The research centre for inclusive access to outdoor environments

Profile

Catharine is a founder and Director of OPENspace, established in 2001. She was educated at Southampton and Edinburgh Universities and has practised as a landscape architect in Vancouver, Canada, and in the UK, where she made a significant contribution to the Megget Reservoir Scheme for W J Cairns and Partners from 1977 to 1983; this project was overall winner in the 1987 BBC Design Awards. She was Head of the School of Landscape Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art from 1989-2000 and continues to teach in Landscape Architecture and direct its PhD programme.

Catharine is a Fellow of the Chartered Landscape Institute and a Trustee of the Landscape Design Trust. She was awarded the international Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) Outstanding Paper Award (the first of its kind) in 1998 and the Research Award in the Landscape Institute (UK) Biennial Awards in 2004 and (with Penny travlou) in 2008..

Catharine was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard and Penn Universities, USA, in 1994-95. She chaired the Landscape Institute’s Research Sub-Committee from its inception in 1997 until 2003. She was a member of the Higher Education Funding Councils’ Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) Built Environment Assessment Panel in 2001 and deputy chair of the RAE2008 Architecture and Built Environment panel. She was a member of the Forestry Commission’s Advisory Committee on Forestry Research from 2004-09 and currently sits on the Scottish Government’s Good Places, Better Health (GPBH) Evaluation Group. She has lectured widely throughout the UK, Europe, Canada and Australia and recently visited China as one of a select group of UK delegates for a two-day Healthy Ageing and the Physical Environment workshop hosted by the Medical Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Tsinghua University (Beijing).

Research projects

Catharine Ward Thompson has engaged in research consultancy for a range of clients including the Scottish Executive/Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, NHS Health Scotland, the Countryside Agency, English Nature, Natural England, the Forestry Commission, Scottish Natural Heritage and CABE Space. Under the auspices of OPENspace Research Centre, she has directed research for the Forestry Commission on social inclusion in relation to use of local woodland environments in Central Scotland and on increasing the diversity of access to the countryside for the Countryside Agency and Natural England.

Catharine is active in the Scottish Physical Activity Research Collaboration (SPARColl) for NHS Health Scotland, exploring the influence of outdoor environments on people’s physical activity, particularly walking. She is also leading research within OPENspace on ‘GreenHealth’, in collaboration with the Macaulay Institute and Glasgow University, focused on the contribution of green and open space in public health and well-being, for the Scottish Government. In addition, she is Director of the I’DGO - inclusive design for getting outdoors - research consortium - which particularly focuses on older people. Collaborators include Salford and Warwick Universities and over 30 partners, embracing government agencies, professional institutes, practitioners and charities, ensuring that research outputs will be user-friendly and effectively disseminated to a range of end users, from design professionals to community groups. She is part of KT-EQUAL, the knowledge transfer consortium to ensure research on extending quality life for older and disabled people is effectively shared with stakeholders and research end-users.

Catharine’s early research focused on children’s perceptions of play environments, using projective methods. She subsequently undertook analysis of policy drivers, perceptions and user needs in urban park renewal in North America, Europe and the UK. She has since researched inclusive access to open space for a range of age groups, and in different contexts, recently demonstrating the key importance of childhood experience of natural environments close to home. She co-edited the first Open Space: People Space book, published in 2007 and the second, on Innovative Approaches to researching Landscape and Health, in 2010.

Selected publications

Ward Thompson, C. (1998) A Projective Approach to a Language of Landscape Design. Landscape Review 4 (2) 27-40

Ward Thompson, C (1998) Historic American Parks and Contemporary Needs’ Landscape Journal 17 (1) 1-25

Ward Thompson, C. (2002) Urban Open Space in the 21st Century’. Landscape and Urban Planning 60 (2) 59-72

Bell, S, Ward Thompson, C and Travlou, P. (2003) Contested views of freedom and control: Children, teenagers and urban fringe woodlands in Central Scotland’. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 2, 87-100

Countryside Agency (2004) Diversity Review – Options for Implementation. Research Note CRN 75, The Countryside Agency, prepared by OPENspace. February 2004. (author).

Ward Thompson, C, Aspinall, P, Bell, S, Findlay, C, Wherrett, J and Travlou, P. (2004) Open Space and Social Inclusion Local Woodland Use in Central Scotland. Edinburgh: Forestry Commission

Ward Thompson, C., Aspinall, P., Bell, S. and Findlay, C. (2005) “It gets you away from everyday life”: local woodlands and community use – what makes a difference? Landscape Research 30 (1) 109-146

Ward Thompson, C., Findlay, C. and Southwell, K. (2005). Lost in the Countryside: developing a toolkit to address wayfinding problems. In Martens, Bob, and Keul Alexander G. (eds.) Designing Social Innovation: Planning, Building, Evaluating. Göttingen: Hogrefe & Huber Publishers. 38-45

Ward Thompson, C. (2005) Who benefits from landscape architecture? In Harvey, S and Fieldhouse, K (eds) The Cultured Landscape: Designing the environment in the 21st century. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 95-124
Sugiyama, T. & Ward Thompson, C. (2005). Environmental support for outdoor activities and older people’s Quality of Life. Journal of Housing for the Elderly, 19 (3/4) 169-187

Ward Thompson, C. (2006) Patrick Geddes and the Edinburgh Zoological Garden: Expressing Universal Processes through Local Place, Landscape Journal 25 (1), 80-93

Ward Thompson, C., Travlou, P. and Roe, J. (2006) Free-Rage Teenagers: The Role of Wild Adventure Space in Young People’s Lives. OPENspace Research Centre report for Natural England, November 2006

Sugiyama, T. & Ward Thompson, C. (2007). Outdoor environments, activity and the well-being of older people: Conceptualising environmental support. Environment and Planning A, 39, 1943-1960.

