Not all cities have extensive data on environmental quality available. But most of our urban populations are exposed to high levels of pollution that negatively affect health and wellbeing.
We believe that everyone should have access to information that improves our understanding of the environmental quality around us. It can help us make healthier daily decisions that reduce exposure to harmful air pollution and noise and increase exposure to more tranquil areas. Tranquil spaces can help us find balance and be mentally restorative as well as combat loneliness. However, this kind of data isn’t usually available, especially in our cities.
Tranquil City Bristol!
For the past few months, we have been lucky enough to be working with Bristol City Council and our friends Go Jauntly to create the Tranquil City Index for Bristol, our first city outside of London! The collaboration will see the Go Jauntly app Green Routes feature enhanced to use our data to calculate greener, leafier, quieter and less polluted routes between your A to B. The aim is to encourage more people to walk and discover tranquil, greener and more nature-filled environments every day.
Our collaborative project helps work toward the Bristol One City Plan ambitions of promoting a radical modal shift towards walking and cycling, tackling health inequalities in active travel and promoting reductions in air quality emissions and exposure. Urban populations are growing and compact, walkable cities can help address the climate emergency by providing people with more efficient and less carbon-intense ways of living well (IPCC report Section 2: Why do cities matter?’).
Creating people-centred data and making it usable
We are using our brand new data creation model to predict environmental data layers for the Bristol City region, down to a 20 m x 20 m resolution. It includes air pollution, quality of green space and tree density information, which aren’t currently available for the entire city. These layers and more go into forming the Tranquil City Index, which is then mapped to the city’s street network.
The index will help inform the Go Jauntly Green Routes feature to maximise the tranquil potential of your journey, displaying a tranquillity rating to help nudge the app user to see how the alternative can boost enjoyment and wellbeing, as well as reduce noise and pollution.
Testing with local communities
The feature will be launched all across the city this May and will be tested in two focus area workshops in mid-June. If you’re a local resident, or if you’re interested in being part of testing the new app feature with us, you can register to attend the Barton Hill workshop on 17th June here or the Filwood workshop on 18th June here.
Scaling to new cities near you
This project demonstrates how we can create our unique datasets for any city to help cities and their citizens work towards greener, healthier and more equitable cities and work towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Get in touch with us if you’d like us to create our datasets in your city! Because all cities should be Tranquil Cities.
Keep it tranquil
Grant Waters
Tranquil City Co-founder & Director