Connecting places: A landscape-led approach to transport and mobility by Landscape, the journal of the Landscape Institute

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A landscape approach to transport is about realising multiple outcomes, and considering how new infrastructure can simultaneously enhance public health and wellbeing, local ecology and biodiversity, climate resilience, landscape character and sense of place.

Carolin Göhler FLI President, Landscape Institute

Page 66

A landscape-led approach to transport is essential for delivering positive outcomes for people, place and nature.

The impact of transport on landscape, the environment, and society is one of the key driving forces of our times. As the largest-emitting sector of greenhouse gases in the UK,¹ transitioning to more sustainable forms of mobility and connectivity is an essential part of any net zero ambition. But as well as climate, how we plan and design transport infrastructure also holds great consequence for local places and communities, public space, health and wellbeing, biodiversity and nature recovery.

What if we were to start by prioritising these outcomes when planning and designing transport infrastructure, and putting people, place and nature first? This is exactly what a landscape-led approach to transport offers, and the benefits are clear to see throughout this summer edition of the journal.

Ahead, we look at the impact that revolutions in transport have had on the cultural landscape of the UK, and the significance of transport in placemaking today, learning from Alister Kratt FLI that “it’s about establishing the place and then securing the connections appropriate to support that place”.

We offer an introduction to what landscape professionals can bring to highway, rail and active travel infrastructure, with Noel Farrer PPLI arguing that “landscape-led approaches ensure that the design process for new roads identifies the impacts and opportunities and creates a net-positive balance of outcomes”. Meanwhile, a new masterplan by

Landscape Institute (LI) Registered Practice, Periscope, puts forward an approach to neighbourhood mobility which it says “has the potential to transform spatial and urban planning in the UK”.

From across the industry, we bring insights from the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT), Sustrans, and National Highways. The Landscape Institute’s latest research on Landscape and Carbon sits alongside that on nonlinear infrastructure and land use for public transport, and we hear from LI voices including a Level 3 apprenticeship success story, and President, Carolin Göhler FLI.

As Carolin rightly declares, “Landscape professionals are essential not only for articulating [the] vision, but for making it happen.”

Josh Cunningham Managing Editor

1 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-andenvironment-statistics-2023

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EDITORIAL ADVISORY PANEL

Saira Ali, Team Leader, Landscape, Design and Conservation, City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council

Stella Bland, Head of Communications, LDA Design

Marc Tomes CMLI, Director, Allen Scott Landscape Architecture

Sandeep Menon, Landscape Architect and University tutor, Manchester Metropolitan University

Jaideep Warya CMLI, Landscape Architect, Allies and Morrison

Jane Findlay, PPLI, Director FIRA Landscape Architects

LANDSCAPE INSTITUTE

Managing Editor and PR & Communications Manager, Landscape Institute:

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Copy Editor: Jill White

Proof Reader: Johanna Robinson

President: Carolin Göhler

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The views expressed in this journal are those of the contributors and advertisers and not necessarily those of the Landscape Institute, Darkhorse or the Editorial Advisory Panel. While every effort has been made to check the accuracy and validity of the information given in this publication, neither the Institute nor the Publisher accept any responsibility for the subsequent use of this information, for any errors or omissions that it may contain, or for any misunderstandings arising from it.

Landscape is the official journal of the Landscape Institute, ISSN: 1742–2914

Cover image: East Leeds Orbital Route

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Find out more on page 11

‘Shadow Play’

Jen Orpin

8 Lines over time: The landscape heritage of transport

Shaping a landscape-led approach to roadbuilding 20

Landscape and highways: a journey to progress

Placemaking through landscape, connection and belonging The place of transport

Lines over time: The landscape heritage of transport

1. Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed –

The Great Western Railway, 1844. © The National Gallery, London

Will Jennings looks at the complex, often conflictual, relationship between transport and landscape as it has evolved over time, finding that interventions we make today will have heritage implications that live long into the future.

Will Jennings

On a drive in 1921 through Herefordshire, businessman Alfred Watkins suddenly noticed a series of manmade, natural, and geological landmarks lining up perfectly in the landscape. Using his camera to take a photograph, he then went home to lay a ruler over an OS map, slowly adding criss-crossing straight lines, and in doing so invented the concept of ley lines. Over the century since, his imaginary network came to absorb all kinds of counter-cultural and spiritual ways of perceiving place, but to Watkins the rigid routes indicated a prehistoric trade map created by ancient societies, connecting minerals, mines, and settlements in a time before pathways.

It is a romantic reading of landscape, if unscientific and never accepted by experts. At a time of growing private car use, he was perhaps searching for an imagined ideal of historic untouched nature, pre-Industrial Revolution and before infrastructure carved up the country. According to the RAC, in 1909 there were 53,000 licensed cars in Great Britain, rapidly rising to 2 million by 1950. The number of vehicles is now nearer to 32 million. This rising use has a huge impact on landscape, in movement, maintenance, and storage, and it is fair to say that some 400,000km of road entangling Britain is rather more visible than the ancient infrastructural routes Watkins imagined.

It began with unpaved tracks, some of prehistoric origins, connecting tribal areas, offering defence routes, and smoothing passage through the landscape upon paths beaten hard through regular use. There is evidence that some early settlements contained an early act of urbanism with stone pathways, and in 2011

an archaeological dig in a Shropshire quarry revealed an Iron Age cambered and metalled road from the first century BCE, suggesting there may have been engineered roads through rural landscapes.

It was only after the Roman invasion of 43 CE that the green and pleasant land became one also of hard surfacing and networks of movement, with over 3,200km of roads linking ports, cities, and fortifications, many of which such as Fosse Way and Watling Street are now partially buried under today’s system. In the 2009 book And Did Those Feet,¹ Charlie Connelly retrod important routes of British and Irish history, but found that the modern network sometimes not only covered up but also prevented slower and historical passage. When treading the Roman road Boudicca likely took from

Venta Icenorum (Norwich) towards Camulodunum (Colchester), now the A140 and A12, his walk ended prematurely:

I found myself walking among muddy ruts and grassy clumps, jagged branches tearing at my clothes, as I stepped around unidentifiable lumps of metal, bottles and disused road detritus.

2. Map of Roman roads in Britain.

Open Spaces Society

² https://www. barpublishing.com/ the-good-the-bad-andthe-unbuilt-handlingthe-heritage-of-therecent-past.html

³ Crowe, S., ‘Buckingham Talk’ unpublished. MERL AR CRO SP4/2

“Many deem [motorways] to be too mundane, ubiquitous, characterless, and recent to be of architectural importance or to have heritage value,” writes Peter Merriman in his chapter on motorways and landscape in The Good, the Bad and the Unbuilt: Handling the Heritage of the Recent Past.² A Human Geographer at Aberystwyth University specialising in transport, Merriman raises questions around whether junctions, bridges, service stations, and even sinuous routes carved through rolling hills are worthy of recognition and preservation.

Landscape architects of course had a large role to play in the development of this post-war infrastructure, as past President of the Landscape Institute Sylvia Crowe put it at the time: “Before the war landscape design was confined almost entirely to the creation of gardens and parks […]. Gradually this is changing: the pressure of population, transport and economics is upsetting the balance of great areas of landscape, and it is evident that positive design is needed to restore them to a state of balance.”³ But while Historic England and the Twentieth Century Society increasingly raise awareness around industrial heritage, such as recent campaigns around power stations, gasholders, and cooling towers, modern transport infrastructure is not often up for preservation conversation.

We know that transport infrastructure can contain real moments of beauty and cultural importance that is embedded into the story of Britain. The canal network is now a celebrated scenic, relaxing, touristic experience, far removed from the grime and grind it once was, with the picturesque Caen Hill’s locks in Wiltshire now found on t-shirts, mugs, and jigsaws. Turner’s painting of the Great Western Railway captures the nostalgia and threat of transitioning into the modern age within a great swirl of brushwork. The 1890s Glenfinnan Viaduct’s sweep across the top of Loch Shiel had always been iconic, but with a starring role across the Harry Potter films it became celebrity infrastructure which welcomes the luxury Belmond Royal Scotsman.

Much transport infrastructure deemed ‘beautiful’ has a patina of history, connecting us to a romanticised version of the past – one cleansed, depoliticised, and easily commodified. Railway arches, once an ecosystem of mechanics, recyclers, and upholsterers, are now polished and repurposed as craft beer, coffee, and dining destinations. Docks which once connected to enslaved islands and trading partners are now sites of luxury housing, universities, and financial business. Bits of the network Beeching broke are now reimagined as heritage railways.

Perhaps modern infrastructure hasn’t settled into the landscape long enough to pick up such romance, but this might change as older generations imbue childhood and distant memories into post-war places. Such

infrastructure is beginning to seep into the cultural landscape: Jen Orpin‘s miniatures of motorway bridges, often unremarkable architecturally, but truly sculptural when frozen into her postcard format; Mark Leckey’s 1:1 model of an M53 motorway bridge in the galleries of Tate Britain as a space of remembered teenage gathering; and the generation of ravers who gathered at 1980s service stations waiting to head to a rural party location are now in their sixties.

These transport landscapes contain social and cultural heritage, but as Merriman points out: “motorways are important, strategic spaces in the economic and social lives of millions of Britons, and in an age where the public (and hence politicians) care about congestion and traffic flow, heritage practitioners will have to work hard to

3. Guildford by-pass, Surrey. © Open Spaces Society

4. Summer Cutting. © Jen Orpin

ensure that motorway ‘improvement’ schemes do not result in the widespread destruction of important structures and features.”⁴

The kind of opposition to transport infrastructure as witnessed with HS2 is not new. Early railways faced opposition from farmers concerned that smoke would destroy crops, from landed gentry angry at the impact on foxhunting, and from a threatened canal industry. In his poem, On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway, Wordsworth⁵ asked, “Is there no nook of English ground secure from rash assault?” and while Ruskin wasn’t too upset about rail’s physical impact, he disliked the speed of travel disconnecting us from places passed through: “All that you can know, at best, of the country you pass is its geological structure and general clothing.”⁶

Having to go through regular planning and with well-publicised campaigns opposing how it sits in nature, especially through the Chilterns, much of HS2’s route is culverted or tunnelled so it won’t be seen in or as part of landscape, also meaning – which might please Ruskin – users won’t be able to see the magical views of natural and manmade vistas.

“If you go back to Brunel‘s Great Western, his view was that it was to be celebrated, not hidden,” Glenn Howells, director of his eponymous architectural firm, tells Landscape, “where bridges were opportunities to celebrate the synthesis of architecture, engineering, and landscape.” Howells is involved with HS2 through the design of public realm where 65,000 people a year will leave Curzon Street Station to continue their Birmingham

journey on foot, bike, and public transport. Working collaboratively with Grimshaw, and landscape architects Grant Associates, Howells are aiming to stitch the new station district to wider work undertaken through recent pedestrianisation schemes in the city centre, and a Central Birmingham 2040 urban framework for the city council. “Our work in Birmingham is about re re-establishing older, smaller, human-size connections which don‘t need machines to take you around,” Howells says.

Other than the potential risk of damaging ancient archaeological sites and chalk geology, this is also a point of opposition to the Stonehenge tunnel. The view from the A303 towards the ancient site is perhaps one of the most incredible views any driver will ever experience and, as a palimpsest of man’s relationship to a particular place, there is an argument that the presence of the road is of critical importance in understanding the site. Just as the Angel of the North is a gateway moment for those heading north on the A1, so too Stonehenge could be considered not solely as a sculptural moment in the landscape but one intrinsically part of a wider, complex reading of place –including the A303, which is a gateway to a West Country holiday for so many adults and children.

“Infrastructure is more than just A-to-B; it defines a generation in terms of how it makes provision for the future, which we seem unable to do at the moment,” Howells again muses, leading to the question of what future transport infrastructure will look like and how it will relate to, or be led by, landscape. As we emerge from the modern into the Anthropocene age,

one approach will undoubtedly be to unstitch some of what we built over the last century, but that we now realise has brought environmental or social damage. When we think of the words ‘transport’ and ‘infrastructure’, our mind immediately thinks of big lines in the landscape shuttling humans and cargo across increasingly large distances. Such infrastructure will likely continue to have a place in our world, but the heritage of the future demands that we find better ways of doing it: See Amsterdam-based VenhoevenCS and DS landschaparchitecten’s ‘Butterfly Effect’ research, for example, which proposes a web running over linear transport networks, generating renewable solar energy while also creating migration corridors for insects. Proposed for the UNESCOlisted Hollandse Waterlinie heritage landscape, Venhoeven CS’ Ton Venhoeven says, “They are protected lands, so UNESCO will be very critical – it’s like the Dutch Stonehenge!”

But balancing the trade-offs of a given site is a critical aspect of landscape practice, and neither the difficulty nor demand of this work will abate any time soon.

More inspiration can be found in Seoul, where the Cheonggye Freeway was deconstructed to create a

6. Is Stonehenge a part of the landscape of the A303?

⁴ https://www. barpublishing.com/ the-good-the-bad-andthe-unbuilt-handlingthe-heritage-of-therecent-past.html

⁵ The Morning Post 1844

⁶ The Letters of John Ruskin, 1827–1869

5. Sylvia Crowe: The Landscape of Roads and The Landscape of Power Published by the Architectural Press in 1960 and 1958, respectively.

7. Debate over the future design for transport is not new. In 1959, Past President of the Landscape Institute, Geoffrey Jellicoe, made provocative proposals for ‘Motopia’, a grid of residential blocks topped by a road network, which aimed to tread lightly on the landscape.

8. Venhoeven CS and DS landschaparchitecten’s Butterfly Effect proposes a web running over linear transport networks, generating renewable energy and creating insect corridors.

pedestrian path and re-opened stream, with MVRDV working with landscape architect Ben Kuipers to establish 24,000 potted trees and plants upon a former highway interchange. Meanwhile, a shortlisted entrant to the current Davidson Prize proposes a co-living project for Yorkshire’s now-closed Robin Hood Airport, with team member Eric Guibert introducing a landscape scheme of rewilded land and the growing of building materials. A look back at the 2016 Venice Biennale would also recall Norman Foster’s mudbrick droneport, a technology that at first might be useful for last-stage deliveries or connecting to rural or remote communities, but in time perhaps may develop into cargo and human transport and reduce our infrastructural impact on the ground altogether.

At a time of great transition, landscape architects and project collaborators will be critical to the ongoing reorganising of transport infrastructure, not just to conceal or blend infrastructure into place but to ensure that any development also brings natural, social, cultural, and ecological value. And while big lines in the landscape may be here for some time, the restructuring of city streets, creation of green infrastructure and cycle lanes, and ‘LTN-ing’ of suburban areas (as witnessed so well in Paris and now slowly developing in the UK) also continues apace.

As we decommission, reconfigure, and build new transport infrastructure, planners and designers should remain mindful of the slow pace of heritage compared to the high speed of change. Landscapes take time to root in ecology and place, and while it is perhaps no surprise to find short-term opposition and anger to schemes of such scale, future generations will be the ones to use, live with, and create stories about what is built today.

Will Jennings is a writer across art and architecture, editor of online platform recessed.space, and teaches at UCL and the University of Greenwich.

The place of transport

Transport and environment journalist Laura Laker looks at the pivotal role of transport in the UK today, and why landscape, place and connection is key to unlocking its potential as a driver of social and environmental justice and to secure a sense of belonging.

Chippenham masterplan.

The former transportation commissioner for New York City, Janette Sadik-Khan, tells the story of a careers chat she had with her grandmother. If you want to make a difference, she was told, go into sanitation or transportation. How early and to what extent we gain our independence as children can be defined by our journey to school. In adulthood transport affects which jobs we can take – those on a low wage especially need affordable transport options to access opportunities of any sort.

Transport impacts our access to social activities and healthcare throughout our lives, but particularly in older age when driving may no longer be an option and the ability to stay active is dictated by density of housing, access to good walking, cycling and public transport options. Into older age, or for those of us with disabilities, traffic profoundly impacts our connections with our neighbours and our very ability to leave the house and move about our localities in safety.

Transport can generate air and noise pollution, or it can be used to boost our mental and physical wellbeing, connect us to people, cut our risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease, even diabetes and our risk of broken bones. Well-designed streets and places with green space embedded protect our mental and physical health in profound ways we are just beginning to understand.

The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) points out that all sectors, particularly transport, have to do more to reach net zero. Achieving this will require substantial investment in infrastructure. While electric vehicle uptake will go some way to meet this goal, they are not the whole solution and in part perpetuate the challenges of a car-dependent society. More walking, cycling and public transport

are needed – things that also deliver on health and environmental goals, as well as social justice. Arguably, a holistic approach to delivering these networks is highly beneficial for our transport choices, connecting people, communities and the places around them.

