Nurturing Smart Regional Hubs, with Sofie Pringle

In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I had a brilliant conversation with Sofie Pringle, a designer with a passion for creating cities and urban places that increase people's happiness and mental well-being. She is currently completing a doctorate in urban planning and design at Queensland University of Technology, focusing on the positive and negative effects that design and planning features have on user happiness and well-being. In this episode Sofie tells us about her PhD and what sparked her interest in this space, as well as why she believes there is a gap in the Smart Community conversation around the concept of happiness in the city. We also discuss sustainable urbanisation and the compact city fallacy, and why nurturing our Smart Regional Hubs is so crucial. We finish the chat discussing the emerging trend of the neuroscience research into the impact urban environments have on human brains, and how we're just not talking about that enough. As always, I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed making it. Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community Connect with Sofie via LinkedIn or Twitter @sofie_pringle Connect with me via email: [email protected] Connect via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook @smartcommpod