity, and remain adaptable to future challenges—making them more attractive to investors and ultimately, more successful propositions.