Landscape Journal Spring 2022: Whose landscape is it? by Landscape, the journal of the Landscape Institute

2022 Issue 1

Whose landscape is it? Designing for an inclusive environment

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PUBLISHER Darkhorse Design Ltd T (0)20 7323 1931 darkhorsedesign.co.uk tim@darkhorsedesign.co.uk EDITORIAL ADVISORY PANEL Stella Bland, Head of Communications, LDA Design Marc Tomes, Landscape Architect, Allen Scott Landscape Architecture Peter Sheard CMLI, Landscape Architect

Designing for diversity and democracy

John Stuart-Murray FLI, Landscape Architect Jaideep Warya CMLI, Senior Landscape Architect, BBUK Studio Limited Jo Watkins PPLI, Landscape Architect Jenifer White CMLI, National Landscape Adviser, Historic England

LANDSCAPE INSTITUTE Editor: Paul Lincoln paul.lincoln@landscapeinstitute.org Copy Editors: Jill White and Evan White President: Jane Findlay PLI CEO: Sue Morgan Landscapeinstitute.org @talklandscape landscapeinstitute landscapeinstituteUK Advertise in Landscape Contact Saskia Little, Business Development Manager 0330 808 2230 Ext 030 saskia.little@landscapeinstitute.org

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Landscape is printed on paper sourced from EMAS (Environmental Management and Audit Scheme) certified manufacturers to ensure responsible printing. 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

From Parliament Square to Tiananmen Square, it is in public that much of the political theatre of our lives takes place. The question at the heart of this edition is posed by Siraaj Mitha, head of Accelerate, who says (p19), “Our personal stories, journeys and memories are never without a physical backdrop to contextualise them. Surely then, the decisions affecting the construction of the built environment should be made democratically and should represent the population that it serves.” Romy Rawlings, keynote speaker at our conference in Sheffield five years ago, reviews the challenges facing women pursuing a career in landscape practice since she made her speech (p22); Zhe Ji, a master’s student at UCL, is surprised at the lack of inclusion demonstrated by some London landscapes (p24); and Susannah Walker introduces the fast-growing Make Space for Girls campaign (p25). In East London, young people are challenging how design professionals approach regeneration (p28), and further afield, we showcase a new atlas of queer spaces offering a guide to landscape designers as well as architects (p32). Greenwich student Naomi Maguire looks at intersectionality in the design of the landscape (p38), and disability activist Christine Tongue expresses some ramped-up rage (p40). Black Landscapes Matter, a recent book of essays by Professor Walter Hood, examines the American context for the history of landscape architecture (p45), and an astonishing

initiative in Liverpool led to the ultimate ‘meanwhile project’ as many of the city’s statues were redressed, offering a creative commentary on the city’s colonial history (p48). This history and its impact on rural landscapes is analysed in our research section. Corinne Fowler’s book Green Unpleasant Land, is the starting point (p51) for a series of articles to be published over the course of this year. The topics covered in this edition are examples of building blocks which create change, from individual users campaigning through to local projects producing tools that everyone can use, on to large national organisations striving to effect permanent change and improvement in our understanding of and ability to achieve greater inclusivity. It is only by connecting local and national changes that we will link with wider global efforts and move forward. Paul Lincoln Editor

2022 Issue 1

landscapeinstitute.org

Whose landscape is it? Designing for an inclusive environment

Cover image: Liverpool Redressed. Statue of Disraeli redressed by Daniel Lismore. Photographed by David Edwards

Contents BRIEFING: COP26

Making COP26 Count all year round

Inclusive Environments Conference

Making Space for Girls

Looking at the implications of Glasgow

Setting the scene on inclusive environments

Challenging park designers and managers to meet the needs of teenage girls

Changing Spaces

Building an inclusive generation of designers

Aberfeldy – a case study of innovative engagement

Reflections on COP26 three months on

Open City’s Accelerate is diversifying entry to built environment courses

How young people are changing the approach to regeneration

Locked up and locked out

Slow steps in the move to gender parity

Queer Spaces

One landscape architect discusses her experience of COP26

Reflections on progress or lack of it within the profession

Celebrating queer life through time and space

Next steps

The LI outlines its plans post COP26

FEATURES

Looking at inclusion in London

Not all cyclists are Lycra-clad ironmen

Reflections on accessibility in the capital from a masters student

An introduction to human-centred infrastructure design

FEATURES

Intersectionality in the design of landscape Tackling exclusion in landscape design

Auditing Accessibility Creating an audit tool to resolve conflicts between different users

Ramp rage

Black Landscapes Matter

Statues Redressed

Designing landscapes fit for disabled people

Learning from American landscape architecture

Monumental moments in Liverpool as statues are recreated

RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE

Reading Green Unpleasant Land:

Look up: resources

Creative responses to rural England’s colonial connections

Further reading and viewing on inclusive environments from the LI

55 Conference: ‘Future History’ 56-57 Building research links

LI LIFE

59 Beauty, diversity and design at the LI AGM

62 Policy updates

67 60 Appointment of Ethics in Practice: Creating new Fellows

68 CAMPUS:

Learn from anywhere

a new LI Code of Practice

BRIEFING: MAKING COP26 COUNT

Making COP26 Count all year round The UK retains the presidency of COP26 until November 2022, when COP27 will take place in Egypt. Three months after the gathering in Glasgow, the implications of this event are slowly being understood. In a series of articles, we reflect on the event through the eyes of one landscape architect, consider the ways in which individual practitioners are changing how they work, and provide a policy-led analysis. 2.

1. Visting COP26 and the neighbourhood © Clare Hunt

2. Rebecca Rylott, Chair of LI Scotland with Jane Findlay, LI president

BRIEFING: MAKING COP26 COUNT

Changing Spaces Claire Thirlwall invites colleagues to look back on COP26. Jane Findlay is president of the Landscape Institute. What has been encouraging for me is that we are finally talking about the integrated approach to the many environmental challenges humanity faces. Previously, conservation and biodiversity were often viewed as separate issues from our changing climate, whereas the landscape profession has long recognised that the crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and human health and wellbeing are inextricably interconnected. Now, with promises to reverse deforestation, conserve peatlands, and provide funding directly to indigenous people to help them protect their lands, there is greater recognition of the vital part that nature plays in regulating the climate. The resulting Glasgow Pact offered few wins against expected COP26 outcomes, but there were critical signs of progress seen beyond the negotiation tables. Expectations for the conference were high and several months on, I’m still asking myself whether COP was a success. Having witnessed both formal and fringe COP26, I personally have mixed feelings – but ultimately COP26 fell well short of delivering the national commitments that would together limit warming globally to 1.5C.

Carolyn Willitts is director of CW Studio and and a member of the Landscape Architects Declare and Built Environment Declares Steering Groups As a team, we had already talked about what we needed to do to become a more sustainable business. COP26 was perfectly timed for us to announce our plans to become Net Carbon Zero by 2030, as well as working towards becoming a B Corp business – a journey we started twelve months ago. In terms of our day-to-day activities, it is important for us to be reading, watching and listening to learn and unlearn, enabling us to be conscious and proactive in how we are as a company and how we are as designers.

David Pearl is an innovator in business, arts and social change, inventor of Street Wisdom, and author of Story for Leaders and Wanderful. As COP26 approached I was

feeling deeply alarmed and, as a “sustainability outsider”, powerless. Worse – paralysed. The environmental narrative seemed to be telling me apocalypse is imminent. The vested interest narrative wanted to lull me to sleep with the idea that some miraculous technology will save us all, so I should go back to sleep. So, I headed to Glasgow with a film crew, set up a makeshift studio and started talking to experts, particularly to find out what stories they use (and tell themselves) when they encounter defeatism, hostility and despair. I was particularly keen to

uncover the powerful micro stories that can switch your perspective in a few words. The interviews (both in person and online) with people like Bianca Pitt, Gabrielle Walker, Nigel Topping, Eliane Ubalijoro, Sir Tim Smit and Johanna Gibbons were fascinating. A seedbed of inspiration. I asked each interviewee to give me some parting advice. One of my favourites was from Jo: “If you’re feeling scared or defeated, dig a hole and smell the earth.”

Eccles Ng is Course Director of BA Landscape Architecture at Birmingham City University. COP26 identified and highlighted the important aspects of mitigation, adaptation, finance and collaboration in tackling climate change. As a Chartered Landscape Architect and course director of BA Landscape Architecture at Birmingham City University, I can see there are a lot of upcoming opportunities for our landscape architecture students to work with other disciplines, professions, local communities and governments within our nation and internationally. The recent success in our international collaboration project with Shahjalal University in Bangladesh opened up further opportunities to connect students and professionals across the globe. This encourages me to focus further on the COP26 “Collaboration – work together to deliver” goal by finding future cross-disciplinary, transnational education collaboration opportunities.

Abu Siddiki is a British Bangladeshi architect currently completing an MA in International Planning and Sustainable Development at Westminster University. COP26 highlighted the urgency to act quickly to save our planet. As professionals within the built environment, we all need to change our behaviour and recognise this call to action, as we have a huge responsibility to not only change our own mindset but those around us. We need to work collectively to bring about positive changes through dialogues, collaboration and education. The global pandemic has highlighted the inequalities within the built environment and the challenges we are faced with as professionals. Going forward, my philosophy is to design with communities and their wellbeing in mind and collaborate on cross-disciplinary projects that embrace diversity and inclusivity. In my experience of working on projects internationally across the UK, UAE and Bangladesh, I understand that a blanket approach cannot be applied, as there are various differences which impact decisions. However, in every culture “community” is a common factor. If we can persuade the client that decisions made can impact negatively or positively on their communities then hopefully, we can have a consensus.

Chris Churchman is founder and director of Churchman Thornhill Finch.

Luke Engleback is Director of Studio Engleback.

The changes arising from COP26 were general and specific. To meet the objective of maintaining a 1.5°C increase in temperatures will require a two-thirds reduction in emissions. This will demand fundamental changes in all aspects of life, from diet through mode of travel to how and where we build. However, it is the finally enacted Environment Act which will drive the necessary changes. The binding commitment on the Secretary of State to halt species decline, and on Public Authorities to establish policies to bring about transformation, will drive tough targets, with policies needing to be reviewed regularly; there will be a progressive and frequent ratchetting up of substantive changes in the way that landscapes are delivered – no more ‘eco bling’ or greenwashing.

