Sandra Costa

• PhD in Art and Design (Landscape Architecture, User Experience and Wellbeing)

• MSc in Urban Planning and Design
• Licenciatura in Landscape Architecture

Sandra has taught in the fields of Landscape Architecture, Urban Design and Planning. 

Sandra brings her expertise to the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project Sonic Heritage and Environmental Change on England's East Coast, 1718–present, based at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Her research sits at the intersection of landscape architecture, sensory experience, biophilic connections and wellbeing. In Sonic Heritage, she uses soundwalking methodology and GPS-mapped routes to explore how coastal landscapes on the Suffolk coast are experienced and changed over time, situating sound as a vital dimension of heritage and environmental change. Over the years she has investigated the choreographies of landscape experience, that is: the user experience, the emotional and physical person-place interactions through which individuals sense and negotiate urban and natural/biophilic environments towards positivity and wellbeing, using immersive self-narrated walks, and diaries. She has researched urban agriculture and food urbanism, a research strand that grew from her involvement in a multidisciplinary EU COST project on productive landscapes and urban agriculture in European cities, examining the socio-spatial configurations, territorial behaviours, and public-private boundaries through which urban food-growing reshapes derelict spaces into green, engaging places and contributes to more inclusive, environmentally sustainable urban forms.

• Antunes, H. A., Martinho da Silva, I., & Costa, S. (2026). Bringing Food Back to the City: A Critical Review of Green Infrastructure Concepts for Integrating Agriculture. Sustainability, 18(8), 3781. https://doi.org/10.3390/su18083781
• Costa, S. & Coles, R. (2025). Person-Place Interactions: Landscape Choreographies of Self-Regulation, in Marques, B. & McIntosh, J. (eds), Designing Therapeutic Environments: Social and Cultural Practice for Health and Wellbeing. Routledge.
• Coles, R. & Costa, S. (2023). Biophilic Connections and Environmental Encounters in the Urban Age: Framework and Interdisciplinary Practice in the Built Environment. Routledge.
• Coles, R., Costa, S. & Watson, S. (eds) (2019). Pathways to Wellbeing in Design: Examples from the Arts, Humanities and the Built Environment. Routledge. tandfonline.com
• Coles, R., Costa, S. & Watson, S. (2019). Chapter 12, Pathways to Wellbeing, in Pathways to Wellbeing in Design. Routledge.
• Coles, R., Costa, S. & Watson, S. (2018). Introduction, in Pathways to Wellbeing in Design. Routledge.
• Costa, S. & Coles, R. (2018). The self-narrated walking: a user-led method to research people's experiences in urban landscapes. Landscape Research, pp. 526–540.
• Coles, R. & Costa, S. (2018). Food growing in the city: exploring the productive urban landscape as a new paradigm for inclusive approaches to the design and planning of future urban open spaces. Landscape and Urban Planning, 170, pp. 1–5.
• Cabral, I., Costa, S., Weiland, U. & Bonn, A. (2017). Urban gardens as multi-functional nature-based solutions for societal goals in a changing climate, in Kabisch, N. et al. (eds), Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change in Urban Areas. Springer. springer.com
• Costa, S., Fox-Kaemper, R., Good, R. & Sentic, I. (2016). The position of urban allotment gardens within the urban fabric, in Bell, S. et al. (eds), Urban Allotment Gardens in Europe. Routledge, pp. 221–228.