This event is part of the Unusual Suspects Festival, a unique festival of ideas, solutions and discussion which runs across different London venues from 14-16 June 2017.

Our lived experiences are an incredible asset to understand our built environment and making decisions about planning services, however this is often overlooked. This walkshop will help build up a shared understanding of how we interact with our built environment and will generate ideas about how we can capture this and channel it into better decision making.

The area around Elephant and Castle sets a good backdrop for this conversation. The area has undergone significant physical transformations and is emblematic of London’s changing urban landscape with a mix of established residential areas and high-density urban developments.

During the walk there will be stops at a set of locations to measure our feelings in relation to what we come across. There will be an examination on how these places make us feel, and whether collectively sharing our sometimes divergent experiences of a place can help us feel more connected to it. Participants’ experiences will be captured through questions, drawing on the Urban Realities Laboratory’s ground breaking research methods.

Understanding the psycho-geography of the area can help everyone deal with change, whether they are residents concerned about the number of large scale developments, or urban planners creating new plans and strategies.

OUR CHALLENGE TO YOU! Help us make this session unusual! Bring along you mum, your dad, your child, your partner, your colleague or anyone else who would not usually attend an event like this. We need to start talking to people we know, and people we don't, in a different way. Join us!