Alister Kratt, Director at LDA Design, Fellow of the Landscape Institute, and a member of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) Design Group, takes the view that while transport planners may look at individual modes of travel, landscape architects see in a broader sense the structural components of how we move around, in terms of democratic

and accessible connection. While the wealthy and well-connected “are able to move around with absolute freedom using any mode of transport they wish, either nationally or locally or globally”, he points out, in rural and low-income communities access to transport can be poor. In other words, it’s a social justice issue.

The way we think about transport is, to some extent, being flipped on its head, he believes, with the goal of tackling some of those issues. Historically, settlements often grew at the intersections of roads or train stations. While the historic foundation of many settlements grew from good road connection, the very nature of

Laura Laker

2. Jubilee Square, Leicester, before.

© LDA Design

3. Jubilee Square, Leicester, after.

© LDA Design / Robin Forster Photography

4. Chippenham masterplan. The gentle density masterplan (in green) takes up two-thirds less land on the edge of Chippenham than the original road-led masterplan (in red).

Create Streets

5. Map of proposed preferred option for Edinburgh City Centre Transformation. © City of Edinburgh Council

6. Core spatial planning principles to facilitate local living, trip reduction and sustainable mobility within and between settlements. From research undertaken by LDA Design with City Science and Vectos for the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI).

road connectivity generates many of the problems some settlements experience today.

“That‘s not to dismiss those settlements as communities and places, because they’ve been fundamentally important economic and social influences,” says Kratt. “The issue now is how do we plan for good? I think the position we’re now in is that we are thinking much more about establishing the communities as place and then securing the connections appropriate to support that place.” The philosophy of placebased settlements, he argues, is not tail wagging dog; it’s dog wagging tail. This change in approach is key, he argues. Taking transport as connection, settlement, place and belonging, and considering strategically the landscape as the context for these relationships, is fundamental to structuring good outcomes, beyond a single

¹ https://nic.org.uk/ studies-reports/ national-infrastructureassessment/second-nia/ ² https://www.rtpi.org. uk/research-rtpi/2020/ june/net-zero-transportthe-role-of-spatialplanning-and-placebased-solutions/ ³ https://www. createstreets. com/wp-content/ uploads/2024/03/Roadto-Nowhere-110324.pdf

neighbourhood, town or city. These boundaries should all join up in good place planning.

Policy has helped refocus transport around the regional, via reports like the NIC’s National Infrastructure Assessment (NIA).¹ The NIA states that while the UK is moving towards devolving transport funding to major city regions, “investment is required to facilitate sustainable trips within and between English cities”. Transport is part of a solution to reducing disparities in economic outcomes and quality of life, it notes. Kratt sees a smarter approach, one the industry is moving towards, establishing desired environmental and community outcomes first, and working out how to meet those outcomes at the drawing board. For cities, that might mean whether new homes are built within the urban core to secure regenerative outcomes

and walkable neighbourhoods, extending urban suburbs with good rail connection using a gentle density model to use land more efficiently, or whether it makes more sense to develop elsewhere using zero carbon principles for essentially car-free new settlements.²

David Milner, Director of Create Streets, believes, “for too long we’ve defaulted to concreting over the countryside with sprawling housing estates driven by prediction-led transport planning.”

Low-density housing, he argues, swallows up too much land and demands too many roads be built, absorbing funds that could be better spent elsewhere. In a report titled Stepping off the Road to Nowhere (Create Streets and Sustrans, 2024),³ he argues in favour of ‘gentle density’ and ‘vision-led planning’. For the UK’s 1.5m new homes target, the report

reimagined new housing estates as mixed-use developments, with shops and schools integrated within neighbourhoods, using Chippenham as a case study. For the £75m allocated by Homes England for roads, he says this alternative plan would allow “town builders, not housebuilders” to instead deliver an array of benefits. That includes:

These moves, he says, would generate 9,300 more walking and cycling trips, 12,000 fewer vehicle trips, and cut projected CO₂ emissions by 2,000 tonnes. It would also, he adds, save an area the size of the Isle of Wight in land, and deliver better social connection for the new community by creating neighbourhoods where people, not vehicles, are the priority.

In terms of thinking on a ‘town scale’ or bigger, rather than in terms of modes or individual plots, change is coming from city regions.

At a city level, Edinburgh represents a very visible example of learning on this. In a project conceived over a decade ago, two new tram lines caused issues for broader connectivity.

7. New housing developments are usually car-dependent dormitory suburbs added onto big new roads. A vision-led approach would put people and communities first.

£6.5m for Chippenham’s bus plan, £15m for safe walking and cycling routes, a rail passing loop, car clubs across the site, £6m to subsidise rents for shops within the new site whilst it gets off the ground, £10m for Chippenham’s town centre to benefit locals and money for highways.

The National Planning Policy Framework, meanwhile, recommends proactive mitigation to challenges like flood risk and overheating, caused by climate change – but it still tends towards reactive mitigation of transport projects in its language. New transport infrastructure, including cycle lanes, from Cardiff to Glasgow to London, are increasingly incorporating things like sustainable drainage (SuDS) and tree planting, not only to absorb water from heavy rainfall events but also to provide shade and public amenity, softening the streetscape and encouraging active journeys. This shift requires proactive planning, however, and the nowmandatory requirement for SuDS in England is a step in the right direction.

On Princes Street, cycle lanes were simply painted around the tram, at times putting cyclists in danger.

On Leith Walk, this ‘tram first’ approach resulted in a confusing streetscape with a slalom cycle lane, a roadway that struggled to accommodate even the trams, and a poor pedestrian realm.

A new approach, led by the city’s Head of Place, Daisy Narayanan MBE and launched this year, seeks to put place at the heart of transport. A Streetspace Allocation Framework is the starting point. To meet 2030 targets of both net zero and a 30% reduction in car traffic, the plan seeks to achieve a balance between these competing demands by prioritising place, walking and wheeling, cycling

and public transport, over private motorised traffic and parking. With this guiding goal, a series of maps lay out the desired place functions of streets, including networks for bus, tram, walking, cycling, taxis and private car traffic. As part of this new joined-up philosophy, and the policy documents accompanying it, in theory every network will be delivered by giving each street two or so modes, led by connectivity, not competing modes. Placemaking is key to this: viewing the city based on its streets’ neighbourhood and place functions, as well as their through-route functions and different modes.

City officials hope it will prevent repeating the mistakes of the ‘tramfirst’ approach and, because it’s part of a unified citywide plan, the council can avoid some of the historic backlash, and the street-by-street legal battles that accompanied that. Cllr Scott Arthur, convener for transport and the environment, says the plans will also help deliver homes for 36,000 more people without inducing gridlock in an already traffic-congested city.

Edinburgh’s in-house bus service carries 30% of all bus journeys in Scotland, and the plan is to expand and integrate its use substantially across the city. Nationally, siloing of transport is slowly reversing, with policies like Bus Back Better seeking to integrate bus transport with other modes, such as active travel. This more unified delivery of buses will offer greater influence over how the bus network integrates with the local landscape and its users, such as providing access by making surrounding developments permeable to those users. Greater Manchester is a forerunner of this, as the city’s Bee Network brings bus services back under city control, as

part of a unified transport network.

In rural areas, the Create Streets report notes, Somerset and Oxfordshire County Council are already prioritising ‘vision-led’ transport planning akin to its Chippenham case study. The NIC’s National Infrastructure Assessment report adds that such public transport upgrades will help unlock economic growth, along with a ‘new comprehensive and long-term rail plan’ for the North and the Midlands. In the West Midlands, the combined authority led by mayor Andy Street is delivering, with local authorities, a cycleway adjacent to the HS2 line, bringing together active travel connections for local communities across a 23-mile corridor by repurposing existing haul and access roads as green transport corridors.

While policies and industry may be beginning to tackle what some see as the tyranny of transport planners at a national level, the debate has become caught up in the culture wars at a local one. Proposals to restrict councils’ abilities to control motor traffic and make walking and cycling more appealing via measures like low traffic neighbourhoods and 20mph zones, as well as entreating councils not to enforce traffic contraventions so rigorously, and limiting where the money from fines can be spent, could have the opposite impact.

The British Parking Association says, “the current rhetoric and implied punishments for councils is proving to be extremely damaging and misleading” on this topic.

Alister Kratt says, nationally, both rail and bus services are being viewed increasingly as parts of an integrated network that can support good spatial and settlement planning, placemaking and new communities.

“I think ultimately, the ideal scenario for landscape architects is to be involved in transport strategy planning, because of its consequences on the design of place, both at strategic scale and local scale within towns and cities.”

Placemaking founded on connectivity is ultimately a collaborative endeavour, he says; that’s “not just greening and paving space and streets and making it look attractive. It’s about understanding place and how it’s defined; how spaces are activated and how good design can influence behaviour, movement and support connection. The role of a landscape architect is to support that wider-outcomes thinking and make sure that it is delivered through design founded on strategic thinking.”

While most local authorities and commissioning agencies understand the role of interdisciplinary and collaborative working, the challenge ahead is to make sure that landscape professionals have the opportunity to help lead the thinking. Rather than responding to predetermined mobility and connection strategies, they must be empowered to form an active part in their development.

It’s about stepping up to the plate and realising the roles and responsibilities we have,

says Kratt. Only then will the full potential of transport to make a positive difference to people, place and nature be realised.

Laura Laker is a journalist specialising in active travel and transport, and the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network (Bloomsbury, 2024).

8. Artist’s impression of Canongate following implementation of Edinburgh city centre measures.

© The City of Edinburgh Council

Landscape and highways: a journey to progress

Vice President of the Landscape Institute, Noel Farrer, is a landscape architect and member of National Highways’ Strategic Design Panel. Here, Noel argues what a landscape-led approach to roadbuilding offers.

1. The pioneering A21 Scotney Castle green bridge in Kent (Fira Landscape Architects, National Highways, National Trust) was the first green bridge to be constructed in the UK, in 2006. The concept was designed by LUC to connect National Trust land severed by the A21, maintaining the original ridgeline as well as access for wildlife such as local dormice.

Noel Farrer

The expression “Which side of the road do you live?” is common and reflects the fundamental difference that ten to twenty metres of land can make when you put a road on it. Roads divide places, watercourses, habitats, flora and fauna, people, communities – everything. Roads and other infrastructure projects of national significance represent the greatest physical changes and the largest marks we make on our urban and rural landscapes. Our considerations for new roads must therefore recognise and address all the impacts and opportunities they create. It is now well-evidenced that our road infrastructure and the vehicles that travel on it have truly massive and wideranging impacts. These can be felt in almost every aspect of our lifestyles, quality of life, health, natural systems, communities, connections, places and planet. With this understanding comes great challenge and responsibility –but also great opportunity.

National Highways Strategic Design Panel

How the LI and National Highways work together to promote better road building in the UK

The National Highways’ (previously Highways England) Strategic Design Panel is drawn from a wide range of interest groups and professions, with the objective of encouraging National Highways to deliver greater design excellence in all aspects of the design and management of the strategic road network. I have sat on the panel for eight years, and as a result, I’m glad that the understanding of landscape within the group, and the importance of landscape considerations in highways projects, has steadily improved.

The panel’s work has increasingly shaped and identified the opportunities for progress in roadbuilding, and the nature of changes that are required. This has led to the ‘Road to Good Design’ report, which promotes ten design principles for meeting a broad range of design outcomes.”

Noel Farrer PPLI, Vice President of the Landscape Institute and National Highways Strategic Design Panel member

Our Strategic Design Panel has been vital in helping us produce and promote our design vision and principles of good road design. First published in 2018, and subsequently embedded into standard, the ‘Road to Good Design’ report highlights a series of integrated principles to improve the design quality of our road network. We’re proud to be now putting these principles into practice.

In addition to ensuring that designs cater for people’s needs, our design principles include a focus on ‘place’, ensuring that design is restrained, environmentally sustainable and fits its surroundings. The place, the geography and the landscape dictate so much of road design. Good design is also collaborative, and we value our relationship with the Landscape Institute.”

Dean Kerwick-Chrisp, MA BA(Hons) DipLA Principal Environmental Advisor at National Highways

Historically, too much emphasis has been focused on one singular objective: to foster efficient vehicular movement within and between places. The approach has often led to severed, unsafe and inhospitable environments in neighbourhoods across the country, with roads now commonly recognised for the negative consequences they have for the very places they were built to serve. We can do much better.

Early budgeting

Government budgets currently only include the costs for building the road, which means any additional benefits proposed after the first budget is set are considered ‘extras’, and therefore can become difficult to justify. Schemes which bring landscape professionals in at an early stage benefit from an initial landscape analysis of the site, which enables much broader, integrated outcomes for relatively little cost:

– Appraisal of existing land use and how best to compensate for lost habitat.

them) contextually. Any intervention should be led by a design team that recognises how this severance could be minimised, and connectivity maintained or even improved.

Currently, most new roads, once decided upon, are purely perceived as being a problem-solving, engineering challenge, rather than a multipleoutcomes-led opportunity.

The pitfall is that whilst this approach enables the delivery of efficient, safe and serviceable new roads, it is simply not sufficient to plan and design for project benefits beyond the road itself. This means that addressing wider outcomes is done through mitigation or offsetting, after the road is built. The challenge remains to broaden the outlook, and recognise both the impact of what we build and the necessity of prioritising the wider benefits that road projects offer.

A landscape-led approach to road infrastructure has the potential to encourage the perspective we need, better aligned to multiple and varied outcomes, in which infrastructure investment represents greater value for money, whilst also benefiting people, place and nature.

Progress is being made in the highways sector, with more and more projects now exemplifying how a landscape-led approach can deliver the multi-dimensional, cost-effective solutions that benefit local communities and surrounding environments holistically. These best practices, detailed below, should be widely adopted at local, regional and national scales.

– Engaging communities to understand the potential benefits the project can offer local people.

– Incorporating basic masterplanning of any wider development in proximity to the road to ensure connections and wider landscape benefits are considered and budgeted for.

– Assessing local landscape character and heritage to ensure appropriate detailing and design contributes to the local character.

– Designating site boundaries (red lines) to accommodate new habitat creation and wider environmental net gain, rather than the road in isolation.

– Appraising best practice for on-site soil, including movement, management and reuse.

– Developing a connectivity plan to integrate public rights of way (PROW) and active travel routes, considering investment outside the red line area.

– Developing a water management plan so that run-off ponds and existing watercourses also promote public amenity, play, Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), and sustainable drainage schemes (SuDS).

Severance

New roads divide environments, but the creation of crossing points triggers complexity and costs, meaning they often end up being inadequate for users. This is as true for badgers and other animals as it is for humans.

A design process starting with the landscapeing through which the road travels would negotiate crossing points (and the severance issue behind

My experience of many new roads funded by the Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) is that even though they are funded on the basis of the creation of development sites for additional housing communities, the road is designed wholly in isolation from the design or the wider masterplan for these homes. This means that all the advantages of integration and connectivity a new road could bring to the community is thereby lost.

The A120 to A133 link road in Colchester will run through land being masterplanned for over 7,000 new homes as part of a new garden village, extending to 25,000 homes in the wider area. The road layout and site extent have little regard for the masterplan development or wider project outcomes. © Essex County Council.

Landscape

character and placemaking

The introduction of new roads changes and reshapes places. Movement patterns are altered, juxtapositions changed, new desire lines introduced. We need to understand the place through which the road will pass by undertaking landscape character appraisals, then assessing how a new road can contribute to the character and appeal of a place. Landscape-led approaches ensure that the design process for new roads identifies the impacts and opportunities and creates a net-positive balance of outcomes.

Progress is being made in the highways sector, with more and more projects now exemplifying how a landscapeled approach can deliver the multidimensional, cost-effective solutions that benefit local communities and surrounding environments holistically.

¹ Carbon Storage and Sequestration by Habitat 2021 (NERR094), Natural England https://publications. naturalengland.org.uk/ publication/ 5419124441481216

Water management

Water management around roads requires demanding storage and runoff capacities, and great understanding of the impacts roads have on natural watercourses, water flows and land drainage. Within this challenge we find mitigation measures and wider opportunities. Current engineering approaches accommodate the mitigation of torrential rain, and this work now regularly includes pondside planting and soft landscaped areas to encourage wildlife habitats. However, more engagement with the local communities could shed light on completely different benefits of water storage ponds, such as amenity areas for play and recreation. To realise these holistic outcomes, we must switch focus from the road itself to a wider landscape appraisal area.