We constantly research the big issues and look at ways to address them better – this aspect has to continue to feed back into our work. Mostly it is the justification in terms of benefits – we have to sow hope not just frighten folk! Some clients are far more amenable to changing behaviour than others. We have legislation so we know we have to massively reduce carbon emissions, especially embodied carbon, and we also have to have a net biodiversity gain, and ideally we need to see legislation for net environmental gain – these need explaining not only to the client but also the lead architects in many cases. It has to be framed as an opportunity, not a penalty.

This requires better skills from landscape professionals: swales and bat boxes won’t cut it. Every landscape architect must know the relevant metrics, the carbon in a 50 year old tree, the C02 captured by a new tree, the carbon in a hectare of soil. Claire Thirlwall is a director of Thirlwall Associates. Her book “From Idea to Site: a project guide to creating better landscapes” is published by RIBA.

BRIEFING: MAKING COP26 COUNT

1 and 2. Visting COP26 and the neighbourhood © Clare Hunt

Locked up and locked out Glasgow was a place of high security, but for one landscape architect, also a place where the public realm provided a place for discourse and connection. Clare Hunt

Head of Landscape at ADP

A chain of people all dressed in red threaded through the crowd, as the “Red Rebel Brigade” danced their protest around us. I later learned that the red outfits signify the blood on the hands of the government due to their inaction in combating climate change.

Making my way to the Green Zone at COP26 – an area where the general public could engage with talks and exhibitions – I noticed how much of the event felt locked away. We were met with security gates, guards, checkpoints for COVID passports and tickets. This was of course with good reason, given the ongoing threat of COVID and the potential for terrorism or protestors to disrupt the event. Still, it added to the sense that climate change is in some way intangible to the general public. If not here, where can the public easily engage? In public places, of course: the streets, squares, and parks of the city. So, this is where I went – and it wasn’t long before the faint sound of music caught my attention. Drums beating. The familiar tune of “She’ll be coming round the mountain” (with the lyrics cheekily changed to “You can stick yer climate crisis up yer arse”) in a gentle, folky Scottish voice. There was a gathering of people outside the Blue Zone, where the main delegates enter the site. Bright banners reading “There’s no Dancing on a Dead Planet” brought life to the imposing security fences, creating a backdrop for what can only be described as a climate change cèilidh. The joy I felt watching this event matched the faces of the dancers. This is what public space is all about: peaceful protest, freedom of speech, fun and chance encounters. I spoke to some of the protestors while here – the most striking of

whom was Isabella Harding. On this cold, sunny Glaswegian afternoon, she stood holding a plaque around her neck, silently making her statement. Isabella seemed guarded at first, but when I explained that I was a landscape architect, her demeanour changed. We discussed the need for habitat restoration, tree planting and buying organic. I was beaming after our chat and felt that I’d left her with some optimism. My head turned when a flash of red passed by. A chain of people all dressed in red threaded through the crowd, as the “Red Rebel Brigade” danced their protest around us. I later learned that the red outfits signify the blood on the hands of the government due to their inaction in combating climate change. We next encountered a group from Sustaining All Life, who provide counselling for the emotional toll of the climate crisis. “Climate guilt” is a real threat, too. The personal pressures we face – perhaps especially in our profession, as we battle to make nature a priority – can be overwhelming. I was amazed that a support network exists for people feeling this. It reinforced the need for outdoor space and contact with nature as an antidote to the stresses of society. My final stop was the student exhibition for Architects Climate Action Network, where I met Freya Macleod. Freya studied interior and environmental design at Dundee University, and I enjoyed hearing the perspective of someone starting their career in the built environment. Our chat covered the importance of public space for protests: looking around the exhibition, I could see many examples of public realm design. One exhibition which caught my eye was titled “Climate Confessions”. The exhibition invited people to write

their climate-related “guilty pleasures” on a sticky note. “I go for drives… just for fun.” “I never switch my lights off because I’m scared of the dark.” Even here, climate guilt seemed ever present. My trip to COP26 was full of wonderful people, all striving towards a common goal, some personal, some professional and quite often both. It gave me a sense of pride to be working in an industry where we’re able to make a difference, particularly when I was describing what a landscape architect does to those who weren’t familiar with the profession. We’re in a role that allows us to create beautiful spaces that can respond to the current threat of the crisis. We’re part of a diverse built environment network and we’re in the right time and place to create a genuine greener future. Claire is ADP’s head of landscape, and a chartered member of the Landscape Institute. Claire is also a visiting tutor on the Landscape Architecture course at Birmingham City University.

BRIEFING: MAKING COP26 COUNT

COP26 – next steps The LI was represented at COP26 by the President Jane Findlay, CEO Sue Morgan and members of the Policy Team, including Dilraj Sokhi-Watson, who asks if the event was a road to recovery or a missed opportunity. Dilraj Sokhi-Watson

COP26 could have been a landmark moment in the history of the planet and humankind, only if concrete action from political leaders from across the world had matched the climate rhetoric. A successful outcome would be, ambitious 2030 greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reducing targets and actions across all high emitting sectors, leading to a global goal of 1.5°C, adaptation support through finance for the most vulnerable countries, equal consideration given to adaptation as well as mitigation, and enhanced climate resilience through nature-based solutions1. What could have been a kaleidoscopic montage of climate targets and solutions, that would have set the tone for ambitious action in the coming decade, became a disjointed picture of commitments. While some may argue that initiatives and commitments made at COP26, such as deforestation pledges2, methane pledge3, coal phase out4, the ‘Global Goal on Adaptation5’ and the ‘Glasgow Climate Pact6’, set us on the pathway between 1.8°C and 2.1°C of global warming7, and there is still a glimmer of hope that keeps the 1.5°C goal alive. Two questions arise from this. First, 10

do these actions have enough weight to take the 1.5°C climate goal off ‘life support’8 and our planet into recovery? Secondly, with key unresolved issues such as lack of action on fossil fuel abatement and an absence of ambitious emission reduction targets in the near term from the big polluters, in addition to maintaining the net zero momentum, should we now focus more on adaptation and enhancing resilience? Post COP26, the call for ‘urgent action’ continues. Whether we will be able to achieve the global 1.5°C goal remains to be seen, with countries being ‘requested’ to ‘revisit and strengthen’ their climate pledges by the end of 2022, in time for COP27 in Egypt. For now, though, the commitments and pledges made at COP26 somehow give the feeling that the show is over, the curtains are drawn, the audience is walking away with apprehension, and when the time comes for COP27 the one and only sequel, will live up to all the unfilled promises made in the preceding COPs, or will the calls for urgent action remain unheard? The LI’s President Jane Findlay, CEO Sue Morgan, LIS Branch Chair Rebecca Rylott and members of the senior management team had the opportunity to attend COP26 in person, observe negotiations and attend conference activities in Glasgow. Further information on engagement, collaboration and conference activities can be viewed on the LI’s COP26 Campaign16 page.

The road from Glasgow to Sharm el-Sheikh The LI’s 2021 COP26: ‘What do the outcomes mean for the landscape profession?’17 policy briefing provides a detailed review of COP26 outcomes, their implications on UK’s climate responsibilities and commitments, and how this impacts the landscape sector. A key outcome of COP26 – the ‘Glasgow Climate Pact’ – is being called a distinctive, global, cross-sector political decision, calling on countries for more ambitious national emission reduction targets, policies and implementation plans to be put in place by COP27, which takes place at the end of 2022.

1. Sue Morgan with a copy of Landscape for 2030.

BRIEFING: MAKING COP26 COUNT

2, 3, 4. Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens were redeveloped between 2001 and 2023. On the south side, adjacent to the tram and bus interchange, a new concrete modernist pavilion designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando was erected along with a curved concrete wall at the side of the tram line. After less than twenty years, the wall was demolished in November 2020. In response to ongoing problems with antisocial behaviour and the public response to the 2003 design, Manchester City Council announced a new urban design competition to redesign Piccadilly Gardens. © Martin Malies

Historically, adaptation has been underfunded, where historically, negotiations on climate finance have been heavily skewed towards mitigation activities. However, this was the first time adaptation was considered. This change in pace is reflected in the Glasgow Pact, where developed countries have been called to ‘at least double their collective provision of climate finance for adaptation’ from 2019 levels by 2025. In addition to expanding the scope for climate finance and emphasising oprogressively ambitious emission reduction targets, a two-year Glasgow to Sharm el-Sheikh Work programme on the Global Goal on Adaptation has been included as well. The Glasgow to Sharm el-Sheikh Work programme builds on the work of the Adaptation Committee. From the landscape sector’s perspective, globally, countries will now need to adapt to the changing climate and its impacts, in ways that will make a profound impact on the landscape profession.

Concrete action: the demolition of a Manchester city-centre landscape scheme less than twenty years old.

