As has become tradition when we welcome a new member of the team, we invite them to share a few thoughts on our blog. And we have a new Economist! Over to Leanne Kelly to explain her journey here, her unique mix of socio-economic planning and impact evaluation expertise, and the projects she’s getting started with…

I’m thrilled to have joined the DG Cities team as an Economist, with a behavioural economics slant, and glad to share a few words about my first few weeks.

Firstly, I am so pleased to say what an incredibly warm, open and ideas-driven team it is. It’s clear that collaboration matters, both internally and externally, as testified by the fantastic range of expert, academic, local government and private sector partnerships that DG Cities has developed. Whilst the term ‘dynamic’ is often used, I can genuinely say I am part of a company where no two people have the same career paths or qualifications, but a shared purpose, care and passion for people and improving places sings across the team.

Joining a new organisation gives you a chance to reflect, and to perhaps find a nice overarching narrative that pieces together what has come before and led you to where you are now. My story weaves together my education in economics and local economic development, my early work experience shadowing town centre managers in South West London, and a very enjoyable ten years in infrastructure consultancies, working on a range of multi-disciplinary projects, from needs assessment and business cases for places across the UK to urban economic plans with towns in Kenya. And finally, my part-time return to education to complete a behavioural economics MSc, which was incredibly rewarding.

The headline for me is that I have been so fortunate in my experiences so far, for all I have learnt along the way, and for some brilliant mentors and colleagues. Experiences that I hope help me to consider challenges and solutions for DG Cities’ projects in the broadest sense. Questions like, what makes a place work well for people, and where and why does this differ? What will improve people’s journeys to work, and does this differ for their leisure time? How can we better understand barriers in the uptake of home-based technologies? And, what might be the unintended consequences of accelerating a particular city trend?

At DG Cities, I’m excited to bring my experience in socio-economic planning, impact assessment, project appraisal and evaluation to our projects. My work involves drawing together local data and insights to design effective approaches, and to ensure that the impact of interventions can be monitored and refined with a greater openness. I’m keen to draw in the important developments in infrastructure, place and wellbeing evidence and measurement, to help appropriately incorporate behavioural insights, and inform on the socio-economic drivers, uncertainties, inequalities and effects that matter. To bring this knowledge framework to every project, whether we’re talking electric vehicles, digital use cases, high streets or micro-mobility.

In each of my first weeks, I have been fortunate to attend exciting workshops and events where I have met talented and generous folk – and inevitably, made a library of notes! I attended a Wellbeing Valuation workshop led by the What Works Centre, which was framed by both the Green Book – Treasury guidance for officials and analysts who work on business cases and appraisals – and excellent real-world examples. As well as building confidence in robustly considering wellbeing, it brought into focus work from my Masters, where my dissertation looked at travel to work changes through Covid-19 and subjective wellbeing.

I joined DG Cities’ D-Risk deliberative workshop at Imperial College, where members of the public shared their views and ideas for self-driving vehicle safety. It was fascinating to capture participants’ opinion journeys and to hear their stories and hypotheticals. Week three saw me attend the Behavioural Public Policy annual conference hosted by the LSE, with discussions drawing out the future of nudge and inspiring talks on behavioural environmental economics. This emphasised some really useful points for DG Cities’ own projects, including supportive interventions for household energy consumption, and led to fascinating chats with ‘vegan as the default’ snacks in the London sunshine afterwards. And finally, last week, I was at the Smart Mobility Living Lab in Stratford, discussing safety, capacity, sustainability and cost in balancing mobility, where user perceptions and inclusion were central. DG Cities helped to found and has been part of the SMLL community for a number of years, and I was grateful to have had the chance to see what it’s all about.

Looking ahead for my role here, I’ve been reflecting on the intersecting challenges ahead. I’m proud to be part of a team with such a strong legacy of understanding where communities and individuals are on emerging issues, and prioritising their needs, views and agency in change-making.

We are working on purposeful projects, which can make a difference to people’s qualify of life and their environments. For example, we are looking at what helps a neighbourhood to thrive and how we can use data from the ground to build interventions with residents. We are looking at the critical energy nexus of consumption-cost-sustainability, both at the hyper-local level to support residents, and with partners to test the feasibility of heat pump deployment. Plus, we are continuing to ask our research community about these pressing issues and future trends, which will certainly be a discussion for a future blog. I am excited about this next chapter and our projects, and look forward to making new connections and sharing more on these topics.