Soil (waste, management and reuse)

Road construction accounts for a large part of the soil we send to landfill as waste. With soil sequestering 95% of the UK’s terrestrial carbon stock,¹ the road construction industry can and should provide leadership in the responsible use and reuse of living soils to preserve this important material and so it is not treated as waste. Progress is being made here, benefiting greatly from the skills and expertise of landscape professionals,

but all road projects should be looking to assess the soil quality, types and quantities of each on the site and prepare a methodology for its movement and reuse.

Biodiversity and habitat creation

The high cost of roads understandably demands strict cost management, which often starts with the compulsory purchase of the minimum area of land possible to create the road. All additional benefits after the budget is set are perceived as extras to be minimised, but with more strategic budgeting, far greater outcomes for nature could be realised.

A pre-budget landscape appraisal would stipulate that where a road requires the removal of a section of habitat, at this earliest stage, the land compulsory purchase agreement for the road can include additional land to ensure the creation of a viable new habitat. A landscape-led approach is essential for informing this strategic decision making, and helping infrastructure projects to integrate BNG now and when it becomes mandatory for nationally significant infrastructure projects from November 2025.

Stewardship and maintenance

The ongoing stewardship and maintenance of roads is currently almost solely driven by safety and road use. We must continue to strive

towards better ecological thinking, for example higher BNG, reduction in mowing, and leaving more trees alone. The low survival rate for newly planted trees on roadsides, resulting from the minimal establishment care they receive, can be dramatically improved. The relative costs for better procurement and increases in skills, which could make a profound difference to long-term success, should be considered.

Conclusion

We know that natural systems must be fully integrated with our own human systems for the benefit or even survival of both. Highways present a hugely significant lever for managing how these systems interact.

An understanding of, and commitment to, a truly holistic, landscape-led approach is required, especially at the earliest budgeting stages of road projects. Working with colleagues across the highways sector, we can achieve the broad range of benefits that society and the environment now demand from future roadbuilding.

Noel Farrer PPLI is Vice President of the Landscape Institute and director of Farrer Huxley Landscape Architects.

2. A417 Missing Link.

© National Highways

East Leeds Orbital Route

A 2023 Landscape Institute Awards finalist for ‘Excellence in Public Health and Wellbeing’, the East Leeds Orbital Route by AtkinsRéalis showcases how landscape architects can help deliver integrated benefits for nature and local communities through transport infrastructure.

The East Leeds Orbital Route (ELOR) is a pioneering infrastructure project which was conceived as a multi-modal transport corridor driven by nature, with people’s wellbeing at its heart.

Set within an abundance of attractive and useable green space, it represents an innovative reimagining of the transport corridor, with green and blue infrastructure principles underpinning the design, reflected in its 75% landscape to 25% road space ratio.

Strategically, the route provides a crucial 7km-long north–south link to the east of Leeds, designed to open up key development areas, allowing the city vital residential expansion and stimulating economic growth in a deprived area. At £173m, it is Leeds City Council’s (LCC) largest project for 50 years.

A series of accessible active travel routes totalling 14km were integrated into the scheme, allowing the community to enjoy the gentle, safe and varied green spaces and views. Active travel routes are separated from vehicles in a design which has been carefully amalgamated with the parent landscape through sensitive landform and planting.

AtkinsRéalis’ landscape architects were at the heart of this project, working extensively with the local community, stakeholders, and multidisciplinary partners, including client Leeds City Council and contractor Balfour Beatty. It delivers a community-friendly and sensitive scheme with a unique vision carried through in detail, to

The team played a key role in conceiving, designing and implementing LCC’s vision, designing 12 hectares of stunning new wildflower areas, as well as amenity grasslands and over 35,000 trees, alongside generous, SuDS-supplied water bodies.

ELOR provides a well-connected leisure environment, hosting four pocket parks with ‘play on the way’, including two outdoor gyms and three trim-trails, which also host biodiversity and water-sensitive design features. Habitat connectivity and improvements have been achieved throughout the scheme, with three ecological ponds and numerous swales providing SuDS and valuable wetland habitat. These also provide places for people to interact and enjoy the new environment using viewing platforms.

Careful consideration has been given to site boundaries, knitting the new corridor into its context. Hedgerows 4.5km in length have been protected, repaired or provided, with 2.5 hectares of native woodland, shrub planting and individual trees also reflecting and enhancing the receiving environment.

The ELOR showcases how landscape architects can join up the dots to create healthy, accessible spaces for human wellbeing, with

Whinmoor Swarcliffe

Manston

The Springs

Sandhills

Scholes

Pendas

Katy Cardwell

A landscape project with a railway running through it

HS2 Head of Landscape, Christoph Brintrup, offers insights into the essential role of landscape architecture in delivering one of Europe’s largest landscape design projects.

Christoph Brintrup

The High Speed 2 (HS2) project represents a monumental undertaking in the realm of transportation infrastructure in the UK. Despite the ongoing national discussion surrounding HS2, one aspect that is not often celebrated is the pivotal role that landscape architects perform in shaping its environmental, social, and sustainability objectives. A project of this scale inevitably involves massive landscape change, and the balance of competing outcomes means that solutions are not easy to establish.

This article highlights how the work of the landscape architecture profession is helping, and leading, on the delivery of its ambition.

The HS2 project is more than just a high-speed rail network; it is a transformative infrastructure megaproject that will reshape the way people travel through, interact with, and perceive landscapes. The 140-mile route between London and the West Midlands spans dense urban areas and open rural agricultural landscapes, representing an extraordinary opportunity for landscape architects. HS2 is one of the largest landscape design projects in Europe, and how these thousands of hectares of habitats are managed through this period of change is thoroughly dependent on the skills and expertise of the landscape architect.

Around 300 landscape architects have worked on the project to date, either as part of the HS2 central client team, as consultants within HS2’s supply chain, in local authorities or other stakeholder organisations. They have been tasked with sensitively integrating this vast project into the natural and built environment in a

1. Balsall Common Viaduct artist’s impression. © HS2

way that reduces and mitigates the railway’s impact on its surrounding environment and communities, while simultaneously delivering regenerative landscapes and cityscapes.

The role of the landscape architect

HS2 Ltd’s Landscape Design Team has played a central client role in defining the route map, specification and strategic goals of the project within the landscape corridor that is currently under construction between London and the West Midlands. The team acts as the project’s technical landscape design authority, and the assurer and guardian of design quality related to landscape architecture, from the initial optioneering and concept design stages, through to the operational end state. It continues to be a key force behind the design framework, not only providing direction and strategic guidance for the supply chain’s design development, but defining key processes and requirements that enable the delivery of integrated, multifunctional landscapes.

These activities relate to a myriad of challenges that often go beyond the assurance of design outputs. They include matters around consenting, stakeholder engagement, contract management, contract interfaces, procurement, programme planning, data management, legal considerations and end-state planning. It is precisely this framework that provides time and clarity for landscape consultants to coordinate and interface with other professions in multidisciplinary environments, showcasing their expertise in integrating natural and man-made elements, creating places that are not only visually appealing, but also environmentally sustainable and socially beneficial.

The multidisciplinary teams that form part of the numerous HS2 supply chain contracts are at the very core of delivering the landscape design narrative. They follow the ambition that has been defined by the client organisation in the HS2 Landscape Design Approach,¹ which is closely linked to the overarching HS2 Design Vision,² and serve as manifestos for

the project. These documents look to deliver strategic integration, advocating for an infrastructure that is not merely functional but contextual, connected to the environmental and cultural fabric of the landscapes and communities through which it passes.

Public space, health and wellbeing

As well as environmental considerations, the landscape architects’ role is about fostering community cohesion and improving social outcomes. Witness the integration of vibrant public realms such as at Old Oak Common Station,

walking trails around Water Orton Viaduct, and enhanced community gardens that have been implemented around Euston, which will aim to provide accessible and inclusive spaces that improve the quality of life for residents and encourage physical activity.

By actively engaging communities during the design process, such as the recent consultation taking place around the design of Balsall Common Viaduct, the landscape architecture team has played a key part in ensuring that the project reflects the needs and aspirations of those it serves. This approach strives to create a sense of ownership among local residents.

Our scope also extends across

¹ https://assets. publishing.service.gov. uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/ attachment_data/ file/550791/HS2_ Landscape_Design_ Approach_July_2016. pdf

² HS2_Design_Vision_ Booklet.pdf (publishing. service.gov.uk)

2. CGI visual of Old Oak Common public realm at Old Oak Common Station. © HS2

3. A CGI visualisation of Saltley Viaduct, canal track view. © HS2

From species selection to seed provenance, decisions that take account of a changing climate, and help the landscape sequester carbon, are critical.

the public realm, where HS2 plays an important role in shaping a strong emphasis on community spaces which are of critical importance to urban and rural communities alike. This vision encompasses more than just aesthetics; it is about crafting spaces that welcome, unite, and inspire, that support biodiversity and offer respite, encourage play, contemplation, and celebration. These are objectives that landscape architects are aiming for when orchestrating the various project requirements and creating places. This work is crucial and shows that the profession contributes to a broader ambition of social sustainability, especially around HS2’s stations. Our landscape architects also work

closely with other experts in the active travel, health and construction sectors, with the aim to establish a ‘slowspeed’ network that lies alongside the high-speed rail corridor. These connections, created in part through the retention of construction haul roads and maintenance tracks, will connect communities, encourage active lifestyles, and positively contribute to more sustainable travel.

Climate, biodiversity and resources

One of the cornerstones of HS2’s Landscape Design Approach is its response to climate change. The planting of around 7 million trees and

shrubs, and the creation of habitats, will play a pivotal role in mitigating environmental impact, and translating sustainability policies into tangible outcomes. From species selection to seed provenance, decisions that take account of a changing climate, and help the landscape sequester carbon, are critical. Equally, by the integration of green and blue infrastructure (such as sustainable drainage systems, green roofs and the naturalisation of rivers) landscape helps the project to reduce urban heat islands, manage flood risk, and enhance urban air quality.

HS2 is moving an unprecedented amount of construction supplies, with many millions of cubic metres of

4. An aerial still of the Colne Valley Viaduct, September 2023.

excavated materials to be relocated, and the work that the landscape team are doing in material management has been extensive. This has required us to balance cut and fill volumes, and carefully reintegrate this material locally, thus avoiding unnecessary lorry movements and reducing carbon cost and impact on local communities. Such interventions highlight the role landscape architects can play in embedding sustainability into infrastructure construction.

The preservation and enhancement of biodiversity are central to HS2’s mission, and landscape architects, working closely with ecologists, are aiming to create and connect habitats, ensuring wildlife thrives alongside infrastructure expansion. These ecological networks form

green arteries that breathe life across the landscape, allowing species to migrate, forage and reproduce in coexistence with infrastructure interventions.

The landscape-led approach leaves room for others beyond HS2’s red line to one day build on. Joining up projects through collaborative working and carefully targeted funding will achieve a wider-reaching green corridor that has the potential to deliver greater social and environmental benefits than a series of smaller linear initiatives could do. Such an approach represents an ambitious effort and will contribute to some of the key targets and actions set out in the government’s 25-Year Environmental Plan.³

The close relationship between water management and landscape

design is another aspect of the extensive remit of our landscape architects. Their work requires whole-systems design thinking and recognising water’s vital role as a precious resource. By understanding the wider catchment area including habitat and community context, the multidisciplinary design team is able to merge functionality with a natural systems-led approach that minimises resource use, slows water flows, mitigates flooding, promotes enjoyment of watercourses for recreational use and bolsters resilience. Ultimately, this results in regenerative and multifunctional outcomes, including enhanced biodiversity and habitats, and community benefits, such as the realignment of the River Cole to the east of Birmingham.

The preservation and enhancement of biodiversity are central to HS2’s mission.

3 https://www.gov. uk/government/ publications/25-yearenvironment-plan

5. ‘North Abutment aerial’ Colne Valley Viaduct concepts created for HS2 by Grimshaw Architects. © HS2

Heritage and culture

A deep appreciation for history and heritage guides the hand of landscape architects as they weave HS2 through Britain’s rich mosaic of storied landscapes. Conserving, enhancing or restoring the setting of historical sites, such as the landscape around Grade I Listed Edgcote House and the adjacent battlefield site in Northamptonshire, ensures that the project doesn’t erase the past but rather highlights and celebrates it. Through sensitive interventions, designers aim to tell the stories of the land the train will move through, turning the rail project into a journey through history.

Finally, the legacy envisaged and driven by the profession includes the seamless integration of arts and

With its blend of innovative engineering, high-speed connectivity and wide-reaching green infrastructure, HS2 is redefining what is possible when landscape architects lead the way in applying a landscape-led approach and nature-based solutions to what is often considered as simply an engineering project.

culture in the landscape, celebrating the natural world and human creativity, and fostering a sense of belonging and pride. Land art projects in rural areas and art installations in civic centres require a close collaboration between the artist and landscape architect. One example where this has been put into practice is the Maple Cross JMI School’s play area, which was created through professional collaboration and crafted from soil excavated from the Chilterns Tunnel. Initiated by a student’s request, the project engaged a landscape designer to collaborate with pupils, integrating their ideas and local history. Featuring rolling hills, fruit trees, balancing logs and woven willow saplings, the project demonstrates the multidisciplinary team’s ability to combine educational opportunities, community engagement and the sustainable reuse of materials.

With its blend of innovative engineering, high-speed connectivity and wide-reaching green infrastructure, HS2 is redefining what is possible when landscape

architects lead the way in applying a landscape-led approach and naturebased solutions to what is often considered as simply an engineering project. Behind the landscape and public realm design of HS2 stands the application of almost every part of a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute’s (CMLI) professional remit. The approach and design imagines a balanced coexistence between human advancement and environmental stewardship. As HS2 progresses, the ongoing innovation and dedication of its landscape architects will ensure that the green corridors it creates, the biodiversity it enhances, and the human experiences and health it enriches, will be leveraged to their full potential. HS2 is paving the way for a more sustainable and ecologically integrated approach to major infrastructure, and landscape architects are well and truly in the driving seat.

Christoph Brintrup is Head of Landscape at HS2.

6. The Maple Cross JMI School play area was created from soil excavated from the Chilterns Tunnel, and co-designed between a landscape designer and pupils to integrate their ideas on local history.

In practice on HS2

Three HS2 projects, looking at the work of Landscape Institute Registered Practices in collaboration with project partners

Curzon Street Station

Grant Associates, WSP, Grimshaw, Howells, Speirs Major

Curzon Street Station will be the first brand new intercity station built in Britain since the 19th century, creating a new landmark for Birmingham and boosting opportunities for regeneration. The project will extend the reach of Birmingham city centre eastwards by half a kilometre and help to drive regeneration in the Digbeth area of the city.

The station will be fully integrated into an extended tram network, as well as offering pedestrian, cycle, taxi, bus and conventional rail connections to the rest of the city and the wider West Midlands. Inclusive design is at the heart of the proposals, with a clearly laid-out progression of intuitive public spaces, open and accessible information ’hubs’, quiet zones and children’s play areas.

Grant Associates’ public realm design is set around themes of people, time and place, and includes four key public spaces: Station Square, the most significant new public space, giving a sense of arrival into Birmingham and providing easy links into the city centre and Digbeth: Curzon Promenade,

which provides views of Old Curzon Street Station and complements the setting of Eastside City Park; Curzon Square, which reflects the historic setting and buildings and links well to Digbeth; and Curzon Street, which provides a flexible lawn space as an extension to Eastside City Park, and links to wider plans for the future development of the area.

1. Colne Valley Western Slopes. © AlignJV

2. Curzon Street Station. © Grant Associates

Colne Valley Western Slopes

LDA Design, Jacobs

New infrastructure is not always designed to create wider social and environmental benefits, but major civil works can provide fantastic opportunities to give back in ways not immediately obvious. For example, with the ten mile Chilterns tunnel for HS2 in the Colne Valley, all three million tonnes of chalk excavated will be used to create a new nature reserve.

The Colne Valley Western Slopes project involves transforming 127 hectares of arable land to create wood pasture, wetlands and species-rich chalk grassland. It will be a distinctive landscape that replicates local chalk ridges and creates an immersive environment. There are only 800 square kilometres of calcareous grassland left in England and this would be one of the largest sites in the adjacent Chilterns. It will deliver the biggest and best possible habitats, designed to thrive over the long term with minimal human input.