Ward Thompson, C. (2007) Complex concepts and controlling designs: Charles Jencks’ Landform at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. Journal of Landscape Architecture, 3, 64/75.

Sugiyama, T. & Ward Thompson, C. (2007) Older people’s health, outdoor activity and supportiveness of neighbourhood environments. Landscape and Urban Planning 83, 168/175.

Ward Thompson, C. and Travlou, P. (eds) (2007) Open Space: People Space. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Ward Thompson, C, Southwell, K and Findlay, C. (2007) Site Finder toolkit – a wayfinding assessment toolkit. Edinburgh: OPENspace research centre, Edinburgh College of Art.

OPENspace Research Centre (2008). Participation in Outdoor Recreation by Welsh Assembly Government Priority Groups. CCW Policy Research Report No. 08/15. Bangor: CCGC/CCW

Ward Thompson, C, Aspinall, P and Montarzino, A. (2008). The Childhood Factor: Adult Visits to Green Places and the Significance of Childhood Experience. Environment and Behavior. 40 (1) 111/143.

Sugiyama, T. & Ward Thompson, C. (2008). Associations between characteristics of neighbourhood open space and older people’s walking. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 7(1), 41-51.

Alves, S., Aspinall, P., Ward Thompson, C., Sugiyama, T., Brice, R. and Vickers, A. (2008) Preferences of Older People for Environmental Attributes of Local Parks: The Use of Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis. Facilities 26 issue 11/12

Travlou, P., Owens, P. E., Ward Thompson, C. and Maxwell, L. (2008). Place Mapping with Teenagers: Locating their territories and documenting their experience of the public realm. Children’s Geographies 6(3), 309/326.

Fitzsimons, C., Baker, G., Wright, A., Nimmo, M., Ward Thompson, C., Lowry, R., Millington, C., Shaw, R., Fenwick, E., Ogilvie, D., Inchley, J. and Mutrie, N. (2008). The ‘Walking for Wellbeing in the West’ study, a pedometer-based walking programme in combination with a physical activity consultation with 12 month follow-up: rationale and study design. BMC Public Health 2008: 8:259

Millington, C., Ward Thompson, C., Rowe, D., Aspinall, P., Fitzsimons, C., Nelson, N. and Mutrie, N. (2009). Development of the Scottish Walkability Assessment Tool (SWAT). Health and Place 15, 474-481

Sugiyama, T., Ward Thompson, C. and Alves, S. (2009). Associations between neighborhood open space attributes and quality of life for older people in Britain. Environment and Behavior, 41(1), 3-21

Golicnik, B. and Ward Thompson, C., (2010) Emerging relationships between design and use of urban park spaces. Landscape and Urban Planning, 94: 38-53

Aspinall, P.A, Ward Thompson, C., Alves, S., Sugiyama, T., Vickers, A. and Brice, R. 2010 Preference and relative importance for environmental attributes of neighbourhood open space in older people. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 37(6): 1022 - 1039/p>

Ward Thompson, C., Aspinall, P. and Bell, S. (eds) 2010 Open Space: People Space 2: Innovative Approaches to Researching Landscape and Health, Abingdon: Routledge.

Travlou, P., Eubanks Owens, P., Ward Thompson, C. and Maxwell, L. (2011) Place Mapping with Teenagers: Locating their territories and documenting their experience of the public realm, in A. Coffey and T. Hall (eds) Researching Young People: Vol 1-3 (Fundamentals for Applied Research). London: Sage Publications.

Ward Thompson, C. (2011) Linking Landscape and Health: the Recurring Theme, Landscape and Urban Planning, 99(3), 187-195

Park, J.J., O’Brien, L., Roe, J., Ward Thompson, C. and Mitchell, R. (2011) The natural outdoors and health: assessing the value and potential contribution of secondary public data sets in the UK to current and future knowledge. Health & Place, 17(1): 269 - 279

Ward Thompson, C. & Aspinall, P. (2011) Natural environments and their impact on activity, health and quality of life. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 3 (3), 230-260

Ward Thompson, C. (2012) Places to be Wild in Nature. In Jorgensen, A. & Keenan, R. (eds) Urban Wildscapes Abingdon, UK: Routledge, pp. 49-64

Ward Thompson, C. Roe, J., Aspinall, P., Mitchell, R., Clow, A. & Miller, D. (2012) More green space is linked to less stress in deprived communities: Evidence from salivary cortisol patterns. Landscape and Urban Planning 105, pp. 221-229, doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2011.12.015

Ward Thompson, C. Roe, J., Aspinall, P., Mitchell, R., Clow, A. & Miller, D. (2012) More green space is linked to less stress in deprived communities: Evidence from salivary cortisol patterns. Landscape and Urban Planning 105, pp. 221-229, doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2011.12.015

Ward Thompson, C. (2013) Activity, exercise and the planning and design of outdoor spaces, Journal of Environmental Psychology 34, pp. 79-96

Posters

Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors (I’DGO leaflet): information leaflet – (PDF document, 589 KB) inside of I’DGO leaflet (jpg file, 226KB), outside of I’DGO leaflet (jpg file, 145KB)