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What Makes a Good Place? Place Standard Tool Training - first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region

The UNSW Cities Institute hosted a Place Standard Tool Training the Trainers workshop lead by John Howie from Public Health Scotland. This is Australia’s first steps with a tool to help develop good quality places for our health and wellbeing.

Published on the 06 March 2026
Participants working on their actions based on the “is good” and “could be better” observation with the facilitator John Howie.
Participants working on their actions based on the “is good” and “could be better” observation with the facilitator John Howie.

The Cities Institute was fortunate to have John Howie from Public Health Scotland to lead the Place Standard Tool workshop at UNSW Health Translation Hub. John heads up the newly designated World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Place, and the UNSW Cities Institute is honoured to be the lead partner for the Western Pacific Region. The Place Standard is a community engagement framework developed by Public Health Scotland for assessing the quality of places. It has been applied in over 20 countries and translated into more than 20 languages.

We are pleased to have forty participants from across academia, local government, public health, and the built environment come together to learn how to use and facilitate the Tool. The diversity came through in the richness of the discussions. Participants highlighted the solution-focused nature of the process and the advantage of having such a wide range of perspectives in the room. We are glad that 90% of participants felt confident using the Tool, and nearly 80% plan to apply it in their work or community.
Group photo of the participants and their Place Standard compass diagrams.

A special big thank you to John Howie for leading us through the day and sharing his wealth of experience with the Tool, to David Cami and the UNSW Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture for their welcome and support, and to colleagues at the Randwick Health and Innovation Precinct (Sophie Forbat, Tim Reagan, Natalie Walsh) for hosting our walkabout.

We look forward to the growth of the Place Standard Tool program across the Asia-Pacific region. Interested in the Tool or how it could work in your context? Get in touch! We'd love to chat.

Read more insight about the amazing workshop from the article published by Croakey Health Media: Australia’s first steps with a tool to help develop healthier places and communities – Croakey Health Media

Feel free to contact

Dr Jinhee Kim｜ jinhee.kim@unsw.edu.au