This rewilding project was inspired by Knepp Estate in West Sussex. Matt Hobbs, the lead ecologist from Jacobs, says the Western Slopes will potentially be colonised by hundreds of species of flora and fauna, including invertebrates, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. “We hope that when areas are robust enough, the land managers will introduce some of nature’s best engineers – freeroaming large herbivores, grazing all year round.”

Wendover Dean Viaduct

Moxon, Arcadis, EKFB

LDA Design’s landscape architecture lead for the project, Simon Railton, says it will be a place for people to connect with nature, with new footpaths, cycling and horse riding routes. “Our design team is passionate about achieving an enduring environmental legacy and addressing the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.”

The Western Valley Slopes project is progressing at pace, with much of the landform taking shape and early seeding and planting works alongside wetland habitats beginning to turn the project vision into reality.

The majority of the HS2 line throughout the Chilterns National Landscape runs underground in tunnels or is concealed by cuttings. The Wendover Dean Viaduct is where the line breaks out, and much attention fell on the design. From the outset the project design team (Arcadis, EKFB and Moxon) adopted a highly collegiate approach. By maintaining a circular discussion throughout each stage of the project we were able to use existing features of the pastoral landscape to meet HS2’s exacting technical standards in new and innovative ways – ultimately creating a design that treats the viaduct and its surrounding landscape as one entity.

A key initial design challenge was the team’s desire to create a visual continuity between the landscape and the viaduct, allowing the 450m infrastructure to run seamlessly and unobtrusively through the valley. This required subtle remodelling of topography combined with sophisticated architectural and engineering work to reduce the structure’s visual complexity. Above-deck elements are limited to the necessary aspects of vehicle containment, maintenance, security, and overhead power, while the abutments have been conceived as ‘sockets’ in the front slopes of the approach embankments, concealing the bearings and associated support structure.

As important as the viaduct itself, was maintaining a natural landscape that flows unhindered beneath it. To achieve this, a biodiversity-and heritage-focused landscape planting scheme was designed and implemented, to repair and reinstate historic agricultural field boundaries and hedgerows. New earthwork landforms, and the land and track drainage assets – including a new network of ditches, balancing and infiltration ponds – have all been designed in keeping with the natural characteristics and topography of the valley floor, while new woodland copses and wildflower grassland have been introduced to complement it. Over time the viaduct’s weathered steel beams will take on an earthy russet tone in keeping with the surrounding countryside.

3. Chiltern Tunnel.

© Grimshaw Align

4. Wendover Viaduct.

Low traffic neighbourhoods: How did we get here, and where are we going?

Ralph Smyth

In May 2020, weeks after the start of lockdown, the government published new guidance telling councils to “make significant changes to their road layouts to give more space to cyclists and pedestrians”. ¹ The benefits for wellbeing, air quality, noise, climate and local economies were also mentioned, as was fitness. Perhaps surprisingly, low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) were not. Instead, there was a mention of “modal filters” (also known as filtered permeability), in other words the underlying measures that allowed people who were walking and cycling through access, but not those driving.

In July 2020 the Department for Transport (DfT) published Gear Change, described as a “bold vision for delivering a permanent and long-term increase in cycling and walking”,² but the meaning of LTNs remained undefined until summer 2023 when a review was announced, describing an LTN as a “transport scheme which seeks to remove, or substantially reduce, motorised through-traffic from a residential area through the use of

Ralph Smyth charts the recent public trajectory of ‘low traffic neighbourhoods’ (LTNs), and gives context to their future as part of a greener, better-connected public realm.

traffic-signed restrictions or physical features such as planters”.³ Measures that restrict driving on existing roads typically attract opposition in the run-up to and immediately after their introduction, and it was in London that LTNs and opposition to them took off.

Many people feel a lack of consultation contributed to LTNs’ image problem and that the perceived rush to install them in 2020 was particularly problematic. While plans at the height of the pandemic positioned themselves as “a once in a generation opportunity to deliver a lasting transformative change”,⁴ the realities of the pandemic also meant that usual consultation methods such as public meetings were impractical. This led some to say they did not feel they were being listened to, others to even claim that LTNs were an affront to democracy. By February 2023, ministers had commissioned a briefing on preventing ‘15-minute city’ measures, which referred to restrictions on driving.⁵

Over the spring of 2023, work progressed “to drop some commitments which no longer seem to chime with current priorities”,⁶

such as a community right to close streets burdened by people driving through. Tactical notes on media handling proposed to do this “quietly”,⁷ with the shift in policy reaching a crescendo at the Conservative Party conference that October. “What is sinister, and what we shouldn’t tolerate,” Secretary of State for Transport, Mark Harper, announced, “is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when, and that they police it all with CCTV.”⁸

1,4 https://web. archive.org/ web/20200511192243/ https://www.gov. uk/government/ publications/ reallocating-road-spacein-response-to-covid-19statutory-guidance-forlocal-authorities 2 https://www.gov. uk/government/ publications/cyclingand-walking-plan-forengland

3, 5, 6, 7, 15 https:// transportactionnetwork. org.uk/plan-for-driversrevelations/. See also 12.

⁸ https://www.ukpol. co.uk/mark-harper2023-speech-toconservative-partyconference/

9,16 https://www. gov.uk/government/ publications/plan-fordrivers

10 https://www.gov. uk/government/ publications/ reallocating-road-spacein-response-to-covid-19statutory-guidance-forlocal-authorities

11 https://www.gov. uk/government/ publications/ implementing-lowtraffic-neighbourhoods

12 https://petition. parliament.uk/ petitions/633819

13 https://www. theguardian.com/ uk-news/2024/jan/10/ shift-from-15-minutecities-in-england-partlydue-to-conspiracytheories

14 https://www. linkedin.com/posts/billesterson-311013156_ the-suggestion-thattransport-policy-mightactivity-715087347318 6164737-Rosx/

17 https://www. racfoundation.org/ media-centre/car-milesand-cutting-carbon

18 https://www.gov. uk/government/ publications/ environmentalimprovement-plan

19 https://www. legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/2021/30/ contents/enacted

20 https://www.gov. uk/government/ publications/activetravel-england-schemereview-tools

21 https://www.gov. uk/government/ publications/low-trafficneighbourhood-review

Alongside the speech, ministers published their Plan for Drivers,9 saying it was wrong some drivers should feel under attack, and cancelled key guidance for local authorities.10 The result of its withdrawal meant policies supporting the creation of school streets, pedestrian zones, safer cycle lanes and reliable bus routes were cancelled. When a new version was published in March 2024,11 it failed to fill the policy gap for these other measures, as well as leaving out important advice on equalities, such as helping people with visual impairments navigate changed street layouts.

Concurrently to all of this, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities had actually rebuffed a Parliamentary petition against 15-minute cities in March 2023, saying that far from limiting freedom, they were actually about creating

high quality places… ensuring key services are located close to development...to provide people with more choice about how and where they travel.12

Indeed, rather than being restrictive, they are about moving away from areas zoned as residential, shopping or offices, towards creating a more organic, vibrant mix.

The Labour Party had stayed mostly quiet on the matter, until the media revealed a connection between so-called 15-minute city conspiracy theories and changes in government policy.13 Shadow roads minister Bill Esterson noted, “The negative comments about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and 20 mph zones in residential areas all came as a result of the conspiracy theories on the internet, not as the result of evidence from the real world.”14

Looking ahead, the key battleground remains whether measures, seen by some as “dictating travel choices”15 are needed to meet environmental targets and quality of life ambitions. The Plan for Drivers asserts that environmental concerns don’t justify “anti-driver measures”,16 but even mainstream motoring bodies like the RAC Foundation acknowledge meeting climate targets without cutting car use would be like “trying to climb Everest on a bad day”.17

Although there are no targets for climate adaptation, as weather becomes ever more extreme and unpredictable, swathes of grey in urban areas will need to be turned green with SuDS and other green infrastructure to mitigate flooding and heat. Public health would also benefit from more people travelling actively in greener spaces, but as yet there are

no hard targets for this. Landscape professionals will be essential to deliver these changes, but policy is required to enable them. As well as the Plan for Drivers, the Environmental Improvement Plan18 is another major document set to impact the future relationship between transport and the public realm, and thus how planners and designers can respond. Created by the Environment Act 2021,19 this sets out an array of statutory targets across issues like particulate pollution and nature recovery, though not noise, microplastic pollution, or landscape yet, sadly. There appears to have been no modelling to date, but traffic and speed reduction will likely be needed in some rural areas, if roadkill and habitat fragmentation are to be reduced and ecological connectivity enhanced. This could offer important opportunities for reducing the impacts of traffic in Protected Landscapes in particular. Design guidance published in February 2024 by Active Travel England20 seeks to find a way forward, ensuring that LTNs are joined up as part of coherent routes for walking and cycling, while mitigating the impacts of any displaced motor traffic. While adding green infrastructure to schemes will help them score over the threshold for funding set by the guidance, it is unlikely to deflect opposition in the short term, not least as planters have often been the most fought over, if not vandalised elements. But, in areas where LTNs have been in place long enough to bed in, the high-quality public realm has formed an important legacy. With a DfT survey of residents living in LTNs finding that 58% of them were unaware of their existence,21 the longer-term health, environmental, and community benefits of greening streets could yet be the changes that are most remembered.

Ralph Smyth is a freelance sustainability consultant, advisor to Transport Action Network, and mediator. He’s previously led on transport for countryside charity CPRE and practised as a barrister.

Community streets

With a special focus on engagement, a low-traffic scheme in Calderdale shows how a landscape approach provides integrated solutions to design challenges, and puts local people at the heart of its long-term success.

Amanda McDermott CMLI and Ella King

Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council (CMBC)’s Highways team incorporates good placemaking wherever possible. They recognise that investment in active travel principles gives CMBC best overall value, with benefits spanning the remits and budgets of different council departments. Spaces prioritising walking and wheeling not only increase those activities, but can free up space in urban areas for planting.

Benefits of well-designed community streets include:

– Improvements in air and water quality, due to fewer cars and more planting

– Biodiversity gain, bringing nature into urban environments

– Physical health improvements from encouraging activity and reducing air pollution

– Mental health benefits of fresh air, nature and greater interaction with other people

CMBC has taken care to involve the community of Ash Green, Mixenden (an area of Halifax with high deprivation levels), in the scheme from its early conceptual design days, which will be important to its success.

The design brief

The project, funded by Active Travel England and West Yorkshire Combined Authority, proposes to reduce traffic, building a safe and healthy environment for people of all ages to walk, cycle, rest and play in the streets around Ash Green School.

When CMBC appointed 2B Landscape Consultancy Ltd (2B) as project landscape architects, they had already determined the area around Ash Green School as a priority for one of their proposed

community streets, and agreed that road closure points would be part of the scheme. 2B developed the idea by suggesting that the horseshoe loop created by the road closures could be converted to a one-way system, liberating a carriageway to allow for wider pavements, and inclusion of planting.

Calderdale suffers from devastating flooding. Even up on the hillside in Mixenden, surface water causes issues in heavy rain. Every little amount held back higher up the catchment also helps to relieve fluvial flooding in the valley bottoms, so it was agreed that wherever possible the proposed planting would be designed as rain gardens.

Stakeholder engagement and design process

With these principles in mind, CMBC and 2B began liaising with stakeholders, including Ash Green Primary School, Holy Nativity Church, The Addy (support services for people with Learning Disabilities), Together Housing (community housing provider), North Halifax Partnership, White Rose Forest (who helped the team achieve funding for street trees), and local councillors. We also liaised with different departments within CMBC, including Active Calderdale, Playgrounds, and Maintenance.

These initial conversations informed a design that considered local issues, such as the need for a hearse to park near the church, and different maintenance regimes depending on which organisation is responsible. Some of the proposed locations for raised crossings (prioritising the comfort of pedestrians as well as reducing the speed of vehicles) were relocated following feedback from a school audit workshop, undertaken with groups of students.

The resulting draft masterplan was publicised, with a feedback survey available on the council’s website, publicised in the local newspaper, and public drop-in events held within the school. Genuine public engagement raised awareness of issues for individual householders and gave important insights that can only be gained by living on a particular street – for example resulting in the relocation of a road closure to further down the street.

Local suppliers

As the design developed, 2B and CMBC worked closely with suppliers, ranging from Calderdale-based international corporation Marshalls, who invited the scheme to trial their developing rain garden products, to

nurseries Dove Cottage and Beardsworths, who have contract-grown the plants, lowering the project’s carbon footprint, supporting local SMEs, and ensuring quality and availability of plants. Compost will be used from CMBC residents’ green recycling, and school children will be involved in designing interpretation panels for the rain gardens, through education sessions with locally based natural flood management charity, Slow The Flow.

The narrative of the project has also encouraged Active Calderdale, North Halifax Partnership, UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), and CMBC’s Playgrounds team to contribute to the refurbishment of the tired adjacent playground, which will be completed following the highway works (intended during 2024).

Stakeholders’ involvement in the project’s journey is also invaluable, with The Addy and the school (with Council support) volunteering to lead the community in providing ongoing maintenance. This enabled the design team to specify interesting and varied planting, including a community orchard and attractive, diverse rain garden planting. With the community invested in looking after the environment, it is far more likely to thrive. They will be the key to success.

Amanda McDermott is a Calderdale-based Senior Landscape Architect for 2B Landscape Consultancy Ltd, and a founding trustee of Slow The Flow.

Ella King is a Project Manager for Highways at Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council, mainly on Active Travel Schemes.

3. Ash Green masterplan.

Inclusive design for transport in the public realm

In this provocation to all landscape designers, Jill White questions whether common approaches to designing transport infrastructure in the public realm are inclusive enough – and searches for where improvements could be made.

Jill

White

What exactly is ‘transport’?

As designers of the public realm, we really should know what we mean – and it’s not just motorised wheels. People transport themselves on foot (including using walking frames); they may also employ a wheelchair or a scooter; carers may push others in a pram or buggy.

But who is deciding the rules on how we all get about in the same environment as motorised vehicles?

If you drive a car or other vehicle, you are legally obliged (as a condition of holding a driving licence) to keep yourself up to date with all the information in the current Highway Code, and to keep abreast of updates. As good landscape architects, I am sure that those of us who drive are regularly doing this but, even if you don’t drive, the Highway Code is hugely relevant to your practice if you

are designing any masterplan featuring a road, track or path.

The recently revised Highway Code, with three new Rules (H1, 2 & 3),¹ clearly sets out the legal transport hierarchy and puts pedestrians at the top, and this category includes wheelchair and mobility scooter users. This is because they are most at risk in a collision situation. Pedestrians may use any part of the road and use cycle tracks as well as the pavement, unless there are signs prohibiting pedestrians, and cyclists must give way to pedestrians to shared cycle tracks (Rule H2). The hierarchy then moves to cyclists, horse riders and motor cyclists, then cars and vans, with bus and lorry drivers at the bottom. We must be aware of this and should use this hierarchy system to inform our practice.

Designers: you should not only be thinking about the things you need to get around, as individuals are not representative of all users. Look around; improve your knowledge with CPD; talk to local people and organisations and learn about the most common public grumbles in the area you’re working in. When you’re scoping a project, perhaps consider needs by treating it like writing a

1 https://www.gov.uk/ government/news/ the-highway-code-8changes-you-needto-know-from-29january-2022

specification and breaking it all up into the sequence of things that need to happen to achieve an end. In this case people want to get from A to B, so first we need to consider all the types of likely user in the space to be designed. What are they employing to get about? Is it feet, wheelchairs, pushchairs, mobility scooters, cycles, electric cars or vans and lorries (or a mix)? Then consider the world from their viewpoint, go out on a bike around the area, get hold of a wheelchair or pushchair with some weight – you’ll very soon understand first hand why you should be thinking extremely hard about where those dropped kerbs are, how many you are incorporating and the positions on the roadside they need to spring from. There’s nothing like doing it yourself to really have your eyes opened. Do a walk with an older person along any stree; the first thing that will strike you is how few seats or perching opportunities there are and how short the distance is that many older people can keep going before benefiting from a short rest. And while you’re thinking about those benches, make sure you choose some with one or two arm rests – it’s so much easier to get up and down from a bench using one of these. You’ll not only help older people, but will also benefit anyone else who is frail or unwell or is less able in any way.