Translating global ambition to national action

the commitments and pledges made at COP26 somehow give the feeling that the show is over, the curtains are drawn, the audience is walking away with apprehension

On the domestic front, more focus on adaptation and the emphasis on implementation of emission reduction targets at COP26 are of particular relevance. One dimension of adaptation is building, improving and maintaining green infrastructure, which has been traditionally underfunded. There is a need for further investment in green infrastructure: natural flood management systems, energy, including carbon efficient strategies such as green roofs and waterefficient design, measures which embed nature-based solutions and enhance resilience. The issue of underfunding for adaptation is also relevant on the domestic front, as this is connected to the implementation of UK’s emission reduction targets. The UK’s Net Zero Strategy18 provides the overall framework to deliver its climate ambitions, including headline actions to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. While there are positive initiatives within the strategy

BRIEFING: MAKING COP26 COUNT

Landscape Institute Climate and Biodiversity Action Plan May 2020

Climate and biodiversity action plan The Landscape Institute’s commitment to addressing the climate and biodiversity emergencies

The Landscape Institute, and by extension the landscape profession, have been ardent advocates of employing an integrated approach to the climate-biodiversity crises. For the LI, COP26 was a milestone in the journey of reconciling environmental and climate related imbalances where the organisation’s COP26 advocacy actions, noted below, were informed by the strategic objectives as set out in the LI’s climate and biodiversity action plan9.

in the areas of sustainable transport, heat in buildings, green jobs and green finance, there is an absence of detailed policy interventions when it comes to green infrastructure investment19. The Climate Change Committee’s key recommendation20 to the UK government on this front is to reinforce its climate adaptation policies through clear implementation plans. Following COP26, the next key milestone on the domestic front which will highlight near term action is the next five-year National Adaptation Programme for 20232028. The programme will be published this year and will set out adaptation action the government will be taking for the next five years. Dilraj Sokhi-Watson is the Landscape Institute’s Policy and Partnerships manager for Scotland 12

Some of the initiatives were: – The LI’s 2021 Landscape for 203010 report, which demonstrates how landscape professionals can respond to the climate and nature crises. The report showcases examples of landscape-based climate interventions, incorporating both mitigation and adaptation measures – The LI’s 2020 Greener Recovery11 report, which provided landscapebased solutions to the question on how the landscape sector can deliver a sustainable recovery from the pandemic To identify and highlight opportunities for UK policy makers by calling for top level COP26 goals:

Ahead of COP26, we published the briefing: ‘What is COP26 and why is it important?’12 This provided further information on the LI’s policy position. In addition to this, we also demonstrated landscape professionals’ holistic approach to the climate and nature crises through practical examples across sectors and borders. Collaboration was a significant area of work on this front where, throughout 2021, the LI were were involved in several projects across sectors and countries including IFLA’s climate commitment by landscape architects across the globe13, Construction Industry Council Climate Action Plan14 and partnership with UKGBC on the Build Better Now exhibition15.

– Prioritise climate adaptation as well as mitigation – Embed a natural infrastructure approach within government’s housing and infrastructure investment plan – Invest in green skills through the economy

1 For a detailed analysis of COP26 outcomes and the implications on the landscape profession please refer to LI COP26 policy briefing, available here: https:// landscapewpstorage01.blob.core.windows.net/ www-landscapeinstitute-org/2021/12/policy-briefingdecember-2021-cop26-what-ouctomes-mean-for-thelandscape-profession.pdf

12 https://issuu.com/landscape-institute/docs/ li_journal_4_cop_edition/s/13631567

2 https://ukcop26.org/glasgow-leaders-declaration-onforests-and-land-use/

14 https://cic.org.uk/admin/resources/cic-carbon-zeroclimate-action-plan-for-professional-institutions-3.pdf

3 https://www.globalmethanepledge.org/

15 https://buildbetternow.co/

4 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/end-of-coal-insight-as-uk-secures-ambitious-commitments-atcop26-summit

16 https://www.landscapeinstitute.org/policy/cop26/

5 https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/ what-does-cop26-mean-adaptation#:~:text=The%20 Paris%20Agreement%20in%202015,for%20 tracking%20countries’%20adaptation%20progress. 6 https://unfccc.int/documents/310475 7 https://www.iea.org/commentaries/cop26-climatepledges-could-help-limit-global-warming-to-1-8-c-butimplementing-them-will-be-the-key 8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjH6_hsbyvY 9 https://landscapewpstorage01.blob.core.windows. net/www-landscapeinstitute-org/2020/05/12284climate-biodiversity-action-plan.pdf 10 https://www.landscapeinstitute.org/news new-publication-landscape-2030/ 11 https://landscapewpstorage01.blob.core.windows.

net/www-landscapeinstitute-org/2020/09/12332greener-recovery-v6.pdf

13 https://www.iflaworld.com/ifla-climate-actioncommitment-statement

17 https://landscapewpstorage01.blob.core.windows. net/www-landscapeinstitute-org/2021/12/ policy-briefing-december-2021-cop26-whatouctomes-mean-for-the-landscape-profession.pdf?_cl dee=ZGlscmFqLnNva2hpLXdhdHNvbkBsYW5kc2Nh cGVpbnN0aXR1dGUub3Jn&recipientid=conta ct-59b70d954a19eb11a813000d3ad689ea-475e873 3dfa7486d91bc6cd05ba4aadc&esid=40817 cc3-085d-ec11-8f8f-000d3ad651f9 18 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ net-zero-strategy 19 https://www.landscapeinstitute.org/news/ landscape-institute-responds-government-net-zerostrategy/ 20 https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/cop26-keyoutcomes-and-next-steps-for-the-uk/

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Marshalls expands its European range of natural stone Marshalls has extended its range of European granites with the launch of Ascella, from Portugal.

Ultimate design flexibility Ascella can be custom cut to any size, with bespoke engraving and finishing options available.

Hand-picked by our geologist for its distinctive appearance, the new granite is named after the Ascella star. With an arresting silver pigment it reflects light, creating a shimmering effect that is complimented by hues of rich amethyst, warm bronze and charcoal. Available in paving, setts, steps, kerbs and street furniture, Ascella can be custom cut to any size, with bespoke engraving and finishing options available. Offering a truly unique aesthetic, further variety is introduced by a selection of three finishes including honed, blasted and flamed. This dazzling multi tonal, iridescent stone will set any scheme apart from the rest, working well in bold public realm landscape designs to add a distinctive depth and character. Marshalls Natural Stone Trading Director, Dave Stanger, comments “We want to offer our customers the optimum design flexibility, with a range that provides choice across colour, texture and finish. “As a leading materials manufacturer, we want to bring to the market products that are responsibly sourced, high quality and unique. For us it’s not just about following the current design trends but in paving the way for future innovation. “Colour choice is a key part of this. We want to provide a range of ‘timeless classics’, products that will stand the test of time, both in terms of durability and design longevity.”

Ascella in flamed complemented by Dorado in blasted.

The Marshalls collection of Portuguese granite

To be in with a chance of winning, simply head to: marshalls.co.uk/ascella-competition ED AM FL

The Marshalls’ granite range now offers more than 50 granite solutions, sourced from around the world. Ascella represents the 11th Portuguese granite on offer and joins other European natural stones in the collection, including Italian Porphyry and British Yorkstone This extensive range not only provides unprecedented choice, it meets the increased customer demand for locally sourced materials that reduce transport-related carbon emissions whilst also decreasing lead times.

To celebrate the launch of this stunning stone, we’re offering the chance for you and a guest to enjoy a Michelin starred Portugese dining experience at Volto Do Mar, included in an all-expenses paid weekend break to London, staying at worldfamous The Ritz.

D TE AS BL

Marshalls only work with suppliers which meet the businesses rigorous ethical standards and code of conduct. The firm was the first in the world to be accredited with the BRE Ethical Labour Sourcing Standard BES 6002, which provided independent verification, and which Marshalls has maintained for five consecutive years.

Win a Portuguese-themed luxury weekend

D NE HO

As a natural granite, Ascella offers a hard wearing, UV resistant hard landscaping solution, which is fully tested and UKCA marked.

and answer the following question: “How many Portuguese granites does Marshalls offer?” Full terms and conditions can be found by following competition link. Distinctive character

This dazzling multi tonal, iridescent stone will set any scheme apart from the rest, working well in bold public realm landscape designs to add a distinctive depth and character.

For more information on Ascella and Marshalls wide range of natural stone, please visit: marshalls.co.uk/commercial

Neso Tarvos Carina Sargas Lyra Mizar Dorado Umbriel Archie Oberon Ascella Polished/Honed

Blasted

Flamed

F E AT U R E

Inclusive Environments Conference In summer 2021, the Landscape Institute held its first Inclusive Environments Conference. The three-day online event inspired this edition of the journal. Evan White outlines some of the key themes.

Evan White

Speakers considered the subject of inclusivity within the landscape sector from very different angles and from a great variety of projects, practices and organisations. Presentations were packed with actionable advice for practitioners to implement in their own work. 16

Many presenters highlighted the real importance of understanding and properly considering the cultures, religions and backgrounds of site users in all design and planning. Phineas Harper (Director of Open City) warned of the exclusionary tendencies and patterns present in our architecture, and suggested some ways in which we should start to challenge and move away from certain “traditions”. Part of this involves understanding the difficult histories of many of our landscapes, as was explored by Professor Corinne Fowler (University of Leicester). Fowler suggested we should

acknowledge and interpret this history – in particular of sites with colonial history – and use our understanding to build usable, accessible and relevant sites for every member of local communities. We need to know how people want to, or are restricted from, using public spaces and recognise that there could be a huge variety of expectations of what these spaces need to provide for, and allow this to shape planning. Dr Bridget Snaith CMLI (University of East London) pressed home the need to “recognise and respect diversity enough to adapt practice.”

1. Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park © LLDC

F E AT U R E

What would it mean to choose a way of making that embraced care?

Not all cultures have the same idea about the right way to relate to nature

Urban experiences are shaped by intercultural conviviality

People and plants belong to the same colonial story

Phin Harper

Bridget Snaith

Farnaz Ganji

Corinne Fowler

Public consultation enables public talking Gabrielle Appiah

Our main goals are to empower more black led design..... practice with a decolonial vision for the future

Alisha Morenike Fisher

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It’s important to understand that different cultural groups present in our urban spaces have different relationships with nature, so that we can ensure that public spaces are viable, interesting and representative for all site users. Consulting diverse and representative groups from communities is key, and as Harper put it, we cannot “just open the doors” for people – we need to “understand the barriers” that were there in the first place, which can prevent them from using and enjoying these spaces. On the subject of site usage, the issue of age was also raised in a number of sessions. For instance, Dr Kate Langham (Co-Founder of the Association of Collaborative Design) argued that practitioners should increase their engagement with young people, who have “heightened local knowledge” and a range of insightful ideas to offer. Langham suggested that spaces need to be designed with current and future users, to ensure that spaces appeal to this key user group as well, or as Pamela Conrad (Principal, CMG Landscape Architecture) said, so that we are “providing space for different generations.” Another key demographic discussed by our speakers were people with disabilities. It’s crucial that we consider the accessibility of public spaces for those with a variety of physical and mental abilities and experiences, and cater for their needs and requirements. Therefore, designers should routinely be consulting users with diverse disabilities – as Bobby Chakravarthy (Partner at Arcus Consulting) said, we need to be thinking about a range of users, such as those with visual and hearing impairments, and not just wheelchair users alone, although they are an important group to consider in design. It is critically important that the design of accessible street space takes these factors into account. On a related point, David McKenna and Annabel Keegan gave us an interesting update on the oft-discussed topic of shared spaces. They explored some fascinating current examples from around the country, and provided some useful guidance and case study resources for viewers to make use of in 18

their own projects. Recent successes in this area were discussed, but the presenters also covered aspects of this approach to public space that still need improvement – a constructive presentation that should hopefully inspire changes going forward. The role of technology in these inclusive endeavours cannot be underestimated. Saskia Sassen (Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University) and Bobby Chakravarthy each gave informative talks on the pros and cons of employing digital tools in all stages of landscape projects, and how using data can lead to the creation of high-quality, representative spaces, but can also lead to tech-heavy solutions that may be inappropriate. Chakravarthy explained how behavioural science and simulation technologies can be used to inform and influence design, and how we can use agent-based modelling to learn from the past awnd present use of sites to predict and plan for their future use.

