Dear Sports Officer,
I am emailing you with a request for your support in disseminating information about the research project ‘Your Place and Mine’ to the community sports groups and sports organisations in your area. We would greatly appreciate if you could forward the following information to the various community sports groups that the Offaly County Council is involved with and share it on your social media pages.
We are researching people’s awareness of and participation in their local and national built environment and this is a unique and innovative research project in which we really want to capture a broad view – YOUR view. It is an opportunity for people from your local area to contribute to research which will be brought to policy makers who make decisions on local areas, housing, environment etc. The built environment after all is YOUR place AND mine.
Until Friday November 7th 2014, people across Ireland are invited to access and complete this survey online at www.yourplaceandmine.ie. The survey will take just 20-30 minutes to complete.
Further detailed information about the survey can be found below. Please do not hesitate to contact the team with any queries.
Many thanks,
Emmett Scanlon,
Project Leader, University College Dublin.
emmett.scanlon@ucd.ie
‘Your Place and Mine,’ is a national survey to explore public awareness of and participation in architecture and the built environment in Ireland, initiated by a research team from the Schools of Architecture and Psychology at University College Dublin.
From September 25th and until Friday November 7th 2014, people across Ireland are invited to access and complete this survey online at www.yourplaceandmine.ie. The survey aims to gather the views of the general public across Ireland and will take just 20-30 minutes to complete.
In October the research team will work with local research leaders on the ground in parts of Ireland to gather further views.
Emmett Scanlon from UCD School of Architecture has said: “The built environment belongs to us all and we need a better evidence base to inform the challenging decisions we are taking in Ireland. We need to know what citizens think about local and national issues such as housing for example. Our intention is to publish and make this new and useful data available to housing, design and built environment policy makers, giving them a real opportunity to include the attitudes, views and opinions of the Irish public in their future work. We are delighted to launch this project in collaboration with Create and we hope everyone will participate and complete this survey. We ask people to share this survey online and among their community and to encourage people to get involved.”
SOME CONTEXT ON THE SURVEY:
There is a growing body of research which suggests that the built environment can have an effect on our physical and emotional health and wellbeing. It has been suggested that safe, well designed environments can encourage physical activity and sociability and that proper participation in decisions that are made about your local built environment are associated with more feelings of belonging and ownership. These findings might indicate that the built environment could be used as a more effective tool to make a healthier, happier society. In order to begin to examine this in an Irish context, it is important to explore current attitudes, views and opinions on architecture and the built environment in Ireland and this survey seeks to do that.
There is a recognised housing shortage in Ireland and the challenge of providing affordable, quality housing has been presented in the media as a national crisis. As work is done to address this crisis it has been suggested that Irish building regulations may be too restrictive, and what is needed is a system that will allow the sector to produce homes faster and more economically. However have these suggestions been based on the views of the general popuation in Ireland? There is a lack of concrete information about the preferences held by people about where they live and in what type of house they believe best suits their current and future needs. This survey seeks to gain specific insight into our attitudes to our houses and homes today in Ireland in an effort to contribute to the discussion on how we might best provide homes for people now and in the future.
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Emmett Scanlon
+353 (0) 87 9189020
School of Architecture, Richview Campus, University College Dublin, Dublin 4.
PROJECT CREDITS:
‘Your Place and Mine: A survey to explore public awareness of and participation in architecture and the built environment in Ireland’, is a research project initiated by Emmett Scanlon (School of Architecture) and Dr Suzanne Guerin (School of Psychology) of University College Dublin, in collaboration with Create (National Development Agency for Collaborative arts), with additional.
The UCD research team comprises of Principal Investigator Emmett Scanlon, Co-Investigator Dr Suzanne Guerin and Research Assistant Ekaterina Tikhoniouk.
This project has been part-funded, following an open-call process, under the Government Policy on Architecture 2009-2015 Implementation Programme by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Additional support is provided by the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland.
NOTES ON THE SURVEY:
The survey consists of five sections, exploring different aspects of people’s homes and local area, their views on building and the built environment in Ireland, participation in the discussions and decisions on the built environment and people’s knowledge or and experience with architects. Sample questions are given below:
- What do you like about where you live?
- How likely are you to live in an apartment?
- Is placing pylons underground and windmills offshore worth the expense in order to protect the countryside?
- Do you disagree that better quality buildings and public spaces improve people’s quality of life?
- How interested are you in being more involved in decisions affecting your local built environment?”