It’s a very easy win. Now, we’ll assume these people are going to catch a bus, and so your next decision is about our shelter designs. First, consider flagging up the fact that they’re an obstacle on the pavement to visually impaired people by the use of tactile paving, and then help those same users by thinking about features such as talking bus stops and braille information. Consider also the size and colours of fonts and backgrounds for ease of reading for everyone, incorporating graphic designs too, to help users with low or no literacy, reduced language ability or who experience neurodivergence of some kind. Make sure the shelter has seats or perching facilities too, of course, and perhaps a mirrored surface of some kind. This will be much appreciated by people with hearing impairment, to avoid sudden surprises when others come up behind them unexpectedly. Perhaps our local transport users are using an electric mobility scooter instead? Have you thought about whether your footways are going to be wide enough for passing between these and other path users? Such users are legally categorised as pedestrians and so should not feel forced out into the road. Consider also the proposed surface treatments, especially if it is going to be an informal area. If the pathway is to be shared by cyclists and pedestrians, remember the Highway Code states that pedestrians can use any part of that path unless it is signed otherwise (Rule H2), so if you are intending to keep users separated then be aware of this and the need to alert visually impaired users to this arrangement. For informal areas, don’t employ layers of loose gravel everywhere; allow for at least some routing over a firmer surface such as bound gravel or hoggin. Just spend ten minutes pushing a wheelchair or buggy on loose gravel if you are not convinced. I have visited too many parks that have great accessible, bound gravel paths but which wheelchairs users really struggle to get onto because they can’t get from their car across the loose gravel car park to where the path starts. We also need to be thinking about battery charging opportunities

wherever possible in all of our design locations: ask any large National Trust property how any mobility scooters they have to go out and rescue on their properties every week because their batteries have run out. Parking facilities for buggies and mobility scooters also need to be provisioned in our inclusive transport environment. And, in the city, how about considering some more clearly defined spaces where rented e-bikes should be left out of the way of every disabled pedestrian trying to use a wheelchair or scooter?

Such decisions don’t just come down to individual practitioners; practice managers also need to make sure staff knowledge of inclusive design is up-to-date. This can be done through practice-based CPD, such as inviting local groups (such as disability organisations) to talk and discuss with staff. Incorporate inclusiveness as part of your staff appraisal processes; make understanding the issues a requirement for working in your practice. Think also about managing the issues raised for your staff during public consultation events, especially around transport issues such as traffic mitigation or design work on low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs). With conspiracy theories abounding, and with racial and religious abuse issues, there can be real risks for staff sometimes.

Understanding different users’ needs by trying to obtain first-hand experience of someone else’s world, and researching the current regulations, can make it easier than you think to achieve greater inclusiveness in your transport designs for the public realm. And if you’re thinking along these lines for transport issues, it’s a very small step to using the same methods to achieve a more inclusive approach in all your design work.

Jill White is a landscape architect, horticulturalist and writer with a particular interest in creating more inclusive and accessible landscapes. This is Jill’s final edition as copy editor, having previously also served on the Editorial Advisory Panel. The Landscape Institute thanks her immensely for her contribution to the Journal.

Co-designing neighbourhood mobilities

Design researcher Geke van Dijk’s experience in co-designing mobility schemes has mostly focused on Amsterdam, a city known for its progressive approach to active travel and public realm. Here, she looks at what her studio’s ‘Streetlab’ method could mean for UK cities.

Cities are facing multiple pressing challenges around the design and use of public space: How to encourage more sustainable mobility by reducing air pollution, CO₂ emissions and fossil fuel use; how to encourage healthier lifestyles, promoting more sustainable and healthier ways of moving and more social interaction in the city; how to use limited public space, providing a sustainable, healthy, social and safe living environment; how to heat and rain-proof the city, and find the best ways to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Public space in cities is limited and often quite crowded. Cars (both driving and parked) have long been a priority, but this is slowly reversing. More priority is gradually given to sustainable mobility and greenery, with more space for walking, meeting and playing. This involves a large-scale and complex transition, including a series of strategic choices for gradual adaptation over time. A city is not a ‘blank canvas’ where you can just start over with a clean slate. To make the changes feasible, projects must fit within existing maintenance and replacement schedules.

Moving beyond traditional consultation

This complex transition process requires open, exploratory, and constructive conversations between many different stakeholders. Policymakers and officials benefit from getting input from residents and local businesses on these issues for developing new policies and initiating projects. This joint involvement informs both the direction and speed of change. Choices can be jointly made, provided they fit within set policy frameworks.

An effective course of action is to move beyond traditional consultation, where a local council presents an already detailed blueprint and local stakeholders can only object. From both sides, it is important not to get into such traditional ‘us vs them’ conversations, but rather to engage in an open exploration of opportunities and possibilities. The Streetlab approach described in the ‘Key principles’ boxout creates space for a collaborative and future-oriented way of thinking about more sustainable mobility and the design of public space.

Improving bike parking facilities in the City of London

Since 2016, design research agency Stby has facilitated 15 different Streetlab projects for the City of Amsterdam. Recently, it has also facilitated a Streetlab co-design process for the Golden Lane Estate in London. The estate is a major housing development in the City of London, and home to more than 700 people, many of whom are cyclists. Over the past decades, green modes of transport such as cycling have grown in London, and after the pandemic

Key principles of the Streetlab approach

CO-CREATIVE GROUP SESSIONS

A key element of Streetlabs is co-creative group sessions with residents, local businesses and visitors in a particular neighbourhood. This has proved to be a successful way to engage in open conversation with a mix of local stakeholders. There can be up to 30 participants per Streetlab session, who interact in small groups at different tables. Each table has a discussion leader. The conversations at the tables are open, but well prepared and structured. People can say anything, as long as it is relevant to the topic and respectful of the other participants. The moderator ensures that everyone gets a chance to speak and that the comments made are well documented.

VISUALISATION OF IMAGINED FUTURES

The role of the team from Stby in these projects is not only that of researchers, but also of designers. We use our creativity in preparing materials to stimulate, focus and also document the conversation during the Streetlab. In the report phase, after a thorough analysis of the collected data, we also use our creative abilities to create ‘inspiration images’ that indicate in a visual way what suggestions, ideas and visions emerged in the Streetlab. In doing so, we indicate the solution directions that we know have support within the community.

SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM RESULTS

The results of each project are a mix of immediately implementable local adjustments and longer-term further development and realisation of improvements for the wider city. Some improvements are relatively easy and quick to implement because they fall within the mandate and budget of a particular department. Small-scale local improvements in specific streets and neighbourhoods can often be implemented within a short period of time after the completion of a Streetlab project, which as an immediate result is very pleasing to all involved. Other, more large-scale solutions may intervene at the system level of the city, and often cannot be initiated from a single project. Implementing these improvements requires cooperation between different departments, and that usually takes more time.

From both sides, it is important not to get into such traditional ‘us vs them’ conversations, but rather to engage in an open exploration of opportunities and possibilities.

Geke van Dijk

there has been an added increase. Finding a good place to safely park a bicycle on the estate has become more problematic, as the existing facilities that were built in the 1950s are not designed for the current demand.

A group of resident volunteers secured community funding for improving bicycle parking facilities on the estate. To make sure that the views of as many residents as possible were taken into consideration, a series of open and co-creative Streetlab sessions were held in the community centres on the estate. Stby prepared, facilitated and documented these sessions in several ways, to make them optimally accessible and to collect a wide range of voices from residents.

The consultations aimed to learn from as many residents and workers on the estate as possible. The invitations to the sessions were widely advertised via posters around the estate and emails

to an extensive mailing list. Across the three sessions, more than 60 people attended – many regular cyclists, but also occasional and aspirational cyclists and non-cyclists. They all shared their thoughts and preferences.

The principles of the Streetlab methodology were employed during the sessions. A large print with a map of the estate was placed on the table, together with some props (e.g. cards representing types of cyclists and types of bicycle parking options) that triggered people to talk about their cycling experience and their needs for bicycle parking. Towards the end of the conversation, three ‘golden coins’ were handed out to participants so they could indicate their top preferences for locations and parking options on the map. This format created an equal opportunity for people with different parking needs to express their hopes and fears and to engage in a two-way

conversation with other residents. The atmosphere of the sessions was collaborative and welcoming.

The results from the co-creative consultation process were a series of recommendations on the bike parking needs and preferences of people around the estate, combined with specific indications of where on the estate opportunities existed for better outdoor and indoor bike parking solutions. Based on their deep local knowledge, participants were able to point out many underused and unused spaces on the estate that could be refurbished to create new or improved bike parking facilities. The results were reported back to the community in an illustrated report. Since then, a detailed plan has been developed that is now awaiting planning permission from the City of London.

Towards more sustainable and healthier public spaces

By using the co-creative and open Streetlab approach, policymakers and local communities can be jointly engaged in step-by-step transitions to make the use of public space more humane, cleaner and safer. These complex transitions cannot be implemented by rolling out previously determined detailed blueprints. They require gradual and iterative steps within overall strategic frameworks. The main dilemmas are not minor trivial design issues, but complex considerations that are part of a broader transition towards sustainable and healthy use of public space in the city.

The results of successive Streetlabs in Amsterdam over the years have clearly showed a growing momentum for some major changes, such as building large underground bicycle parking garages and a gradual reduction of car parking spaces in neighbourhoods, which increased confidence within the municipality about the implementation. Many of these changes are currently underway.

Geke van Dijk is Director of Stby in London and Amsterdam, and specialises in design research for meaningful change across industry and public sector.

2. A Streetlab London workshop.

STBY

3. Participants in the Golden Lane Estate Streetlab. © STBY

Mobility and masterplanning

Periscope founder and landscape architect Daniel Rea looks at the critical role of mobility in the spatial design agency’s masterplan approach for The Phoenix, a progressive new sustainable development which recently gained planning permission in Lewes.

In February 2024, after four years of work, The Phoenix in Lewes gained planning consent. The project isn’t expressly ‘anti-car’: you can own one, live there and drive to and from the site, but that’s where things stop in terms of business as usual.

At The Phoenix, other forms of mobility are prime, and we believe the approach has the potential to transform spatial and urban planning in the UK. This article is about the catalytic impact of an integrated, progressive approach to mobility as the cornerstone of mixed-use masterplans.

The developer, Human Nature (HN) is a different breed of organisation. As much campaigner as developer, the founders cut their teeth at Greenpeace, going on to found Beyond Green (advising developers on sustainability) before founding HN to enact system change ‘from the

front’, by being better than the market. Their latest project is The Phoenix, a brownfield regeneration project on the former site of John Every’s Ironworks in Lewes within the South Downs National Park. A challenging site on which to promote a new paradigm for low-carbon, regenerative development, but it is through this struggle that the client and team have managed to free themselves from the straitjacket of traditional development approaches and look to the future.

Periscope has a long-standing relationship with HN. The practice understands how to work in deep

Daniel Rea

1. Phoenix Project illustrative aerial view.

© Periscope

collaboration – a term borrowed from Apple CEO Jonathan Smales, who uses it to describe a process of co-locating designers (physically) and adopting a ‘fail fast’ iterative approach to design. Sketches and discursive critique run thick and fast; drawing in front of each other, listening to people who are not designers, throwing out established norms and regular killing of darlings. It is not a process that comes naturally to everyone. However, it works quickly and yields results much faster than more traditional, plodding processes of ‘draw, issue, coordinate’, while adding an energy and a spirit of adventure. Working across disciplines, our team is diverse with varied skills, allowing us to work at a scale from regional masterplanning to small community projects.

We identify as a spatial design agency, are mission led and use landscape architecture, architecture and urban design to bring humans and non-humans into balance through regenerative practice. Periscope’s role on The Phoenix is the Masterplan Design Lead, coordinating the Integrated Design Team. The practice has also designed the public realm and landscape, the adaptive reuse of two heritage structures and the Co-Mobility Hub. We coordinated the work of twelve architects together with the engineering teams,

including the transport engineers.

HN came to their design team with a visual and philosophical blueprint for The Phoenix; this included requirements for low-car, playable streets with ‘wit and mess’ (informality), ‘bike culture’, ‘life between buildings’, ‘super green’ and a host of other components for making streets pedestrian and cycle first, with cars being seen as guests. There are many possible design outcomes to service such ambitions but all of them will fall short without a more fundamental approach to the motor car – this really comes down to the question ‘how can there be fewer and where should we put them?’ The answer could lie in a consolidated, centralised approach to parking with the consequential reduction in car movements. With this in our minds, the design team set about proving this spatially and technically. Happily, a local vernacular of Lewes is narrow streets, in this part of the world called ‘twittens’, which often feature little or controlled vehicle access with low-car parking numbers. As ever, looking back is helpful to move forward.

The transport planning work for The Phoenix was led by WSP and Urban Movement with the former providing the modelling, detailed design and transport assessment. As part of the baseline studies,

We identify as a spatial design agency, are mission led and use landscape architecture, architecture and urban design to bring humans and non-humans into balance through regenerative practice.

WSP provided customer journey modelling in which they case-studied user journey profiles from different demographics. These studies illustrated how lives could be lived well without multiple or in fact any privately owned cars. Aside from private car parking, planning policy required the reprovision of an ‘appropriate’ level of the site’s extant public parking. To support a lower level of reprovision, Urban Movement gathered evidence over the utilisation of the other town car parks which were not reaching capacity even in peak hours.

This work on justifying contemporary mobility and understanding existing provision fed into the Environmental Assessment, the evidence for which required National Highways approval (a process which is not yet complete) given its departure from sole reliance on more traditional transport modelling. The result of this evidenced ‘decide and provide’ approach will be significantly lower traffic streets and one car parking space for every 6.85 homes against a 1:1 ratio in local policy.

Low-car neighbourhoods make streets safer, more pleasant and healthier for residents. Lewes town centre has been plagued by unacceptable air quality for years, so reduced traffic will have a significant positive impact on air quality, felt

2. Phoenix Project illustrative masterplan with Co-Mobility building shown to the bottom right of the drawing.

© Periscope

much more widely than within the project site. Another key driver for The Phoenix is flood water management; low-car streets allow space for integrated, above-ground sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS) with large tree pits and best- practice soil volumes (30m³+ for the larger trees).

Traditional levels of on-street parking compromise the spatial requirements for green and blue infrastructure, whereas reducing the number of

cars improves resilient street design. Setting aside the qualitative benefits, consolidating private parking unlocks residential density and project viability without excessive building height or basements. The previous consent for the site proposed two-to-threestorey buildings on top of a significant basement car park – this was never viable. Human Nature understood that lesson when they bought the site in 2020. Our team also knew that height

in the National Park and Conservation Areas would be a challenge; we had to treat cars differently to make the project finances stack up.

Cars will be captured at the edge of The Phoenix, on their way into Lewes, reducing vehicle movements on site, but also in the town centre’s gyratory system (perhaps offering the local highways authority the opportunity to rethink this in the future). Public and private parking will be mainly provided in a mobility building – a ‘CoMobility Hub’ – with street access for vehicles within the site limited to bulky deliveries, maintenance, waste and removals, and accessible parking bays provided for those that need them.

CoMobility refers to a shared approach to mobility; it is critical to understand this as a service and not just a building. The CoMobility Hub at The Phoenix facilitates interchange between cars, local buses and more active modes such as walking and cycling; services offered will include e-bike and e-cargo bike hire, a car club (fully electric) and last mile delivery (avoiding endless streams of delivery drivers bringing white vans into the site). This strategy provides choice for residents – it’s about making the alternative to ‘on-plot’ private cars easy and attractive; all residents will be within a five-minute walk of CoMobility services. Mobility services and buildings are commonplace in Scandinavia but in the UK they are often scoped out of masterplans on the basis of viability or the need to sell homes with parking spaces outside. Most developers might baulk at not being able to sell homes with adjacent parking spaces, but Human Nature has actively sought the benefits of this approach. They see the risk as an opportunity but also have accepted a lower profit level when compared to

CoMobility refers to a shared approach to mobility; it is critical to understand this as a service and not just a building.

3. Phoenix Causeway long elevation with CoMobility buildings.

© Periscope

4. Phoenix Causeway site approach sketch.

© Periscope

5. CoMobility Hub sketch view.

© Periscope

6. Existing site photograph showing derelict riverfront warehouses.

7. Existing site photograph showing hardstanding and existing industrial sheds.

8. Phoenix Project engagement.

9. Illustrative view of Phoenix Causeway with CoMobility building in the centre of the view and lowertraffic local streets.

Municipal parking enforcement isn’t going to work at The Phoenix, as it doesn’t fit within traditional operational models for Controlled Parking Zones, so the preferred answer is Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR).

more mainstream developers, which helps them make bolder choices. Mobility services will have to be offered from day one, and Human Nature recognises that if people come with their cars, even in the first phase, then they will never leave them. The most important aspect to consider is the service itself (the building itself is secondary), so because the CoMobility building will only be delivered later in the programme, for the first few years the services will be offered through adaptive reuse of some of the existing sheds and hardstanding on site. This is a practical solution which also helps to lower initial infrastructure costs; however, when looking to CoMobility as a model, it is important to acknowledge that not all sites can be phased in this way. In addition to offering incentives to get people out of their cars, the need to manage streets effectively is recognised within the proposals.