Decision making should be done with people, and not to them These techniques help us to reduce unconscious bias in design choices – we can employ data to ensure that all user demographics are considered and provided for in site proposals. Practitioners need to be certain they are “creating public spaces for everyone irrespective of their background.” Digital approaches, as Sassen said, can be used to understand our sites and cities on a human level, and subsequently to understand the people for whom we are designing. However, Sassen highlighted the potential threats of technologised environments for democracy (for example, data-gathering and surveillance), and stressed that people must not become less important than the cities they live in. Sassen felt that it is neighbourhoods and localities that make a city “speak”. Glenn Brawn (Global Partnerships Director of Commonplace Digital

Ltd) argued that we should also be engaging with potential users digitally, especially with those who wish to have strategic input, positing that it is essential we “make it simple and convenient for people to get involved” with our schemes. However, as Harper noted, it’s important that we use a combination of digital and in-person engagement to avoid discriminating against those without easy access to technology and digital tools. In fact, involving our communities in projects rather than simply consulting them was a message echoed by many speakers. Gabrielle Appiah (Project Coordinator at Soundings) said that “decision making should be done with people, and not to them”, and argued that “enabling communities to share ideas and build consensus” would help us to create “better places through active participation.” Similarly, Dr Farnaz Ganji (Senior Consultant at LDA Design) put forth that genuine engagement is key to the success of a project, and that “public consultation shouldn’t be a tickbox – it should be embedded in practice from the start.” This was summarised succinctly in a discussion between by Graham Duxbury (Groundwork UK’s Chief Executive) and Hamira Sultan (Consultant in Public Health at Birmingham City Council), who agreed that the industry needs to “move from consultation to engagement to empowerment.” The Conference not only raised important issues for practitioners to address, but offered practical, achievable solutions. The diverse group of speakers, from a wide range of ages, backgrounds and professions, enabled participants to share their rich experiences and knowledge in this complex and vitally important area of landscape practice. Evan White is a writer and editor with a particular interest in landscape and the natural environment.

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Building an inclusive generation of designers

1. An Accelerate workshop looking at the buildings and landscape of East London from Liverpool Street Station to Brick Lane. © Siraaj Mitha

The Accelerate programme was developed and established by Open City, and is a pioneering design, education and mentoring programme providing access to built-environment courses for a wide group of young people, increasing diversity in these fields. The programme is supported by the London branch of the Landscape Institute. Siraaj Mitha

Accelerate

The built environment affects us all; from how we form relationships and navigate our cities, to where we choose to spend our time and who we choose to spend it with. Our personal stories, journeys and memories are never without a physical backdrop to contextualise them. Surely, then, the decisions affecting the construction of our built environment should be made democratically, and should represent the population it serves?

Over the last ten years, Open City’s Accelerate programme has encouraged more than 350 young Londoners from underrepresented and historically marginalised backgrounds to experience, explore and gain access to built-environment professions, and has introduced more than 700 built industry professionals to mentoring and teaching opportunities. With an ever-evolving pedagogy, the programme strives to equip each student with the skills and confidence to make strong applications to study built environment subjects at leading universities and apprenticeship schemes. Students are exposed to a series of workshops in exciting locations across London, from the labyrinthine raised walkways of the Barbican Estate to the antique rooms of the Museum of the Home, and take

part in one-to-one mentoring sessions with built industry professionals where they gain a sense of the working life and environment of those operating in the industry. Each year culminates with a summer exhibition showcasing the work produced during the course. Accelerate was established by Open City, a charity which has dedicated the last 30 years to making London’s architecture and landscape more open, accessible and equitable to every community and resident of the city, and to this day continues to explore new and creative ways of doing this. Since its inception, UCL has been a longstanding partner of Accelerate, and has provided a platform for the programme to experiment, evolve and expand. The programme now operates with UAL in addition to 19

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architecture. This also exposed me to the real-life constraints in the built environment and how they shape architecture, which has influenced my design ethos and helped me to develop a considerate and practical approach to projects. My Masters thesis, ‘Solace under shade’, looked at informal uses of spaces under bridges and viaducts in Karachi. This project was peoplecentric and involved ground research, which I thoroughly enjoyed and learnt a lot from. This project was as much about process and politics as it was design, and the freedom to steer the direction myself helped me to discover new interests – I would love to pick up this project again in the future and see it become a reality.

UCL, and can offer places on the course to 60 students. With a proven record of positive social impact on the trajectories of its participants and the demographics of the sector –

75% of Accelerate graduates secure offers to study architecture and related subjects at university – Accelerate is looking to expand in order to provide more young Londoners with opportunities to explore a career in the built environment industries. The legacy of the programme is those who have taken part. This year, we look forward to celebrating a decade of Accelerate and the alumni that have come through it. This will provide us with a good opportunity to take stock of what the programme has achieved during that time, and to reflect on what more can be done to further our unwavering commitment to bring equity to all parts of our built environment and to amplify the many voices, cultures and identities of London.

Siraaj spent three years working predominantly on affordable housing for Allies and Morrison, where he qualified as an architect. He then spent six months living, working and educating in Nairobi, Kenya for an architectural NGO, after which he returned to the UK and spent three years working for Stanton Williams . He joined Open City in the Summer as the new Head of Accelerate and has also started teaching Undergraduate Architecture at the Bartlett. 20

Sahar-Fatema Mohamedali – Alumni (2012)

As built environment subjects weren’t taught in my school, Accelerate was my first exposure to architectural education. It gave me the head start I needed and equipped me with skills and critical thinking so I could find a place in university and hit the ground running. Accelerate helped me to confirm my goals as well as achieve them. The course helped me to realise that design is so much more than functionality and aesthetics. It highlighted the importance of community and how architects in their designs must reflect the society that we design for. I saw a place for myself within a field that I previously perceived as impossible to enter, thanks to the mentors, course leaders and tutors. The most interesting part of the course for me was work experience at David Miller Architects, where I got the chance to overhear conversations, peek at screens and participate in design discussions and site visits to get a better understanding of what the day-to-day life of an architect entails. Academia is so different to practice, and I was grateful to have a glance at what work could be like for me in the future before deciding to study

In practice I have worked primarily on bridges and infrastructure in a variety of scales, from a small footbridge in Guildford, now nearing completion, to my current work on HS2 near Birmingham, which is at the detail design stage. The legacy of transport infrastructure projects and the impact they have on communities motivates me to continue in this sector. As I move forward in my career, I would like to branch out on the typologies of architecture to broaden my experience. I am also excited to be mentoring with Accelerate in the coming year, engaging with schools and universities. I am optimistic about the future of our profession and would love to be a part of shaping it. Sahar-Fatema Mohamedali is a newly qualified architect and the champion for social mobility at Weston Williamson + Partners. She studied at the University of Westminster and KTH in Stockholm.

2. Sketching in the landscape in Broadgate Circus © Siraaj Mitha

3. Reviewing the Broadgate landscape © Siraaj Mitha

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people at the centre of the design process. I believe architecture is a tool for storytelling and can be used to reassign agency; I want to work with communities across the world and celebrate them through the design of spaces. Bareera Borhan – Alumni (2014)

I was a GCSE student when I took part in Accelerate in 2014. My project at the time was a response to the theme ‘Moments’. I identified walking through thresholds between spaces as an interesting moment and was particularly interested by the contrast between open and compressed spaces. I felt that the threshold between the street and my school entrance was uninspired, which led to a series of iterative drawings and models through which I designed a new gateway for my school. I also really enjoyed discussing texts by Kant and Junichiro Tanizaki on complex topics like ‘Raum’ and ‘Genius Loci’ with her. These explorations of space have continued as threads throughout my education and working life in the industry. I was so inspired and excited by every conversation with my mentor. I remember thinking I was interested in architecture but second guessing myself, because at 14 you don’t really understand the world around you, let alone what felt like a nebulous profession. Accelerate made me feel like architecture was for me and I had a place in the industry, which I couldn’t wait to take up. My future plans are to complete my Masters, during which I hope to be working on projects that put

Bareera graduated from Central St Martins, UAL in 2020, and developed an interest in people focused architecture and codesign. She is currently a member of the Open City Accelerate Advisory Board and is currently working as a Part 1 architect at David Chipperfield Architects.

Robinson Sivalingam – Alumni (2018)

I came into the Accelerate course with an interest in architecture but not much understanding of it. However, from the moment I started the course, this began to change. From the resources provided to the experiences I gained, Accelerate allowed my curiosity in the built environment to grow. I always wanted to pursue a career in architecture, but through the course, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about various aspects that I was unaware of. One of the main thoughts in my mind that changed was that architecture was just going to consist of ‘straight

lines and making technical models’, but I was wrong. Over the year, I was introduced to so many creative processes through workshops and trips, which increased my love for architecture and the built environment. One of the trips that I was interested in was visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum. Here I became aware of something that I had never thought about before, and that was flow. The flow of people and its correlation with space. We were all told to go to different parts of the museum, to observe and sketch different people’s movements with different colours. This created an overlapping flow of coloured lines, which we understood represented the importance of certain spaces and how this information could be used, for example to regulate the level of light. This tied in with an earlier workshop, where we were introduced to mapping and site analysis. We looked at green spaces, traffic, the topography and learned to represent this on layers of tracing paper. This helped build the foundation for when I entered university and we had to do site analysis in more detail. Something I really liked about the course was the ability to meet and make lifelong friends with likeminded, creative people and gain confidence while being surrounded by similar situations to that of a design student. From a tour of The Bartlett campus to visiting the rooftop of the Islamic Gardens, every aspect of Accelerate enabled me to learn. In terms of my future plans, I hope to finish my Part 1 in Nottingham and eventually return to The Bartlett for Part 2, and from there eventually become a qualified RIBA architect after Part 3. I also hope to explore my love for content creation in my architectural design, and inspire many others in the future. Robinson Sivalingam is 19 years old, originally from London and currently in the second year of Part 1 at the University of Nottingham.

