About Good Growth by Design

Undertaking design research and identifying best practice in architecture, urban design and place-shaping, to support the development of clear policies and standards, and improve the quality of London's built environment.

Publications to date:

• Design for a Circular Economy
• Making London Child-Friendly
• Good Quality Housing for all Londoners
• Public London Charter
• Expanding London’s Public Realm
• Connective Social Infrastructure
• Connective Social Infrastructure: Ecosystem Diagrams
• Safety in Public Space - Women, Girls and Gender Diverse People 
• Industrial Intensification & Co-Location Study: Design & Delivery Testing
• Designing Space for Culture
• Designing with Disabled Experience

Ensuring effective design review across London, including through the London Review Panel.

The Mayor recognises the value that design review by independent professionals can add - reducing risk and expense for clients, creating a better experience for users, and making better buildings and public spaces for the city as a whole. It is also recognised that design review approaches need to be tailored to meet local circumstances and priorities.

To support design review across London, the London Design Review Charter was published which sets out ground rules for effective design review - from panel recruitment and management to presentations and site visits, to feedback and comments.

Enhancing the GLA Group's and borough's ability to shape new development that will deliver good growth.

Supporting Good Growth requires a wide range of skills within public authorities - from planning to urban design, engineering, conservation and community engagement. But after a decade of fiscal austerity, London's boroughs face continuing capacity constraints, with place-shaping teams nearly 20 percent smaller in 2020 than they were in 2014. Capacity pressures are particularly intense in critically important areas of expertise such as zero-carbon, financial viability and infrastructure capacity.

See how we are helping London local authorities to deliver good growth through the biannual Placeshaping Capacity Survey.

Working towards a more representative sector and striving for best practice while designing for diversity.

Women, people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities and disabled people are chronically under-represented in built environment professions. In 2022, 82 percent of UK architects were white and 71 percent were male. Only one percent identify as being disabled falling well below the proportion of disabled people in the workforce overall. In a diverse city such as London, an unrepresentative profession is a profession that risks missing out on the perspectives of many citizens and communities and struggling to meet the whole city's needs as a result.

Read the Mayor's Supporting Diversity Handbook

Ensuring excellence in how the Mayor and other public sector clients appoint and manage architects and other built environment professionals.

Effective design procurement and management are essential building blocks of Good Growth by Design. The Mayor invests significant sums of public money on infrastructure, new housing, and regeneration projects - as do other public authorities in London. Getting procurement right ensures that economic, social, and environmental value is maximised - and that all of London's diverse communities have access to opportunities.

Read more about the Architecture + Urbanism Framework.

Read our Process Notes. These are brief, actionable tools for public commissioners authored by various GLA Group teams and informed by their experiences across a range of commission scales and stages.

These notes are structured: Introduction, Principles, Practice, Resources.

• Procuring Social Value and EDI
• Commissioning Co-Design
• Embedding Design Quality in Grant Agreements
• Delivering Post Occupancy Evaluation
• Architecture Retention & Design Monitor Roles

Advocating for the sector and for best practice and evaluating the programme's impact.

The Good Growth by Design programme is founded on the principle of deploying London's rich diversity of design expertise to make a better city. We are committed to learning from our own experience, but also to showing the potential of London's design sector, to create better lives for all Londoners and to share their skills internationally.

Read the Good Growth by Design Programme Outline (2017)

As part of the Good Growth by Design programme, we held a series of Recovery Roundtables to discuss the most pertinent topics facing London’s built environment in the wake of the global health crisis and its ensuing social and economic impacts. Mayor’s Design Advocates and other external experts have offered their perspectives on the impact of the pandemic, the relevance of existing Good Growth by Design guidance in this new context, and examples of best practice that London could be learning from.

The following report brings together the findings of the sessions and provides 10 ‘Calls to Action’ to the sector, shaping the London Recovery programme.

Read the Recovery Roundtables Report

Below are a series of post-meeting records, summarising the 7 sessions and key topics to London’s built environment:

• High streets and town centres
• Ecological urbanism
• Equality, diversity and inclusion
• Child-friendly city
• Public London
• Housing design
• Social infrastructure

Published in March 2020, 'Designing a City for all Londoners' is a compendium of ten extracts from Good Growth by Design and is a taster of what has been achieved since the programme launched in 2017. It has been edited with the support of Mayor’s Design Advocate Rory Hyde. It highlights some of the most pertinent topics to London’s built environment including high streets, the circular economy, housing design, public space, children and young people’s experience of the city and industrial land.

Read the Designing a City for all Londoners Compendium