Municipal parking enforcement isn’t going to work at The Phoenix, as it doesn’t fit within traditional operational models for Controlled Parking Zones, so the preferred answer is Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR). Most of the team share concerns over the Orwellian nature of our CCTVmonitored public realm, but this tradeoff allows for a low-car approach with minimal infrastructure cost, reduced operational cost and less street clutter. So, is this really the answer? Proving the concept will only be possible through successful detailed design, delivery and operation. The hard work has just begun, but as HN tend to say, ‘There is a better way’, and maybe it can look like The Phoenix.

Daniel Rea is a landscape architect, masterplanner and Founding Director of Periscope.

Creating places for people through transport

Landscape Institute Communications Officer, Oliver Ryan (OR), speaks to Sustrans’

Zoe Banks Gross FLI (ZBG), about the charity’s vision for transport, and the vital role of landscape in achieving it.

Oliver Ryan & Zoe Banks Gross

OR: Hi Zoe, please can you tell us about your work, and that of Sustrans?

ZBG: Sustrans mission is to create happier and healthier places for people. We want to see connected and compact communities where people can meet most of their daily needs within a reasonable distance of their home by walking, wheeling or cycling or using public transport.

In partnerships and public affairs, I work with and influence local and regional authorities, trying to create foundations for more liveable cities, with more active travel provision. Sometimes that means doing community engagement on the ground, sometimes giving presentations, sometimes giving evidence to a climate assembly. But it all comes down to creating places for people.

1. Landscape architects bring multidimensional benefits to the Ripple Greenway route in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

© Alexandra Steed Urban

1 https://www.sustrans. org.uk/the-walking-andcycling-index

² https://www.gov.

uk/government/ publications/nationaldesign-guide#fullpublication-updatehistory

³ https://www.gov. uk/government/ publications/nationalmodel-design-code

OR: What has Sustrans been working on recently and are there any key takeaways from this?

ZBG: We’re very pleased with the insights that the latest reports from our ‘Walking and Cycling Index’¹ has provided. The index is based on data from twenty-three urban areas across the UK and Ireland, with over 1,100 people from each location surveyed on their attitudes to walking and cycling. For example, it showed that 36% of people often use a car as they feel they have no choice, and that 56% of people support shifting investment from road building to options for walking, wheeling and public transport. It also gives insights into the relationship between these statistics and other data points like gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic group. The index shows there are less than half as many women cycling compared to men, for example. There is loads of research showing that women and girls do want to be using public spaces and green spaces, but don’t feel safe enough to do it. This is impacting the ability for many to get enough physical activity, so clearly we need to be doing a lot more to ensure that our spaces are codesigned and that we include the voices of those that will be using these spaces.

OR: What is the relationship between planning and healthier forms of transport and mobility?

ZBG: The National Planning and Policy Framework (NPPF) is not currently designed as well as it could be to

facilitate active travel. We’re enabling the continuation of car-dependent housing developments, giving rise to environmental, social, and economic impacts, including disincentivising the uptake of active travel.

We need to move away from transport planning based on predicting future demand and providing capacity, to planning for an outcome communities want to achieve and providing the transport solutions to deliver these outcomes. Embedding desired outcomes in active and public transport into a revised NPPF, and aligning these with the National Design Guide² and National Model Design Code,³ would be a good place to start.

OR: How do you see Sustrans’ vision applying to national policy agendas and what are your priorities?

ZBG: When it comes to any policy agenda and influencing, collaboration and systems thinking are key. Considerations in health, wellbeing, climate, and environment cannot be separated.

All policy areas are important, but it’s worth highlighting the significance of the NPPF in relation to Sustrans’ aims and objectives. For example, many transport departments and authorities are planning strategically for active travel networks, but this is being undermined by a lack of integration with planning departments, leading to missed opportunities and wasted time and money.

A joined-up approach would ensure

that existing and proposed active travel networks are more visible to local planning authorities when they are developing local plans and determining planning applications. Active travel links with health and wellbeing, as well as net zero, so where layered problem-solving can be applied it will help with creating positive outcomes for everyone, as part of a holistic and just transition.

OR: How can landscape architecture help to champion and deliver better infrastructure?

ZBG: We have many landscape architects in the team at Sustrans as part of our design team (see CMLI Jon Rowe writing for Sustrans in Landscape, Autumn 2023), and we’re often working with external landscape architects as partners on specific projects.

The work they do is essential, and very much in line with our joined-up, systems approach to urban and environmental planning and design. They can help promote active travel and green infrastructure with multidimensional benefits, from reducing the urban heat island effect, to integrating SuDS, to specifying climate-resilient planting, and ensuring that nature has a place to thrive in urban areas – especially now with the implementation of Biodiversity Net Gain.

A great example of this can be seen when Sustrans recently worked in partnership with the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, the Greater London Authority, and landscape architects at Alexandra Steed Urban, to reimagine the Ripple Greenway. What was created was a codesigned, beautiful linear park that links existing infrastructure networks with a new, multifunctional active travel route.

Zoe Banks Gross is Head of Partnerships and Public Affairs (England, South) at Sustrans, and a Fellow of the Landscape Institute.

2. The Ripple Greenway won the 2022 Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) award for ‘Creating Better Places’.

© Paul Scott

The Super Slow Way

Described as a programme, aprocess and a place, the Super Slow Way uses the historic Leeds to Liverpool Canal to weave a cultural landscape across East Lancashire, creating opportunities for people to live, play and create. Working with a consortium of local authorities, organisations, artists and residents, the expansive project demonstrates the cultural potential of strategic landscape development in post-industrial communities.

Completed in 1816, the Leeds to Liverpool canal was described as the ‘super highway’ of the Industrial

Nyima Murry investigates how strategic landscape development is bringing investment, culture, and green infrastructure to underprivileged communities along a canal created during the Industrial Revolution.

Revolution, servicing the mills and mines of the region. Following the area’s industrial decline, the canal has been largely regarded as a problem rather than an asset. Today, the Super Slow Way project looks to harness this historic transport network to transform Pennine Lancashire once again, adopting a ‘string of pearls’ approach along the twenty-mile route, to invest in social, cultural and environmental projects along the waterway. The project’s two-fold approach of physical landscape intervention with cultural programming uniquely places this expansive project as one connecting

landscape, heritage and the arts in a region that is in acute need of investment support in all three. Now eight years on, the programme has realised dozens of projects, including the British Textile Biennial, a floating laboratory, pocket parks and artist performances, and shows no sign of slowing down.

The rejuvenation of the canal was sparked from initial Arts Council funding in the region. Looking to increase national engagement in culture, and recognising the correlation between underfunding in the arts and areas of multiple

Nyima Murry

1. Super Slow Way illustration. © Publica

The housing in this area is terraced housing and they have little or no outdoor space to speak of. But they’re all within half a mile of the of the canal, which could be a real green and blue asset for that area in an otherwise very grey landscape.

deprivation, the Arts Council identified East Lancashire as a ‘cold spot’ for arts investment. Following encouragement for the four local authorities of Blackburn, Burnley, Pendle and Hyndburn to bid together for the Arts Council Creative Place and Process programme, the Super Slow Way was set up in 2016 to access funding and represent a wider consortium of stakeholders, including local councils, Lancashire County Council and the Canal & River Trust. After a design review with Places Matter, a northwest design panel offering free arts design reviews to community and arts projects in the region, the Super Slow Way went ahead.

The Leeds to Liverpool canal meanders from Barrowford in Pendle, through Burnley, Accrington, and Rishton into the suburban sprawl of Blackburn, physically and culturally connecting these four areas. Running through some of the poorest wards that continue to be defined by the low-income housing originally built for mill workers, the canal became the focal point of the new collaboration, recognising the waterway as a heritage asset that could allow the area to access a strategic level of investment that would respond to both cultural and environmental challenges.

“These places are very poorly resourced in terms of cultural infrastructure, but they’re also very degraded environments,” Laurie Peake, Director of Super Slow Way explains.

“It’s a post-industrial environment and the whole stretch of the canal corridor is littered with derelict mills and disused land,” she continues.

“The housing in this area is terraced housing and they have little or no outdoor space to speak of. But they’re all within half a mile of the canal, which could be a real green and blue asset for that area in an otherwise very grey landscape.”

In the feasibility study conducted by London-based research and urban design practice, Publica, Emsher Park in the Ruhr Region of Germany was a key source of inspiration for the project. Although Emsher Park works on a much larger scale (occupying a 450 sq km site for a length of more than 86km) the project

resonated with the ambitions in East Lancashire with a similar postindustrial landscape that required major strategic investment and collaboration to reinvent industrial infrastructure.

“Our stretch is tiny compared to Emsher – it’s just 20 miles,” Laurie continued. “But we thought, surely we can adopt a similar strategy where all the local authorities see that the sum is greater than the parts if you work together. It’s everybody understanding that they can gain from being part of that grander vision, rather than simply ignoring the canal.”

The Lancashire Linear Park, a key project for the organisation, looks to do just that – marrying physical improvements to landscape,

infrastructure and buildings with new cultural and educational programmes made possible through access to multiple sources of funding.

Building upon Publica’s feasibility study, BDP’s strategic landscape masterplan outlines a natural linear park that will create a new green movement corridor to provide improved infrastructure for pedestrians, cyclists and boating communities. With many of the existing developments physically turning their backs to the canal with enclosing walls and fences, the strategy looks to reconnect the canal with the surrounding towns, with new access points and crossings, alongside reconnecting sections to

2. The Wetlab Canal Kitchen.

© Sam Walsh

3. Canoeing on the canal.

© Jack Bolton

existing transport links. A series of green connections intersect the linear pathway, connecting green spaces, parks and nature reserves on both sides of the water, supported by proposed new planting of swathes of indigo, cotton and flax that reference the local textile and industrial heritage.

Looking to encourage boats back on the waterway, new marinas, mooring basins and boating workshops have been identified along the route, including Finsley Gate Wharf in Burnley, now home to artist Stephen Turner’s ‘Exbury Egg’ project. Owned by the Canal & River Trust, the site was previously an abandoned boat building warehouse and wharf. The egg-shaped structure was installed as a temporary, energy efficient workspace for the local communities, opening up the previously inaccessible site. Through this relatively simple intervention, the project catalysed a series of local community projects including camera, photography and nature clubs that meet up in the new community-led space.

“The site went from having been a blight in that community to becoming almost like an urban village green where people could meet and actually identify themselves as neighbours and come together,” Laurie says.

The success of the project enabled the Canal & River Trust to secure National Lottery Heritage Funding to redevelop the site, and renovate the

There are reasons why we call it the Super Slow Way, you know: it’s the long game and you’ve got to keep that vision in mind, even if it’s not going to happen overnight.

4. Hyndburn Coke Ovens.

© Matthew Savage 5. Eanam Wharf.

© Huckleberry Films

6. Pocket park on the canal.

© Huckleberry Films 5.

Grade II listed heritage building into a new café, restaurant and guesthouse.

“One of the programme’s main tasks is to provide evidence to funders and authorities that it can make a difference – and it can make a huge difference for the communities that live along the canal banks,” Laurie continues. “There are reasons why we call it the Super Slow Way, you know: it’s the long game and you’ve got to keep that vision in mind, even if it’s not going to happen overnight.”

The Super Slow Way’s continued success is down to local authorities, organisations, artists and residents coming together under a combined aim – making accessible both significant funding and the necessary strategic infrastructure to deliver a project of this scale. However, it is the recognition of ecological and cultural investment as an interconnected project that makes the Super Slow Way a process, programme and place to take note of. With the shared heritage landscape of the

canal forming its cornerstone, there is clear potential for its approach to be replicated in other post-industrial communities across the UK, delivering greener, bluer and culturally thriving landscapes and communities.

Nyima Murry is a British-Tibetan landscape architect, design critic and filmmaker. Her project ‘The Herring Girls’ won the Student Dissertation category at the 2023 Landscape Institute Awards.

7. Children playing on the Exbury Egg.

© Sam Walsh

Hackney Urban Survey

A pop-up exhibition focusing on transport infrastructure, Mass’s Hackney Urban Survey uses photography to promote wider public engagement with the built environment. Co-founder Luca Piffaretti introduces the series.

Photo Story

Mass is an architectural photography collective focused on promoting both photographic work and educational initiatives around the built environment. One such initiative is the Hackney Urban Survey, a series of one-day workshops and pop-up exhibitions open to amateur and professional photographers.

the East End and the wharves on the Thames with the centre of London. This function was short-lived: with the advent of the railway in the second half of the century, commercial trades on the canal started to decline, morphing instead into a residential and leisure area, home now to thousands of houses.

Similarly, the history of the railway in Hackney wasn’t a linear one: built in the mid 19 century to connect the increasingly populous parishes of Hackney and Stoke Newington with the City, many of these rail lines were run down until the early 2000s when, under the supervision of Transport for London, they were brought back to life in the form of the Overground network.

Starting in 2023 with the subject of ‘Industry’, the workshop has since explored ‘Housing’ and, most recently, ‘Transport Infrastructure’. The aim of the collective research is to explore the past and present of a neighbourhood and reinterpret what is seen, to better understand potential futures.

The transport infrastructure that criss-crosses Hackney has long contributed to its changes over the centuries. The origin of Kingsland Road, for example, traces back to the birth of Roman London, and was one of the first roads that farmers working in the agricultural fields north of the city would use to reach the markets around London Bridge. If Kingsland Road was built to connect the city with the countryside and market towns lying beyond, Regent’s Canal, built at the beginning of the 19th century, served a more local purpose, connecting the industries of

In this context, photography is a means to document the traces of the past and its relationship with the present, via a cataloguing of materials and structures. Workshop participants were also encouraged to explore the subject using photographic styles that deviate from architectural photography, like portraiture and street photography, to connect the spaces with the people that inhabit them.

The resulting images were then collectively reviewed, edited and sequenced to form a small exhibition that was presented in a public exhibition space at Morris + Company, an architecture practice located at 215 Mare Street, Hackney, after the workshop.

The survey is an opportunity to create a photography archive of Hackney today, but also a way for the collective to broaden its community, involving people of all backgrounds who share an interest in the built environment and, most importantly, to encourage people to explore and observe the city with a critical perspective.

Mass was founded by Luca Piffaretti, Henry Woide and Francesco Russo. See masscollective.com for more information on the workshops.

Luca Piffaretti

The role of AI in decarbonising transport

New research by the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) outlines how rapidly developing AI technologies are impacting the transport sector. With a special focus on decarbonisation, Dr Isobel Wilson highlights what this could mean for design.

At the start of 2023, the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) identified artificial intelligence (AI) as an area in which there has been a sudden surge of interest. CIHT members were asking us for more information on AI and how it could change the transportation sector as we know it.

We set out to investigate how this rapidly evolving technology could be used to solve some of our sector’s largest problems by looking at how data and artificial intelligence can be used to achieve transport decarbonisation. A working group was formed of 16 CIHT members and partners, representing academia, local authorities and industry to evaluate where the sector is currently producing and adopting AI tools, and where we might be in the future, with the aim of producing a report from our findings.

On one end of the scale, we spoke to people who were only just appreciating how much data they collect and weren’t sure how exactly to utilise it to get the most value out

Dr Isobel Wilson

of it. We also held an event early in the project to showcase how AI is being used in the transport sector, and we saw many CIHT members commenting they had no idea AI was already so advanced and not ‘just ChatGPT’. Then on the other end of the scale, we had the opportunity to speak with operators of AI companies who have been using and developing this technology for over 15 years. These experienced practitioners were able to give us a more holistic opinion of AI, having worked with it for so long, and were understandably sceptical of the current hype surrounding it.

We were pleased to use these insights to gather a total of 21 case studies that highlight the multiple ways that AI is already being used to decarbonise the highways and transportation industry. These case studies were grouped into three actions where AI could be used to decarbonise transport, which were:

– Accelerating modal shift to public transport and active travel by creating reliable databases on sustainable transport use; optimising traffic flow in favour of active travel and public transport; and monitoring the condition of active travel infrastructure.

– Decarbonising road transport and how we get our goods by making it easier to plan for and use electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

– Delivering and maintaining lowcarbon infrastructure by predicting asset life cycles; analysing the integrity of existing assets; and recommending lowcarbon infrastructure.

A common theme that underlined many of the case studies we profiled was the ability of AI technology to aid decision making, especially when it comes to designing and maintaining the built environment.