To find out more about the Accelerate programme and how you can get involved, contact Siraaj Mitha at Open City siraaj@open-city.org.uk 21

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Slow steps in the move to gender parity The LI annual conference in Sheffield which took place in 2016 addressed the challenges facing women in landscape architecture. Romy Rawlings was a keynote speaker at the conference and now reviews progress since that date. Romy Rawlings

Vestre

When I first spoke about gender parity at the LI’s conference in 2016, little did I know what lay ahead! Since then, the LI has been more focussed than ever before on many areas around Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), including the gender (im)balance in our profession at higher levels. I chaired the LI’s D&I working group for a few years, have spoken at many events (including a closed session at the House of Lords on women in construction), and continue to point out inequality wherever I come across it, as much as it grates with many people, and I find it exhausting at times! Following a first interview at this same conference in Sheffield over 5 years ago, I was subsequently employed by Vestre, a Norwegian company with strongly Scandinavian ideals (which has perhaps been the biggest eye opener of all!). During that session, I highlighted the day-to-day challenges experienced by many women in the landscape profession: for instance, finding usable toilets and PPE that fits during site visits, and the much greater issue of the systemic problems of women failing to attain senior positions within many practices. I painted a picture of a profession that welcomed women at the early stages of their careers, but 22

which made little effort to retain their expertise and skills beyond mid-career. Much of the feedback over the intervening years has both surprised and horrified me. There are many women who (thankfully) haven’t personally encountered any such difficulties and don’t understand why the topic even needs to be raised. There are others who, through gritted teeth and tears, have described truly awful examples of injustice and stifled career progression. What I’ve learned – and to be honest, always suspected – is that the gender imbalance seems intrinsically linked to motherhood as opposed to gender alone. Certainly not always, but the more I hear and read, the stronger the link appears as women hit their thirties and forties, and parenting brings immense challenges in terms of childcare costs and availability. On this subject, if you haven’t already, please read ‘Pregnant Then Screwed’1 by Joeli Brearley (whether you’re a parent or not, male or female, employee or employer). I’m beginning to believe that motherhood is the single greatest barrier to gender equality and, until several aspects around this are addressed, we will continue to see what is generally described as glacial improvement in the sphere of women’s equality in the workplace. Shortly after that first discussion in Sheffield, there were subsequently five areas of inequality identified in the LI’s member survey of 2017, of which gender equality was one (there’s another member survey planned and it will be interesting to make direct comparisons across the data from five years go). The other areas require

attention, and some (for instance issues facing black staff, those from minority communities and members with disabilities, disability) could be argued to be more pressing. Each requires a different approach if we’re to become a truly inclusive organisation. In terms of the gender balance, university entry to landscape courses is skewed in favour of women with more entering the profession than

1. Pregnant then Screwed - The Truth About the Motherhood Penalty and How to Fix It by Joeli Brearly.

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2. Making Space - Women and the Man-Made Environment by Matrix. Making Space is a pioneering work first published in 1984 which challenges readers to look at how the built environment impacts on women’s lives. It exposes the sexist assumptions on gender and sexuality that have a fundamental impact on the way buildings are designed and our cities are planned. The new edition comes with a new introduction examining the context, process and legacy of Making Space written by leading feminists in architecture. Published by Verso in March 2022. © Verso

1 https:// pregnantthenscrewed. com/ 2 https://www. landscapeinstitute.org/ blog/female-equalityuk-landscape/

men at this stage. There’s no problem attracting women into the profession compared with, say, engineering courses, where female students are at around 14%. For salaries up to £50,000, the profession is pretty much at parity and younger women (particularly those without children) may well encounter no issues in the workplace. However, for those earning over £50,000, the situation declines and there are more than twice the number of men than women in this salary band. If you’re female and looking to earn more than £100,000, quite frankly I wish you luck (one woman vs 15 men in the survey). Some specific research carried out by Robert Holden into practice leadership and representation in our largest landscape businesses was pretty horrifying, and you can read on the LI blog.2 There are many reasons for this, and the biggest impacts are around gender equality at home, where the bulk of childcare (and often housework etc.) is carried out by mothers. It’s often not the case that men don’t want a greater stake in childcare, but they’re not supported in taking time off since UK paternity leave is very limited and sometimes frowned upon! If women do choose to work, even part time, childcare costs are exorbitant (the second most expensive globally) and often mothers, particularly if they choose/need to work part time or more flexibly, are seen as uncommitted and can’t be relied upon in more demanding – and better paid – roles.

I’m convinced that this stage of promotion coincides precisely with the stage of a woman’s life where she’s most likely to have young children, and it’s at that point where things go downhill.

For this reason, we lose skilled and much needed women from the profession year on year, yet we’re facing a serious skills shortage but still allowing this consistent leaching of talented women from our sector. Contrast this with Scandinavia and you soon see the reasons for those countries enjoying greater gender equality, higher productivity/ GDP, and a better work life balance. In Sweden for instance, childcare costs are capped at £120/ month (compared to an average £600 in the UK) and are heavily state subsidised because the benefits to the entire economy are well understood. It’s frowned upon for men not to take their full paternity leave (up to 3 months), and flexible hours allow both parents to drop off and collect children, which is generally shared evenly by both parents. Consider this: Norway’s wealth is deemed to be down to their natural gas and oil reserves. In fact, that’s responsible for 14% of their GDP. 86% is put down to their high employment rates where everyone contributes to society on an equal basis. Over the last five years, there has been much conversation around gender equal cities, and what cities would look like if they were designed by women/for children, etc. It’s generally agreed that this would make for better places for everyone, but we simply don’t have enough women in senior positions to achieve this more broadly. I’ve taken part in several of these sessions and they’re very encouraging; however, it’s still commonplace to see panels made up of only men, and women in more senior positions often remain 1. almost invisible.

So, overall, I would say the last five years have brought some really promising improvements and the conversation has opened up considerably, with recognition from many quarters that they could do better. But we continue to battle unconscious (and conscious) bias in the workplace, and women need support from decision makers to become more visible, be seen as role models at all levels, and lead in senior roles. What could you do to make a difference? Romy Rawlings is commercial director of Vestre, a chartered member of the Landscape Institute and a former honorary secretary of the LI.

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Looking at inclusion in London

1. Landscape near the River Thames

A student midway through their Master’s course in Landscape Architecture at UCL reflects on the accessibility of the capital.

2. View from the top of Greenwich Park © Zhe Ji

Zhe Ji

UCL

I came to London for the first time last September. With curiosity, I went out for a walk almost every day after class to explore the city. Many times I walked for over an hour without it feeling boring or monotonous – the combination of old and new in London’s historic urban environments is appealing. Some old buildings retained their original facades, with interior functions changed. Specifically in the area of Bank, a few newly constructed buildings are standing among the historical architecture and, although relatively modern on their own, do not look out of place overall. The streets of London are relatively narrow and constantly change their orientations. The materials on the ground are not set in stone – 2. sometimes smooth concrete at other 24

times uneven bricks. As a newcomer to London, the process of going up and down and changing directions continuously along the way can be a bit disorienting, but the whole process of exploration can be enjoyable. When the long-awaited sunlight seeps through the leaves of the trees along the roadside, when the pigeons fly overhead, when the wind near the Thames touches my face, I can always feel the significance of landscape to a city and human well-being. On my first visit to Greenwich, looking towards Canary Wharf with my feet on the meridian, the landscape of the Greenwich Park really impressed me. To design a park during my undergraduate course, we normally make spatial division first based on different functional demands. However, the undefined lawns in the Greenwich Park can also attract many people to enjoy nature and decide for themselves what they can do there. Coincidentally, my first design project at UCL was also a park design. Initially, I did very complex functional planning, but then my tutor suggested that I pay more attention to designing the rivers, roads, topography, and plantings in the park.

As an inclusive city, London is already user-friendly in many aspects, but I wonder whether the green spaces could give more care to people with disabilities. Jade Eco Park, located in Taichong, China, incorporates a computational fluid dynamics model, using humidity, temperature, and many indicators to design the whole space. This project minimises the visual impact to the greatest extent, allowing people to experience the difference between various areas with their eyes closed. Visually impaired people may feel more welcomed when everyone in the park enjoys nature without sight. Therefore, the use of multi-sensory may contribute to a more inclusive landscape design in the future. Zhe Ji is a student studying on the MLA Landscape Architecture at UCL. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in Urban and Rural Planning in Hebei University of Technology in China.

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1. The work in Einseidler Park, Vienna showed girls used the park more when hammocks were installed. © Isabel Fox & Harry Groom/ Make Space for Girls

Making Space for Girls 1.

A new charity is challenging park designers, councils and managers to create better parks and remove the barriers which prevent teenage girls from using public spaces designed for young people. Susannah Walker

Making Space for Girls

Sometimes discrimination hides in plain sight, impossible to see until it’s pointed out, and then impossible to ignore. As a feminist and the mother of a teenage girl, I’d never even noticed the way that park spaces catered almost entirely for teenage boys. But when it was pointed out to me, I was furious. The problem is set out in all too many play and green space strategies, which define facilities for teenagers as being ‘MUGAs, skate parks and BMX tracks. All of these are almost entirely used by boys. Which isn’t to say that girls don’t want to play football or skateboard, but for a whole heap of reasons, including their design and the behaviour of the boys who do use them, they don’t often get a look in.

