The Centre for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) London ‘Urban Lab’ partnership with Westminster City Council (WCC) and UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) focused on launching a series of initiatives, which identified opportunities for London students to be involved in urban dataset projects which are of mutual benefit to WCC.

The Geography in Government awards celebrate excellence in geography across the public sector. Through a combination of student work placements, consultancy work, secondment opportunities and more than 20 MSc and PhD research projects, the Urban Lab partnership has generated indispensable insights and invited new perspectives to shape evidence-based policymaking. Such outcomes include:

• Identifying distribution of and influencing factors for unauthorised short-term lets and related strategy
• Using leisure centre data to identify and engage least physically active residents to improve health outcomes
• Developing a Green Infrastructure Index to locate areas with high demand for green infrastructure benefits
• Measuring footfall to help understand and inform night-time economy strategy
• Conducting research into West End noise complaints to inform WCC’s Street Entertainment management of busking
• Developing an app for the voluntary Soho Angels service run by WCC to support vulnerable people out at night

Commenting on recognition of the Urban Lab partnership with CASA and WCC, Dr Rita Borgo (Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at King’s Department of Informatics) said:

The Urban Lab partnership was also recently shortlisted in the ‘Future Places’ category of the prestigious Local Government Council (LGC) awards. This award category recognises councils that have worked creatively with technology to make the area they serve more prosperous, ‘liveable’ and resilient in the face of likely social, economic, demographic, political or environmental trends.