We included many examples of ‘perceptive AI’ systems, which receive and process data to understand a situation. For example, we profiled one company, XIAS, which equipped a mobility scooter with cameras to travel where cars can’t, to capture asset and condition data on footways and cycleways. This data is then processed using AI to detect, measure, and highlight defects, which can then be acted on to design active travel infrastructure that is safer and more reliable. Similarly, we included an example of a product, the See.Sense Smart Cycling Project, which conducts AI analysis of crowdsourced sensor data gathered from cyclists using their own personal bikes. Again, this is incredibly useful for designers, so they have access to reliable information that reflects the user experience of cyclists.

We also found examples of ‘predictive AI’ systems that receive and process data to anticipate or forecast future scenarios. This included AI systems like the Mind Foundry Platform that collect and process geospatial data, along with data provided by energy networks, to recommend the optimal type and location for a public EV charge point. Likewise, we also profiled Arcadis’ Enterprise Decision Analytics, an AI asset-management tool that uses the historical data of an asset to forecast its deterioration and predict when it will need maintenance, helping to reduce the cost of routine maintenance work.

These AI systems, and the data that feeds them, could have the potential to really change the way we design for the built environment. Being able to use AI to ask data more detailed and nuanced questions and receiving the answers in real time will be another useful tool in a designer’s wheelhouse. In the coming years we will hopefully see these technologies being used to create spaces for communities in a process that considers far more intricacies and details than it would be possible to today, ensuring that when

we need to build, it is done in a way that will bring long-lasting value.

AI is a continuously developing field, making it hard to predict the pace and direction at which new technologies will emerge, even within the next three years. Even when predictions are made, it is difficult to know whether they will be fulfilled or if external factors will influence AI’s success. It is also important to remember that AI will not be the answer to everything, and other technologies can also be used to solve some of these challenges. Most of all, we need human ingenuity to mould these technologies to our needs, to apply them so they enhance our decisions, while we remain cognisant of their limitations.

This is why collaboration between all sectors will be important for making AI a success, especially when it comes to data – both quantitative and qualitative. A clear evidence-based approach to policy development is critical, particularly when it comes to public understanding around the adoption of new and emerging technologies within the transport sector. Regulators and organisations such as CIHT should work together to ensure that unbiased evidence on the pros and cons of AI is well communicated and shared widely. Informing and educating people can help to build a healthy relationship between users and AI.

By fostering collaboration across the built environment sector, it is hoped that we will be able to use AI tools that help us to design and build infrastructure that is as beneficial as possible to the environment and the communities our professions are here to serve.

Scan the QR code to read ‘The role of data and artificial intelligence in achieving transport decarbonisation’

Isobel Wilson is a Policy Advisor for Transport Technology at the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT).

3. A clear evidencebased approach to policy development is critical, particularly when it comes to public understanding around the adoption of new and emerging technologies within the transport sector.

Landscape and Carbon

Vital new report tackling carbon reduction in the landscape sector launched by the Landscape Institute and British Association of Landscape Industries.

Wayne Grills & Robert Hughes

‘Landscape and Carbon’ is a vital new report on carbon reduction in the UK landscape sector by the Landscape Institute (LI) and the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI). A direct response to the UK’s target to reach net zero by 2050, the report sets out the climate action the sector is taking, and how landscape can provide solutions for reducing and sequestering carbon in development. It also recommends how the sector can come together to gain a better understanding of the carbon impacts and benefits of landscape.

What started as an urgent need to respond to calls from government and industry to take action on the climate emergency soon gave rise to a shared ambition for our two organisations to collaborate and work together on this important issue.

We celebrate the fact that the professionalism and expertise of those working in the landscape sector touches people’s lives across the country. Their collective skill and knowledge play an important part in maintaining health, wellbeing and quality of life, through activities such as designing and caring for open spaces or creating new habitats.

The sector is an increasingly significant contributor to lifesustaining services such as flood water management, and protection

from the harmful effects of climate change. However, when it comes to the amount of carbon generated and sequestered by landscape projects, schemes and works, there is still great progress to be made.

We need to put carbon considerations at the heart of our designs and specifications, at the earliest possible stage. We can also make changes to the projects we manage on site and the way we plan and deliver subsequent maintenance. Importantly, using our deep understanding and far-reaching expertise as landscape professionals, we can also help other industries to deal with, capture and store carbon.

The work ahead

The report is a call to action for the landscape sector, and wider industry, to work together and use its combined skill and expertise to reduce carbon in landscape schemes and works. Landscape professionals can help other industries to proactively store carbon, whilst simultaneously delivering a range of integrated solutions in climate resilience, biodiversity, and public health. Now, ‘Landscape and Carbon’ sets out how the landscape industry is also taking the urgent action required to reduce the amount of carbon generated by development.

2. In a climate-aware approach harnessed at Mayfield Park, Manchester, Studio Egret West were able to overcome logistical challenges on site and justify design moves with the

and

1. Landscape and Carbon report cover.

of Landscape

client

Agree a carbon assessment process

Agree a carbon assessment and management process for the UK landscape sector, and refine the process as new techniques develop.

Use standard data and tools

Agree a standard for the collection and assessment of data to enable the creation of a set of tools to calculate carbon outcomes.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Work with suppliers

Call on manufacturers, suppliers and assessors to provide Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for all landscape products with fully specified data.

Support landscape practitioners

Consider the needs of BALI and LI members, and all landscape practitioners, particularly SMEs, and support their work to deliver net zero projects.

Working together, the LI and BALI will build on work already being done by colleagues across the landscape industry to agree a carbon methodology, put standard data and practical tools in place, and help the sector to improve the level of awareness and skills needed. Inviting professionals from across the industry and beyond to engage and collaborate in a series of working groups, the report sets out eight key recommendations for future action (see grid above).

Next steps

In addition to members of BALI and the LI, ‘Landscape and Carbon’ has been written with clients, contractors, practitioners, suppliers and policymakers in mind. We hope it will also be of interest to colleagues working in horticulture, in manufacturing and in areas such as

ecology, materials science and soils. It sets out the opportunities, drivers and barriers to change, and identifies the challenges facing the landscape profession in addressing its responsibilities. It also brings together basic concepts around the climate emergency and some initial information on available tools which measure carbon. And while not a technical document itself, a series of more technical briefings, focusing on each of the recommendations, is planned.

We want to secure the active involvement of the widest possible range of experience and expertise from across the landscape sector. This means looking beyond our respective membership bases. With this support, we can set up the working groups required, engage with colleagues across the industry, and identify and embed the changes we need to make.

Build understanding

Work closely with other UK built environment professionals and ensure that the role and importance of the landscape sector in carbon reduction is recognised.

Improve education and training

Work with HR, training and development professionals to identify all necessary educational materials and build carbon into wider CPD programmes.

Promote landscape solutions

Promote the carbon storage potential of landscapes to policymakers and the wider public, and highlight the contribution which landscapes play in addressing the climate emergency.

Create a cross-sector action plan

Create a cross-sector action plan to achieve net zero projects, with timescales for delivery. Assign tasks to organisations.

Our message to the sector is simple: Join the conversation, contribute your ideas and experience, and make a difference. Thank you for your support.

Wayne Grills is Chief Executive of the British Association of Landscape Industries. Robert Hughes is CEO of the Landscape Institute.

To indicate your interest in getting involved, please visit landscapeinstitute.org/policy/ landscape-and-carbon, scan the QR code, or get in touch at policy@landscapeinstitute.org.

Corridors: designing linear infrastructure in a non-linear world

Hassell’s Camilla Siggaard Andersen presents the global design and architecture studio’s recent research on the multi-dimensional impacts of transport infrastructure.

Our planet is criss-crossed by linear infrastructure, ranging from highways and railways to canals and byways. A 2016 study asserted that roads alone have fragmented Earth’s terrestrial surface into some 600,000 separate ecosystem patches, of which only 7% are larger than 100 square kilometres.¹ These structures are primarily designed to facilitate the movement of goods, services, and people across space. While they are often seen as conduits for creating resilient communities, enhancing economic prosperity, and driving innovation, their isolation can inadvertently result in system fragility and decline. By building connections across landscapes, we risk segregating communities, ecologies, nutrient flows and land use functions, contributing to climate change, social inequality, biodiversity loss, and resource deficits. For the sake of our planet and communities, we urgently need a new approach to tackle these multidimensional impacts of corridors. Over the past decades, Hassell has actively participated in the design and implementation of over 100 corridors, spanning a total length of more than 1,200 kilometres (and counting).

Through these extensive experiences, we have gained first-hand insights into both the challenges and opportunities presented by linear infrastructure. These spaces, while often conceived within a particular sector, often intersect and impact multiple domains, creating effects that ripple far beyond their physical or operational boundaries. Our ‘Corridors’ research,² published in 2023, reflects on these experiences together with input from a network of over 50 experts and practitioners from across the infrastructure industry. By showing that corridors always produce complex outcomes, we argue that they must also be designed and managed as complex networks − bringing together overlapping uses, integrated systems, and holistic measures, beyond the linear space. To support this shift, collaborative management structures, innovative design solutions, and shared decision-making tools will be essential.

As a first step on this journey, the report identifies a common language and shared objectives to break down prevailing silos and foster cross-sector collaboration, summarised in a practical discussion framework. In this article, we outline the key components of this work.

Presenting a taxonomy of corridors

The report establishes a taxonomy for understanding corridors outside their delineations.

The core purpose of any linear space can be summarised as the need to connect people, wildlife, and plants, and to help ensure the healthy

1. The Level Crossing Removal Project in Melbourne, Australia, is removing 50 level crossings in the city, to improve safety, travel reliability, and healthy communities.

1 Ibisch, P. L., Hoffmann, M. T., Kreft, S., Pe’er, G., Kati, V., Biber-Freudenberger, L., DellaSala, D. A., Vale, M. M., Hobson, P. R., & Selva, N. (2016, December 16). A global map of roadless areas and their conservation status. Science, 354(6318), 1423–1427. https://doi.org/10.1126/ science.aaf7166

² https://www. hassellstudio.com/ research/corridorsdesigning-linearinfrastructure-for-anon-linear-world

Camilla Siggaard Andersen

distribution of nutrients, resources, goods, and utilities between ecosystems where these users reside. In addition to acting as a conduit for movement, corridors may also impact these users and uses by functioning as a barrier, as a habitat in their own right, or as a sink or source of nutrients, resources, and utilities.

Often, linear infrastructure projects are designed with only one kind of user and function in mind, dictated by a narrow sector and its priorities: roads are designed to be conduits for drivers, railways to be conduits for trains carrying people and goods, rivers may be appropriated as sources of energy, and so on. The taxonomy is not sector specific, and encourages us to consider over twenty-five potential combinations of users, uses, and functions.

Shared and conflicting priorities

One of the recurring challenges in ‘non-linear’ corridor design lies in the prioritisation of objectives. Without a single universal design that can meet all demands, we find ourselves perpetually seeking compromises–carefully weighing options and determining what we truly value.

To better understand the roots of how corridors are conceived, we

looked at the vision, mission, and purpose statements of seventy infrastructure agencies across four regions.

Safety emerged as a key concern for most linear infrastructure agencies worldwide, followed by a focus on sustainability and community. However, on closer inspection, there are serious discrepancies in how these objectives are practically prioritised and implemented. It is, for example, very difficult to create a safe and efficient conduit for movement at the same time as a thriving habitat for communities. Likewise, it is near impossible to achieve connectivity at a regional scale without some degree of local severance − especially if financial limitations are in place. Who decides what gives?

When these trade-offs are negotiated, three rules stand out:

1. Even the best design in the world cannot meet all the world’s objectives.

2. When economic objectives outweigh environmental and social concerns, all are left at a disadvantage.

3. Not all objectives are created equal or affect everyone the same.

We propose that every objective should be reviewed in relation to the full spectrum of uses, users, and functions outlined in the taxonomy in order to accurately identify alignments and mitigate against potential conflicts.

Redefining linearity

Corridors are notoriously difficult to plan, challenging to build, and costly to maintain. From measurement and visioning through budgeting and design to construction and maintenance, the status quo repeatedly compels us to think and act in one-dimensional terms. However, by establishing clear leadership, encouraging collaboration, and defining holistic success criteria, change is possible.

One exemplary project that demonstrates how existing corridors can be transformed to yield additional value is the Level Crossing Removal (LXR) project in Victoria, Australia. Hassell has been engaged in this initiative since 2015. In 2017, our team worked on the Cranbourne Line, a comprehensive endeavour involving 12 kilometres of track upgrades, duplication, and the removal of level crossings. Beyond the technical aspects, we focused on ecological restoration by developing a revegetation strategy to reconnect fragmented habitats. Hassell also recently completed landscape designs at Werribee Street, where the removal of the level crossing resulted in significant travel improvements for 20,000 daily commuters, an increase in native vegetation, and a custom-built skatepark.

Ultimately, the ‘Corridors’ research report endeavours to share insights, recommendations, and case studies that showcase the advantages of integrated corridor design. Our hope is that it will inspire policymakers, infrastructure agencies, and designers to always think outside the linear space and beyond one-dimensional perspectives, fostering innovative and sustainable solutions for the challenges of our rapidly evolving world.

Camilla Siggaard Andersen (M.Arch) is Urban Design, Mobility, and Environment Research Lead at Hassell.

2. Types of infrastructure included in the study.

© Hassell

Users, uses and functions of linear infrastructure given in the study.

© Hassell

Planning and land use for better public transport

Caitlin Rollison, from UK urban policy research unit, Centre for Cities, draws upon recent research on public transport in Europe, to look at the critical relationship between land use and transport planning.

Passenger levels on public transport are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, but public transport was in decline long before the pandemic hit, with bus trips 26% lower and 200 million fewer rail trips made than in 2013/14.¹ Even more concerning is that this decline started from a low baseline –ridership in the UK is already low compared to Europe.

Low and declining public transport ridership should be high on the government’s priority list because transport isn’t just about getting from A to B – it matters for productivity, environment and public health, to name a few. This is particularly true for cities, where relying on private transport has significant negative impacts on the built environment, air quality and travel times. Focusing on urban areas, this article explores why transport in the UK cities has failed to keep up with European counterparts, and why planning and land use are key to getting back on track.

Why public transport matters

Politicians of all persuasions should care about reversing this decline and aim to increase ridership to European levels, because effective public transport underpins a range of other policy areas – we’ll look at three of these here:

1. Transport and the economy

Transport connects people to jobs and education and increases the pool of skilled workers available to businesses. This function is particularly important in cities – estimates suggest that if public transport usage in UK cities was similar to Europe, this would result in productivity improvements of around £23.1 billion each year.²

2. Transport and the environment

Nationally, the transport sector accounts for more than a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, and nearly a third of nitrous oxide emissions.³

Shifting from private car travel to public and active transport will therefore be crucial if the UK is to make progress on net zero and local air quality targets.

3. Transport and public health

Having fewer cars on the roads has two main impacts on health. Firstly, policies like the congestion charge in London and LEZ in Glasgow show that reducing the number of cars on the road can quickly improve air quality. Secondly, encouraging active travel, including in combination with public transport, brings public health benefits through improved fitness and wellbeing and lower obesity. Western countries with the highest levels of active travel generally have the lowest obesity rates,⁴ and evidence suggests that switching to active travel for short motor vehicle trips could save £17 billion in NHS costs over a 20-year period.⁵

Where we’re going wrong

As shown in Figure 1, large UK cities have lower shares of travel by public transport than their European peers. This is despite networks in cities such

Figure 1: Share of commutes using public transport across UK and selected European cities with populations over 600,000. Source: Census 2011, Eurostat Transport Cities and Greater Cities (2016 data).

as Birmingham and Glasgow being either the same size or larger than European cities.⁶

This is because it isn’t just network size that matters, but the number of people that live within easy access of the network. UK cities are less dense than their European peers, meaning fewer people live within reasonable commuting times to the centre. As shown in Figure 2 (page 65), more people can travel to central Milan in 30 minutes than central Manchester as the former has higher density. Lower density also means cities need geographically larger networks to reach the same number of people, making it more expensive to build and run the network. This can be seen in Figure 3 (page 65), which shows areas within 30 minutes of the city centre for Birmingham and Lyon.

Caitlin Rollison

¹ Urban Transport Group (2024), Inside track – The state of transport 2024.

² Centre for Cities (2021), Measuring up: Comparing public transport in the UK and Europe’s biggest cities.

³ Department for Transport (2023), Transport and environment statistics 2023.