Make Space for Girls was founded not just out of a burning sense of injustice, but because the current state of affairs goes against the law. Co-founder Imogen Clark, a solicitor for many years, pointed out that under the Public Sector Equality Duty, any public body must proactively consider how any decisions they make may impact on disadvantaged groups, and how to redress those inequalities. We had identified clear-cut discrimination, and councils were legally required to consider it. On that basis, we had a campaign, and Make Space for Girls – after quite a bit of research – came into being. We are a charity focussed on the fact that parks and other public spaces need to be designed with teenage girls in mind. This isn’t about painting things pink or telling girls to be more confident. We want landscape architects, councils, developers and equipment manufacturers to plan teenage spaces which are more creative and inclusive, and so work for everyone - including the very many teenage boys for whom the current provision isn’t working either.

This matters for a whole host of other reasons apart from just the law. Inactivity in teenage girls is a serious health problem, with only 10% getting the recommended 60 minutes of activity a day, but somehow this is never connected with the fact that they have nothing to be active on. Their mental health is worse than that of boys, and it’s proven that going out into green spaces improves wellbeing. Teenage girls also have a right to play. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child includes everyone under the age of 18, but older girls are often forgotten. One problem is that teenage play, to adults, often looks like ‘loitering’ or ‘hanging around’, something to be stamped out rather than encouraged. There’s also a fundamental question of social justice. To be in public space is to be part of the community, but all too often our places tell girls that they are not welcome, that they should be at home instead. “And that’s something they unfortunately might interpret as a lesson for life.” 25

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All of which could be depressing. But the good news is that change is possible and it’s already proven that design can make a difference to how girls and young women experience public spaces. In particular, work in Vienna, Malmö and Barcelona has highlighted that planning with them in mind can achieve results. The flagship example for this, as it is for every kind of gender mainstreaming in planning, is Vienna. Einseidler Park was a large urban space with play areas, but the researchers noticed that girls were passing through without ever lingering to play. So they put in some small interventions – hammocks and wooden structures which could be seating or performance areas – and the girls started to use the park more. The researchers talked to the girls about what the issues were and then altered 1 space. In particular the MUGA the 26

was made much less enclosed, with more entrances and one wall of fencing separated off, so that it felt safer for the girls. The pitch area was also divided into two by a multi-use concrete structure so that a game of football didn’t have to dominate the entire space. Girls used the space more, and stayed for longer. Rösens Rodda Matta in Malmö took a different approach, creating a small urban park as a co-design project with a group of girls. The resulting space contained a stage, a climbing wall and exercise bars, and was also broken up into a number of different areas to prevent one group territorialising the space. From these projects and others, it’s possible to create a set of guidelines which can make parks and other public spaces more welcoming to teenage girls. These would include better lighting and public toilets, a

range of smaller spaces, social seating, exercise bars and swings. They’d cover design issues which improve safety such as better lighting, good sightlines, making sure paths had no dead-ends and putting facilities for teenage girls in well-frequented areas. These are all great and important, but even so they wouldn’t be our number one recommendation. Because the most important thing we need to do to improve inclusivity in our parks is to talk to the teenage girls themselves. This matters for so many reasons. All parks are different and so are the needs of their users. You could build the most perfect path, but if they have to cross a dual carriageway then use a dodgy underpass to get there, it’s a waste of money. But teenage girls are experts in their local areas – they know where’s safe and where to avoid; they know what they like and how it could be made better. All we need to do is speak to them. It’s a relatively easy starting point, but it’s one that could change everything. In the course of writing this article, I’ve learned that the landscape profession is gender equal, which gives me real hope that people will see the problem and take any opportunities they have to make change happen. And girls want change to happen too – when Girlguiding surveyed its members, 82% thought that girls should be more involved in the design of parks and public spaces. Now that the discrimination has been brought out into the daylight, it’s much easier to counteract it, and I’m really confident that this is going to happen for girls in parks and public spaces, and soon.

Teenage girls are experts in their local areas – they know where’s safe and where to avoid; they know what they like and how it could be made better

2. “Somewhere to meet with friends, to be active or just be, to feel comfortable, and like I belong.” © Isabel Fox & Harry Groom/ Make Space for Girls

3. A park that welcomes teenage girls to play © Isabel Fox & Harry Groom/ Make Space for Girls

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4. Dividing up a MUGA and removing the fencing makes the space more welcoming © Isabel Fox & Harry Groom/ Make Space for Girls

What is the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED)? The PSED is a series of legal obligations that public bodies (including local authorities) must comply with in decision making. The purpose of the PSED can be summarised as creating “a culture change so that promoting equality becomes part of public bodies’ core business”1. The PSED in its current form has been in place for over ten years. But when we talk about parks to councils, planners, designers, play professionals and academics, there is a low level of awareness of PSED and confusion about what it means in practice.

What does the PSED require local authorities to do? The PSED requires local authorities to consider proactively the need to: – eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other unlawful discrimination – advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not; removing/reducing disadvantage, meeting differing needs, and encouraging people to participate in activities where their participation is low – foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

Why is the PSED relevant to the work of Make Space for Girls?

Susannah Walker is a design historian, author and former TV producer.

Where a local authority’s current facilities for teenagers (skate parks, fenced pitches, BMX tracks) are dominated by boys and/or there is low participation in the park by girls, girls are disadvantaged. The PSED requires local authorities to consider proactively the need to reduce this disadvantage and encourage greater participation.

Isn’t complying with the PSED just box ticking? No: the need to consider proactively reducing disadvantage and encouraging participation is not about ticking boxes. When councils are taking decisions that relate to their parks, they must exercise the PSED in substance, with rigour and with an open mind. This must be done before the decision is made, not afterwards. If local authorities applied the PSED to their decisions on parks in substance, with rigour and an open mind, they would produce more inclusive parks. Fact.

What are “protected characteristics”?

1 Illien, N., 2021. How Vienna built a gender equal city. https://www.bbc. com/travel/ article/20210524how-vienna-built-agender-equal-city

The PSED protects people by recognising that there are personal characteristics which can lead to discrimination/disadvantage within society. Sex (male/female) is a “protected characteristic”. Being a dog walker, a footballer, a skateboarder or a cyclist is not. But far too often parks give priority to meeting the needs of these groups (where there is no legal obligation to do so) and don’t think about the needs of teenage girls (where there is).

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Aberfeldy – a case study of innovative engagement with young people In East London, young people are changing how design professionals approach regeneration. Dinah Bornat and Andrew Harland ZCD architects and LDA Design

At Aberfeldy Village, a joint venture between Poplar HARCA (Housing and Regeneration Community Association) and Ecoworld, community engagement over the new masterplan started with 100 pupils at local schools. A radical departure, given that teenagers rarely even feature in visualisations for new development.

The existing Aberfeldy estate is boxed in between two busy main roads, the A12 and A13, and the River Lea. Regeneration will provide 1,500 new homes. The pupils were asked to write a manifesto for the neighbourhood, to help them critique the masterplan as it developed. They wanted a friendly place, one that would be easy to get around and give them more freedom. They wanted it to be green, and to work for all ages. Engagement is being led by ZCD Architects, working closely with the design team: LDA Design, Levitt Bernstein Architects and Morris and Company. Local walking tours, for both the primary school children and the

secondary school pupils, provided the design team with insight into their everyday lives. The young people said that given the chance they often preferred to be outside with friends rather than on screens, but a strong narrative emerged around safety. The ‘tunnels’ beneath the dual carriageway are strongly disliked, and some pupils are driven the short distance to school because of them. While many would like to cycle to school, only one person did. Even spaces which were liked during the day become unwelcoming after dark, as early as 4pm in the winter. This engagement has directly shaped design thinking. The walking tour showed that the young people stayed far closer to home than expected, which means that provision for them needs to be spread throughout the public realm, and they need inviting and safe circuits for walking and cycling to encourage them to explore and be more connected to their neighbourhoods. Estate regeneration will see the concrete vehicle underpass under the A12 transformed by colour and light and become a car-free route for pedestrians and cyclists which connects to green spaces. It will be a destination and landmark with social hang-out terraces, play areas, and a climbing wall, and be enlivened by a café, a bike workshop and workspaces.

1. Students from Langdon Park secondary school on walking tour of Aberfeldy © Thomas Graham

2. Students from Langdon Park secondary school completing worksheets in tunnel/ underpass, Poplar © Thomas Graham

3. Voice Opportunity Power - A toolkit to involve young people in the making and managing of the neighbourhood

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Formal play informs the masterplan, with good provision for teenagers, such as terraces for socialising which overlook spaces for activities like bouldering and parkour. Girls wanted integrated tables and seating in squares and parks, and there will be colourful sculptural seating planters in the high street. Urban environments rarely make it comfortable for teenage girls to take exercise, and so at Aberfeldy Village, the cardio gym equipment they prefer is separate from the strength bars. Girls also generally want to be less visible when exercising, though not hidden, so planting gives partial enclosure. Some cardio equipment has integrated seating for sociable use. The young people quickly ‘read’ good design on walking tours, commenting that courtyards and pedestrianised streets felt “like a place where you would trust your neighbours”. Along a new car-free spine which runs north to south, front doors will be paired with low walls for

Word has spread that student voices and views are powerful and forward thinking. seating to create communal spaces. Aberfeldy Village stands out because too often children and young people are ignored in conversations around local planning. Despite them often knowing their own areas like the backs of their hands, as one Year 9 pupil pointed out. The deputy head teacher of the secondary school involved has reported that now other members of the local community are consulting the students on new plans. “Word has spread that student voices and views are powerful and forward thinking.” Practical guidance is already available through an excellent toolkit, ‘Voice Opportunity Power’. All over the country, developers and community groups need to start giving young people a voice in debates about how their neighbourhoods might be changing.

Dinah Bornat of ZCD Architects led the Aberfeldy youth engagement programme. She is an expert in child friendly cities and a Design Advocate for the Mayor of London. Andrew Harland is a director at LDA Design, the landscape architects for Aberfeldy Village, and believes that placemaking starts with the people who will use the place. 29

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

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1. If we are to create future-proof cities, it is of vital importance to bring greenery back to our urban spaces. Bricks and mortar have been taking over for many years, but it has become clear that more green space benefits people in various ways. Streetlife is contributing to the greening of cities by adding mobile benches with greenery to pavements and breaking up stretches of concrete with Green Tree Isles.

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Queer Spaces An ‘atlas’ of queer spaces is due to be published in May this year. The authors explain why this is a guide for all designers.

