Re-Imaging the UK's Built Environment

In the midst of great disruption can come an even greater opportunity.

Covid-19 has created a massive disruption in how we use the UK's buildings (the 'built environment'). Thousands of businesses have closed their offices -- either temporarily or permanently. People 'forced' to work from home have found they are as productive as when they were in an office and their employers are rethinking their need for office space (size, location, facilities). In some cases, no office at all; in others, an office for occasional team meetings. Retailers, restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops are closing outlets as shoppers and diners opt for online and home delivery, and there are fewer office workers for lunchtime purchases.

The opportunity within this is that many organisations (including the UK Government) who own or operate the UK's built environment are rethinking what they now do with the office blocks and business parks that companies don't want to lease, and the high streets and shopping malls that losing more tenants by the day. The opportunity is to literally to 're-imagine how we use the UK's built environment'

This project will deliver a tool to quickly and easily display the potential uses for any building or area in the UK. It will help answer the question, 'what can we do with this building/space'. And that's our proposal.

We'll build a clickable map to 'score' every location in the UK on a range of user-selected criteria. It'll combine (for example) the current and planned Broadband speeds for every location, combined with Office of National Statistics, Land Registry, and Local council info, as well as our own TravelTime catchment areas (both 'normal' and 'covid safe' journeys). The tool will be easy to use, thus available to more than just Geographic Information Specialists and it'll be possible for users to select / deselect different data sets guided by an algorithm we'll create. It will turn a mass of data into actionable information.

We call this project 'Re-Imagining the UK's Built Environment' (or RIBE) because that's what it will enable. For example, the owner of two empty shopping malls could see that one site might be best re-purposed as affordable housing (the tool displayed the site's proximity to schools, health facilities and the shortage of affordable housing in the area); the other site might be best suited as a warehouse (the tool displayed its travel time catchment area and proximity to main road / rail /airports and the availability of a nearby suitable labour force). A business rethinking their need for office space could find a site for a new / smaller venue that all the team can reach occasionally (but not daily) with fast broadband and accessible via covid-safe forms of travel. Their staff could see new areas to live, maybe further away if they only have an occasional commute.

Such a tool doesn't exist today -- but with this grant, we can build it and enable the reimagining of how to use the UK's built environment.