⁴ Bassett, D., Pucher, J., Buehler, R., Thompson, D., Crouter, S. (2008), Walking, cycling, and obesity rates in Europe, North America and Australia. Journal of Physical Activity and Health, 5:795–814.

⁵ Jarrett, J., Woodcock, J., Griffiths, U. et al (2012), Effects of increasing active travel in urban England and Wales on costs to the National Health Service. The Lancet 379: 2198-2205.

⁶ Centre for Cities (2021), Measuring up: Comparing public transport in the UK and Europe’s biggest cities.

⁷ Transport for London, Assessing transport connectivity in London.

⁸ Transport for London (2023), Places for London sets out programme to deliver thousands of new homes and workspaces.

⁹ London Assembly (2021), Planning bus services (3).

This lower density means that transport operators and local authorities in the UK face an uphill struggle, with fewer potential users within easy access of the network, longer journey times, and sprawling, inefficient networks. On top of this, they now face reduced demand due to changing working patterns, the cost-of-living crisis and funding cuts.

The result: a vicious circle of declining service levels, lower patronage, and lower revenue.

Planning for better transport

From fare caps and smart cards to congestion charging, there are plenty of policy levers available to encourage people out of their cars and onto public transport. But, as shown above, the success of these policies and viability of networks is held back by the less dense form of UK cities. To improve public transport and reap the benefits for productivity, health and environment, UK cities need to bring planning and transport together.

London is the only city in the UK that has levels of public transport usage comparable with European counterparts. This is no accident –London’s density levels are closer to cities like Munich and Lyon, and it actively pursues densification.

The London Plan, for example, uses public transport accessibility levels to focus development on areas with good transport connectivity.⁷ And Transport for London and Network Rail plan to build an additional 20,000 homes around stations over the next decade,⁸ and to bring 99 per cent of the population within 600m of a bus stop.⁹

Densification policies like this don’t just make public transport more accessible and efficient; they can also be used to generate revenue to fund further improvements.

London can effectively implement this kind of strategic plan due to its local government structure and the Mayor’s ability to make both planning and transport decisions. Not all cities in the UK have this advantage, but increasing devolution to combined authorities means the benefits of London-style strategic

Source: TravelTime, ONS, Eurostat, Centre for Cities’ calculations.

Source: TravelTime, ONS, Eurostat, Centre for Cities’ calculations

planning is now an option in more and more places. Cities can also make use of Local Development Orders to densify around transport stops, and this will be further supported by the planning reforms included in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act.

Conclusion

London proves that cities in the UK can sustain an efficient and well-used public transport system comparable to that of European cities. By planning for

density and thinking about development and transport together, other UK cities can set their transport networks up for success. And this won’t just support public transport; by encouraging densification, cities can reap additional benefits for their economies, environment and public health.

Caitlin Rollison is External Affairs Manager at Centre for Cities, a non-partisan think tank dedicated to improving the economies of UK cities.

Figure 2: People living within 30 minutes by public transport of Milan and Manchester city centres with residential density.

Figure 3: Area within 30 minutes of the city centre by public transport for Birmingham (green lines) and Lyon (pink)

President’s word

Transport plays a hugely significant role in our everyday, human, community lives. Not just through the direct encounters we have with different transport modes while getting ourselves from A to B, but also through the indirect way that transport shapes the places and world around us.

Incorporating walking, wheeling and cycling as much as road and rail, and nationally significant infrastructure projects as much as local neighbourhood street design, transport poses important questions about landscape, mobility, scale, and the relationship between the environment and society more generally.

From individual decisions on whether to drive, cycle, or catch a bus, to local decisions on where and how to build new infrastructure, and

national decisions on planning and land use strategy, transport cannot be untangled from the landscapes that surround it, nor the people that make them: How will we get there? How much is it going to cost (and how are we measuring cost)? What are the benefits? What impact will it have on the local economy? On local communities? On the environment? What lessons can we draw from history? How can we help to heal the wounds of the past?

These are decisions made by people, and places change, or don’t, as a result. No decision is made in a vacuum, and the places they are grounded in have in turn been shaped by the impact that transport has had on them over time – from the railway, to the motorcar, to the pedestrianised street. With this understanding, not only do we gain a perspective on our future, and the essential need to deliver transport infrastructure today that enables the cleaner, greener, more sustainable and climate-resilient world we strive for, but that it is people at the heart of this change. We must start then, by understanding the people

who live in any given place, and what a better future means for them.

Moving towards a more outcomesbased, landscape-led approach, in which transport infrastructure can be leveraged to benefit people, place and nature both within and between our towns and cities, is a transition dependent on effective landscape planning, design and management. Landscape has huge potential as an agent of change, putting local communities at the heart of the process to enable broader, more holistic perspectives on the outcomes that transport can offer, but early engagement of landscape professionals in the project life cycle is vital for realising them.

From strategy and planning to delivery and management, a landscape approach to transport considers how new infrastructure can positively enhance not only the health and wellbeing of local communities, but ecology and biodiversity, climate resilience, local heritage and sense of place. Landscape professionals are essential not only for articulating this vision, but also for making it happen.

Carolin Göhler FLI

1. The Spine Route using soil stabilisation techniques (Landscape Journal Oct 2006) within the Coton Country Reserve, to the west of Cambridge, provides access for pedestrians, disabled persons, cyclists as well as diverse farm machinery. It also provides herbal native countryside mix for the verges, also rich in clovers bridging nectar droughts in high summer.

Inspiring the next generation

Grace Edmunds-Jones was part of the first cohort of students to enrol on the Level 3 Apprentice Landscape Technician course at Capel Manor College when it launched in May 2021. Having now become a Technician Member of the Landscape Institute (TMLI), Grace offers insights into the benefits of this important route into the profession and why she hopes to inspire others to follow the same path.

I have been interested in conservation for a long time; exploring apprenticeship opportunities online, I came across the Landscape Technician Apprenticeship offered by Plymouth City Council. Intrigued by its potential to combine my passion for art and conservation, I applied. This apprenticeship seemed like a promising avenue to gain new skills and contribute meaningfully to environmental action.

As I started the apprenticeship, I had no landscape design knowledge. However, childhood experiences of helping my mother in the garden sparked an early love for plants, and years spent working at a garden centre boosted my plant knowledge.

I’ve been working at Plymouth City Council since May 2021, starting as an Apprentice Landscape Technician. A month later, I enrolled on my online learning journey with Capel Manor College. The weekly classes were packed with valuable lessons, from site survey and analysis to technical design and management. We also took a course on using Vectorworks and translating hand-drawn designs into

digital. I put my knowledge to work by designing a community garden at my place of work, the Plymouth City Council-owned Poole Farm.

The community garden redesign enabled me to put the skills learned in our weekly classes into practice. I also attended a permaculture design course through Plymouth City Council, where I gained insights into working with nature, utilising renewable resources, and creating efficient and beautiful designs. These principles heavily influenced the design of the community garden. Leading this project at Poole Farm allowed me to see it through from start to finish. I continue to manage the site today, providing valuable hands-on experience that complemented my apprenticeship.

I am currently still employed at Poole Farm and have been seconded to a role as Natural Infrastructure Assistant. My primary responsibilities include leading educational sessions for groups of children and young people, focusing on nature appreciation and biodiversity, as well as overseeing practical conservation tasks and volunteer activities. I am also involved in redesigning various areas of the farm, with plans underway for the development of a natural play space and a sensory garden. I collaborate with other council teams for various projects, including the creation of landscape schemes for a major roundabout, and contributing to the development of a new management

plan for the woodland area in Plymouth’s Central Park.

In my view, being successful in my role means learning and making a difference every day. The variety of tasks I handle gives me opportunities to grow. I love that my work directly impacts the landscape, making it more biodiverse. Plus, I get to share my passion for nature with visitors, especially kids, hoping to inspire the next generation of nature lovers.

Grace Edmunds-Jones is a new Technician Member of the Landscape Institute (TMLI) and Natural Infrastructure Assistant at Poole Farm.

Grace Edmunds -Jones

1. Ecological surveying with children

New Ways of Working: Membership Pledges Outcomes

Taking stock of progress against our eight member pledges, CEO Robert Hughes looks ahead to the next six months of

work.

Robert Hughes

In January 2023, we asked all Landscape Institute (LI) members to share their feedback and help us in shaping the future of the LI. Putting members at the heart of decision making is a core tenet of our New Ways of Working programme,

which is about fostering a culture of collaboration between all the people that shape our organisation – including members, volunteers, Board, and staff. Member surveys such as the one we ran last year offer a vital opportunity for us to listen and move forward together.

In response to the feedback, the LI committed to eight pledges, which were aligned to our strategic priorities for the 2024–25 Business Plan: People, Membership, and Systems. We have listened to members and acted, with a strong focus on areas that are important to our members and

LI Membership Pledges and Outcomes

volunteers. These eight pledges have become a golden thread throughout the Business Plan, enabling us to achieve our objectives, and become a forward-thinking and inclusive organisation.

We’re proud of the achievements we’ve made so far, and in the next six months, we will be working with members to continue shaping the future of the LI. Our work will not be done in isolation, but shaped through consultation and engagement, with members at the core. We look forward to continuing this important work together.

ACHIEVEMENTS

– Building partnerships and engagement in the devolved nations to deliver our work in policy, membership and education (e.g. Landscape and Carbon Report, Registered Practices and B.E Inclusive MoU partners)

– Upskilling our members by embedding our competencies in CPD programme

PLAN FOR NEXT 6 MONTHS

– Refreshing the LI strategies:

– Business Plan

– Corporate Strategy / Brand identity refresh

– Departmental strategies

– Landscape and Carbon

– Member Value Proposition and promotion of our benefits

–

Skills pipeline, including our standards and competencies

ACHIEVEMENTS

– Putting members at the heart of the decision making by launching New Ways of Working, including CFGS report and Brown Review

– Commencing Branch Review to enable better collaboration

PLAN FOR NEXT 6 MONTHS

– Ongoing implementation of New Ways of Working and reviewing our governance structure to enable effective decision making

– Promotion of the 2025 elections and other opportunities for members to engage

LI Life Membership renewals

Tim Byford, Membership Services Manager

This is a quick reminder to members of the Landscape Institute that it’s time to renew your membership. By continuing your membership your fees are helping to protect, conserve, enhance and advocate for the natural and built environment for public benefit.

In return the LI will support you and enable you to maintain the highest standards in landscape practice with a wide range of other benefits including:

– Discounted access to online and in-person CPD events, including the upcoming conference on Digital Practice & Technology for Landscape.

– Watch free or discounted high-quality webinars and masterclasses on LI Campus.

– Receive the quarterly Landscape journal and gain in-depth insights into the issues at the forefront of landscape practice.

– Benefit from member-exclusive, sector-specific insurance through LI Insurance Services.

– Be part of our local branch network and the wider community.

We are offering £10 off this year’s fees for anyone paying by annual Direct Debit for the first time. Renew at my.landscapeinstitute.org

ACHIEVEMENTS

– Launched Digital Transformation (Project Kestrel):

– Project requirements agreed

– Timeline leading up to autumn 2025 with phased work programmes

– Key stakeholders involved in all stages

PLAN FOR NEXT 6 MONTHS

Implementation of Digital Transformation:

– Completion of successful ‘discovery’ sessions

– Review of CPD, communities and volunteer features

ACHIEVEMENTS

– CPD (events programme) / LI Academy)

– Membership liaisons (Branches, Fellows and Devolved Nations)

– Strengthening the assessments – increasing cycle from 2–4 per year and routes to membership A2T

PLAN FOR NEXT 6 MONTHS

– A robust CPD programme: updated policy, digital conference, and expansion of LI academy

– Commence volunteer proposition

– Membership liaisons with pre-career, early career, established career, senior influencers, and actively interested

1. LI members and staff on the LI’s Campaign to Connect People Place and Nature in 2022.

LI Campus

LI Campus offers access to all LI recorded events including three years of online events and conferences. campus.landscapeinstitute.org

Biodiversity Net Gain

In spring 2024, the Landscape Institute partnered with Natural England to present a series of webinars looking at the implementation of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), which went into effect from 12 February 2024.

The series contributes to CPD requirements for LI members, and is aligned with our competency framework – in particular, competencies in landscape planning and policy, and landscapes as systems.

‘Biodiversity Net Gain: Policy update and the statutory metric’ provides an update on BNG policy and the mandatory requirement for BNG. Led by Nick White, Principal Advisor Net Gain, Natural England, and Clare Cashon, Senior Metric Specialist, Natural England.

Introduction to the Statutory Biodiversity Metric, with Natural England Learning and Development Adviser for BNG, Michael Brightman, aids understanding of the statutory metric in the context of BNG policy and related legislation, as well as the rules and principles that underpin the metric and its ecological context.

Intermediate-level training on the Statutory Biodiversity Metric, also with Michael Brightman, provides intermediate-level training, including how to complete the Statutory Small Sites Metric (SSM) and Habitat Management and Monitoring Plan (HMMP) for small sites.

As well as our Natural England series, head to LI Campus for more specialist BNG webinars including ‘Biodiversity Net Gain: Habitat Management and Monitoring Plans’, ‘Biodiversity Net Gain for Watercourses’, and ‘Improving Digital Collaboration between Landscape Architects and Ecologists’.

Scan the QR code to catch up on the BNG webinar series.

1. Habitat Management and Monitoring Plans are an essential part of BNG delivery.

Landscape Institute Jobs

THE JOBS BOARD FOR THE LANDSCAPE PROFESSION

The LI Jobs Board is the best way to get your landscape role or project opportunity in front of a wide audience of qualified applicants.

We have a range of advertising packages available to suit your requirements.

Standard packages

• Listed on our job site, visited by over 2000 professionals each month.

• Tweeted from LI’s @talklandscape account on X (Twitter) with 34,000 followers.

• Sent in job seeker alerts for relevant keywords.

Featured packages

• Same as above plus…

• Pride of place at the top of the job listings.

• Shared in LI newsletter read by over 6,000 landscape professionals. jobs.landscapeinstitute.org/post-a-job/

Wirral Waters, Birkenhead

Hardscape supplied Active Travel Kerbs, Kellen Breccia Tagenta paving, Double XL grey metal edge slabs and Crystal Black granite blister tactiles.

Connecting places: A landscape-led approach to transport and mobility

Extraordinary

Lines over time: The landscape heritage of transport

The place of transport

Landscape and highways: a journey to progress

National Highways Strategic Design Panel

Early budgeting

Severance

Landscape

Water management

Soil (waste, management and reuse)

Biodiversity and habitat creation

Stewardship and maintenance

Conclusion

East Leeds Orbital Route

A landscape project with a railway running through it

The role of the landscape architect

Public space, health and wellbeing

Climate, biodiversity and resources

Heritage and culture

In practice on HS2

Three HS2 projects, looking at the work of Landscape Institute Registered Practices in collaboration with project partners

Curzon Street Station

Colne Valley Western Slopes

Wendover Dean Viaduct

Low traffic neighbourhoods: How did we get here, and where are we going?

Community streets

The design brief

Stakeholder engagement and design process

Local suppliers

Inclusive design for transport in the public realm

Co-designing neighbourhood mobilities

Moving beyond traditional consultation

Improving bike parking facilities in the City of London

Key principles of the Streetlab approach

CO-CREATIVE GROUP SESSIONS

VISUALISATION OF IMAGINED FUTURES

SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM RESULTS

Towards more sustainable and healthier public spaces

Mobility and masterplanning

Creating places for people through transport

The Super Slow Way

Hackney Urban Survey

The role of AI in decarbonising transport

Landscape and Carbon

The work ahead

Next steps

Corridors: designing linear infrastructure in a non-linear world

Presenting a taxonomy of corridors

Shared and conflicting priorities

Redefining linearity

Planning and land use for better public transport

3. Transport and public health

Where we’re going wrong

Planning for better transport

President’s word

Inspiring the next generation

New Ways of Working: Membership Pledges Outcomes

work.

LI Membership Pledges and Outcomes

LI Life Membership renewals

LI Campus

Biodiversity Net Gain

Landscape Institute Jobs

Standard packages

Articles inside

New Ways of Working: Membership Pledges Outcomes

Inspiring the next generation

President’s word

Planning and land use for better public transport

Corridors: designing linear infrastructure in a non-linear world

Landscape and Carbon

The role of AI in decarbonising transport

The Super Slow Way

Creating places for people through transport

Mobility and masterplanning

Co-designing neighbourhood mobilities

Inclusive design for transport in the public realm

Community streets

Low traffic neighbourhoods: How did we get here, and where are we going?