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1. Homomonument on the Westermarkt, 2008 © City Archives Amsterdam

2. One of the diamond windows at A la Ronde, Devon © National Trust Images/ James Dobson

Adam Nathaniel Furman and Joshua Mardell Queer Spaces

It hopes to tangibly unify seemingly disparate, even ostensibly incommensurate strands of the queer coalition.

Queer Spaces is an image-rich book of stories that celebrates the plurality of queer life throughout time and place – stories enacted through spaces. While aimed at the queer community and general public as a whole, it hopes to be an essential reference point for designers. As a limpid and jargonfree book for practitioners who operate in a primarily visual way, it conspicuously fills a lacuna in the historiography and the market. The book is aimed to help designers find a recognisable queer pedigree through provision of an accessible history of queer themes past and present: concrete examples, simply explained. We refer to the book as an “atlas” as it covers many parts of the world, but it is designed to be transnational and transgeographical: an opportunity to map unexpected connections and continuities across places and typologies. It hopes to tangibly unify seemingly disparate, even ostensibly incommensurate strands of the queer coalition. And furthermore, it seeks to cut across class boundaries to reclaim non-elite queer experiences; queer history itself has tended to prioritise upper and middle-class lives who have left more evidence on the landscape. The book, appropriately, is in itself informed by a queer approach. We have resolutely sought to move away from binaries to offer as broad a spectrum of queer stories as possible. Seemingly disparate built environment spheres, from landscape design, to interior design, to architecture, become unified. After all, stories of queer individuals living their lives and creating their own spaces necessarily cut across professional demarcations. As a means of maintaining such diversity and fluidity, we have broken the book down into a series of inclusive scales

from ‘domestic’ to ‘communal’ to ‘public’, and in order to safeguard those singularities and specificities, we invited 45 extraordinary international authors to offer their own unique perspectives across almost 100 vignettes, and to let their own voices sing. The book foregrounds and makes manifest the centrality of landscape to queer experience. For instance, the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940), whose literature was so informed by local topography, created an almost fictive domestic landscape in Mårbacka, Värmland by building a household for a woman who loved women that subtly satirised the hegemonic masculinity traditionally built into the Swedish domestic environment at the time. A further case in point is the voyage of the architect Doron Von Beider through unexpected landscapes and sites in 1980s and ‘90s Israel, poignantly charted in the book, each of which

Architectural historian Freya Gowrley describes A la Ronde, a distinctive sixteen-sided Georgian cottage orné, home to the cousins Jane and Mary Parminter (1750-1811, and 1767-1849, respectively), who appropriated the local landscape – from shells, to sand, to seaweed – to create an idiosyncratic decorative domesticity akin to a grotto. Jane and Mary lived together at A la Ronde from around 1796 until Jane’s death in 1811 (after which Mary lived there alone). Utilising materials collected from the nature that surrounded them, they transformed the detritus of the beach and countryside, reformulating it to convey their close relationship with the landscape and locale of Devon. Mary’s will shows how the Parminters viewed their decoration and cultivation of the homosocial space of A la Ronde. It stipulates that only a female inheritor could claim ownership of the property. Entrance into marriage, making alterations, and failure to maintain the house and gardens could all cause disinheritance. The construction, decoration, and

became queered through action and experience. Aterro do Flamengo, built in 1965, with its thick vegetation and dimly-lit spaces, has long been an attractive safe space for Rio’s queer society (and other marginalised groups) to find belonging in. At a broader scale, the Mediterranean landscape itself, with its ancient architecture, is explored in the book as a setting of homoerotic fantasy and boyish beauty to generations of homosexual expatriates in nineteenth and twentieth-century Sicily. Our book ends with a beautiful concluding celebration of queer life: the Comparsa Drag collective of Buenos Aires, whose performative partying seeks to redistribute queer pleasure through the metropolitan landscape. In what follows, several Queer Spaces authors talk about four further vignettes from the book, in which landscape and queer identity are integrally intertwined.

projected legacy of A la Ronde was therefore an essential aspect of the Parminters’ creation of an explicitly gendered space, a home where feminine accomplishment could flourish, sustained and protected throughout the succeeding centuries. The will invites us to consider the inheritance of the house as a form of distinctively female and queer heirlooming.

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Urbanist and LGBTQIA+ activist Ruhul Abdin examines queer desire as it unravels in the penumbra of anonymity created by Bokultola (Spanish cherry) trees in an unnamed park (XXX) in central Dhaka. XXX offers the possibility of a queered public space right in the very heart of Dhaka, even one that exists precariously and always with the spectre of extreme risk to those who inhabit it. There are some spaces in the public realm in the city where queerness can flourish in the semi-dark, such as those areas occupied by sex workers, but most of them are now beginning to be lost. As the city’s hidden queer geography is changing, and shrinking, XXX stands as testament to the enduring capacity of alternative sexualities being able to coexist, and even thrive, in the most unexpected of urban situations.

Finally, Jeroen van Dijk of the Bishopsgate Institute, London, describes the Homomonument: three triangles of radiant Rosa Porino granite that define a site of queer memorialisation on the bank of the Keizersgracht canal in central Amsterdam.

3. Access is through hidden in-between zones of varying density vegetation © Eusebio Penha

4. Homomonument on the Westermarkt, 2008 © City Archives Amsterdam

5. Flowers on the “triangle of remembrance” of the Homomonument on the Westermarkt, 1997 © City Archives Amsterdam

Architect and sociologist Sergio Galaz Garcia examines an Arcadia for cruising: Caminito Verde, or the Little Green Road, in Mexico City. A pedregal: a unique landscape of endemic vegetation and volcanic rocks chiselled by eruptions, temperate weather, and the pouring of summer rains, fills vast interstices in between the many buildings of the Ciudad Universitaria (CU). Inside this scenery is a garden of earthly delights. This is the Caminito Verde,

People have been bringing flowers to the Homomonument every day since it was erected in 1987. A tangible space for memory, it consists of three triangles, which together form a larger triangle, connected by granite lines cutting through the streets and pavement, making the monument a part of the city’s very fabric and identity. It memorialises homosexual victims who were persecuted during Nazi occupation because of their sexuality, making it the first queer memorial of its kind in the world. Each triangle symbolises a different aspect of queer memory. That extending over one of the city’s canals symbolises the present. The triangle on street level symbolises the oppression and homophobic violence queer people faced in the past. The triangle that rises from street level symbolises the future. It serves as a meeting place for people to come together.

an area enabled, provoked, and inspired by CU’s unique spatial quality, and used by both students and visitors to gaze at others, and if so preferred, engage in bodily intercourse with one another. It is as public as it is private. It is secluded, hidden from those for whom it should remain invisible, but also porous for those looking to enter it, accessible to those who know.

Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places & Stories (RIBA Publishing) edited by Adam Nathaniel Furman and Joshua Mardell will be published on 1 May and is available to pre-order from the RIBA Bookshop: https://www.ribabooks.com/ Queer-Spaces-An-Atlasof-LGBTQIA-Places-andStories_9781914124211#

Adam Nathaniel Furman is an artist and designer who trained in architecture, and who works in spatial design and art of all scales from video and prints, to largescale public artworks, architecture, architecturally integrated ornament, as well as products, furniture, interiors, publishing and academia. Joshua Mardell is an architectural historian, and an Associate Lecturer at the Department of History of Art, University of York.

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1. From ‘Sharing the Beautiful Everyday Journey’ © DSDHA

Not all cyclists are Lycra-clad ironmen: A brief introduction to human-centred infrastructure design

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Deborah Saunt, co-founder of the DSDHA practice and contributing author to a 2018 report on approaches to cycling in the capital,reflects on progress for creating cycling infrastructure that meets the diverse requirements of all those who could enjoy it. Deborah Saunt

DSDHA

Climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemic; our planet is experiencing a raft of entwined social and environmental crises, in which our cities, mobility and inclusivity are all inextricably linked. Within this complex, bicycle travel has consistently been heralded as a vehicle of personal, urban and planetary health – and at no point in recent history has the need for public spaces that encourage walking, cycling, and the use of low-carbon public transport been more widely recognised. But how do we implement the required cycling infrastructure justly in the crowded, ever-changing city of London, where lack of space demands some form of sharing between a multitude of road users with conflicting needs? We see the role of the urban designer as one that actively engages with such challenges, and we are constantly developing relevant and accessible methodologies for designing infrastructures which can help to improve the experience of London’s public realm for all users, which we outlined in our report. Entitled ‘Sharing the Beautiful Everyday Journey’, the report is a result of a two-year research Fellowship in the Built Environment, awarded by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 18511. It seeks to improve the quality of our public spaces, mitigate the current tensions and make cycling (and walking) in London a more pleasurable and accessible mode of transport: one open to people of different ages 36

and ability, rather than a specialism reserved for a (mostly male, mostly Lycra-wearing) few. Since the report was written just before the pandemic, COVID-19 has driven changes in planning policy and regulation, which has led to a considerable amount of investment in cycling infrastructure by the Mayor of London. Major – if temporary – alterations to road layouts which encourage active travel have been introduced with previously unimaginable speeds and scale: more than 100km of cycle routes have been delivered or are under construction since the pandemic began, while infrastructure for 160 Low Traffic Neighbourhoods was introduced across the city in 2020 alone. Between April and June 2020, almost half of all journeys in the capital were made by walking or cycling, a rise of 29% with pre-pandemic levels, and recent figures published by Travel for London also indicate that the people cycling in London are more diverse than ever:

