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East Leeds Orbital Route
East Leeds Orbital Route aerial. © AtkinsRéalis
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 create an active travel focussed route through a country park setting.
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 climate-and nature-positive goals, all wrapped into beautiful places that reflect the parent landscape.
Katy Cardwell is Associate Director at AtkinsRéalis and leads its Northern Landscape Team.