Londoners from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities were not significantly less likely to have cycled over the past 12 months than white Londoners a recent report claimed, with 27% of the population as a whole having made a journey by bike, compared to 24% of Black people, 25% of Asian people, and 31% from mixed backgrounds. Undoubtedly then, elements of the cycling infrastructure landscape 1. have clearly changed, and attempts at

provision for the increasingly diverse demographic of people using bikes must be recognised. However, as critical thinkers and designers, we must be asking whether the uptick in infrastructure does indeed serve the needs of such a diverse set of road users. The fact that over the same period there has continued to be a significant number of deaths resulting from collisions between vehicles and cyclists, the most notorious of these being at the infamously deadly junction between Southampton Row and Holborn, would suggest that inclusivity, mobility and public realm experience continue to elude planners in search of a truly harmonised infrastructure network. We argue that creating cycling infrastructure in our dense cities that is inclusive to all requires a paradigm shift, away from modernist ideals of control, segregation and management delivered by generic engineered solutions, towards a human-centred, intersectional perspective rooted in codesign. It is only when the embodied experience of all road users is taken into account that they can be expected to be aware of, accountable to, and respectful of each other on their respective journeys. It is only then that such journeys will be beautiful. Through our research, which focused on junctions in London of varying typologies where conflict typically arises, we identified characteristics of the nine most common types of cyclist: Lightning Lycra; Charging Courier; Hurrying Hipster; Everyday Commuter; Multi-Modal Commuter; Occasional Commuter; Pedalling Parent; Basket Biker; Slow Sightseer. But as well as this matrix of bicycle riders, at any one junction could be car drivers, taxis, HGVs, pedestrians, motorcyclists and new forms of micro mobility such as scooters and electric bikes too. Each of their experiences and decisionmaking cues must be accounted

1 h ttps://dsdha.heroku app.com/research/ 5d10feed48b247001 6dc5981/Sharing-the -Beautiful-EverydayJourney

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Segregation and overmanagement of ‘flows’ of traffic types typically causes road users to psychologically distance themselves from other road users and grow protective of ‘their’ space

2. Examining a route through Hackney © DSDHA

for, from surface type, to possible obstructions and paths of least resistance. Depending on the situation and location, each of the nine types of cyclists – as well as all other road users – will encounter their environment, and each other, differently. Street design must therefore work to facilitate an environment of shared, egalitarian space and empathetic toleration. Our research shows that segregation and over-management of ‘flows’ of traffic types typically causes road users to psychologically distance themselves from other road users and grow protective of ‘their’ space, making everyone at higher risk of collision, conflict and bad experiences at the points where their paths cross; a junction, for example. In practice, these issues manifest through segregated cycles lanes, which tend to homogenise user speeds, and can favour more aggressive, faster cyclists while undermining the confidence of less experienced riders and pedestrians. Meanwhile, motorists can take a position of perceived superiority, thinking that cyclists should only occupy the infrastructure provided for them, and Quietways – the supposedly ‘quiet’ network of lesser-populated cycle routes – tend to be routed away from the capital’s main sites, and thus become dominated by ‘Charging Couriers’ and ‘Everyday Commuters’

(so not so quiet after all), while also excluding cyclists from key routes via city landmarks and tourist attractions which may also feel less safe. Regardless of the number of new kilometres of cycle lanes that have been built, we argue that if they are built according to the same top-down, overly segregated approach to cycling infrastructure that isn’t sufficiently designed for its context or its users, then they will continue to have exclusionary traits, and serve only a few. Worse still, with an increasingly diverse number of societal groups now choosing to cycle, it is also an increasingly disproportionate few, and conflict sites between road users will continue to proliferate. We must therefore design in such a way that reduces the abruptness of these conflict points, or better still, eliminates them. Various developments must be commended for doing this; Tottenham Court Road now offers cyclists a network of safer streets rather than specific cycle lanes, and the temporary cycle wands installed in the City of London create safer journeys for cyclists and pedestrians without over formalising their separation from other road users, for example. The continued success of this transformation will be reliant on a tactical, human-centred, collaborative design process. In some of our more recent, post-

pandemic projects on inclusivity and the public realm, we have collaborated with Lambeth London Borough Council to give school students an active design voice in the implementation of a Low Traffic Neighbourhood in Brixton. Following successful online teamwork, training and competition engagement, the site now has 50% less vehicle traffic, 50% more cycling, and has codesign at its core. We’re also currently working with Cross River Partnership on another research project focusing on highways and footways inclusivity and accessibility, which uses methodologies first developed in our ‘Sharing the Beautiful Everyday Journey’ cycling toolkit, and have recently received RIBA funding for another ongoing enquiry, ‘Spatial Justice’. Adding to our growing portfolio on social justice and the city, this project aims to understand the relationship between architecture, the built environment, climate crisis, and social inequality. What all of this work shares is a common understanding that whether in relation to street design, mobility, social experience, climate, or pandemic, it is only through the prism of place-led intersectionality that spatial justice can be sought. By codesigning from a human perspective, not only do we give ourselves the potential to uncover inequities, but we also develop a design toolkit which provides an opportunity to redress them. Whether for journeys by bike, or journeys through life, humancentred co-design will continue to navigate the way.

Deborah Saunt is a co-founder and Director of DSDHA, an architecture, urban design and spatial research practice based in London, whose spatial strategies include the public realm framework for the West End Project and the reimagining of Tottenham Court Road, the redesign of the Royal Albert Hall public realm – building on a Research Fellowship in the Built Environment of Albertopolis from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 – and a new park for the City of London, built over the tracks of Liverpool Street Station. 37

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Intersectionality in the design of landscape Preventing one dominant voice dictating design approaches and listening to a variety of users often gets a better result for everyone.

Naomi Maguire

University of Greenwich

Although landscape architecture as an industry appears to have a fairly equal distribution of men and women, numbers alone are not enough to ensure equality. The crossover into many industries including construction and architecture, which can be difficult for women (many of the decisionmakers and policy-makers in our world are men), means that the voices of women are not being heard when making good design decisions. It is apparent that the single most effective way to create a world that is safe and equal for women is to fully embrace intersectionality. By taking many voices and experiences into account, including those of different ages, abilities, genders, sexualities and ethnicities, the experience of landscapes and public spaces will be made better for everyone. 97% of women have experienced sexual harassment, and many incidents happen in public. Women do not have the same experience of landscape as men do, and the inequality is apparent. While a man may experience a park as ‘peaceful’ and ‘quiet’, many women will avoid landscapes like this, particularly after dark, because they feel unsafe. Even in the street, lone women feel unsafe after dark. Much of the discomfort of women in public 38

spaces is to do with a feeling of safety – but a perception. or a fear, is very hard to measure. The effect on women of being harassed in public spaces cannot be overstated and any woman out after dark knows that much of the space around her has not been designed with her in mind. Women often feel excluded from parts of the world they inhabit – and feel restricted even more outside of daylight hours: dark parks, dimly lit streets, hidden doorways, being invisible behind large shrubs, no obvious exit routes, far from any other person, isolated underpasses – are all design elements that contribute to feeling afraid. Their voices are not often being heard in the design process. Intersectionality brings about the most significant change in our designed spaces. When prams are accounted for, suddenly the space becomes more accessible for wheelchair users. When lighting improves to make women feel safe, elderly people are less susceptible to falls. The most important factor for equality within landscapes is to hear the voices of all the people who use the spaces, not just the dominant, default one. It is apparent that just focusing on ‘women’, is not enough – there are so many groups who experience inequality. People of colour, the trans community, those with disabilities, and many other groups have experienced layers of inequality that I have not. Levelling the field for one group should also level the field for all groups. Widening the access to equality, not narrowing or restricting it, is the answer. Vienna uses a strategy called ‘gender mainstreaming’ – a cross-

sectional approach that ensures every part of government considers gender equality. Most of the city, and the whole of their public transport system, is accessible by wheelchair. Main pathways are straight, if possible, and well lit, and even shrubbery is planted spaced apart to improve visibility. “When it is done well, it is invisible. A well-functioning public space, where no group is missing or struggling to use it, doesn’t stand out.”1 The importance of cross-party political support has been proven in Vienna in order to achieve equality: the gender mainstreaming strategy had political backing, from all political parties, and therefore the budget to make it happen. In the Seestadt Aspern development, most of the public spaces and streets are named after women. They found that raising the profile of women increases receptibility to gender equality by making a clear statement that women and their needs are being taken into account. They also have a ‘trans crosswalk’ (a street crosswalk in the Trans flag colours) which again has proven to raise awareness and therefore tolerance. When Aspern was building new spaces, not a single woman was invited to pitch. Female-only designers

1. To celebrate Transgender Awareness Week 2021, Camden Council has unveiled a four-way crossing at the junction of Tavistock Place and Marchmont Street. Thought to be only the second in the country, the crossing is painted in the international Transgender colours of blue, pink and white. © London Borough of Camden

1 Illien, N., 2021. How Vienna built a gender equal city. [Online] Available at: https:// www.bbc.com/ travel/ article/20210524how-vienna-built-agender-equal-city

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Women often feel excluded from parts of the world they inhabit – and feel restricted even more outside of daylight hours: dark parks, dimly lit streets, hidden doorways, being invisible behind large shrubs, no obvious exit routes, far from any other person, isolated underpasses

were then invited, and in doing so it was discovered that taking gender into consideration makes things better for everyone. They conducted surveys on which areas were anxiety-inducing and responded by improving street lighting, adding crossings to prioritise pedestrians, installing extra seating, widening pavements and making some areas without barriers. Doing all of this made life suddenly more accessible for prams, wheelchair users, elderly people, and women. A huge cross-section of society was now able to go out and participate, instead of staying at home. Sometimes certain groups feel safer being at home, than venturing out – for example maybe an elderly person can’t face the thought of navigating difficult paving, or a wheelchair-user knows a certain tube station won’t allow them access, or a woman can’t face the dark walk home from the bus stop. Perhaps they do go out, but leave early. What would it look like if these things didn’t even have to be considered? Groups who can often be especially targeted in public include ethnic and religious minorities, those with disabilities, and those who are queer and gender non-conforming. In Barcelona, Collective Point 6 is a collaboration of feminist designers of urban spaces, whose aim is to make Barcelona’s streets a place of equality. One of their strategies is ‘eyes on the street’ – being able to see and be

seen, not just with lighting, but the amount and context of people present. They have recommendations for design elements including the height of vegetation (1 metre max), and avoiding different ‘levels’ – which makes a place more inviting to women, and more accessible for prams and wheelchairs. By having a lively city centre, women, and other groups, feel safer. For example, measures could include visible windows, tables and seating in the street. Careful consideration of SuDS can also help, so that there are never flooded areas which make it difficult for pedestrians to access. Vienna also applies gender mainstreaming to their parks – in 1990 they noticed the number of girls in the park had decreased in the 10-13 year old bracket. They included girls in the design process, and with their participation they were able to reimagine parks in a way that made everyone feel safer and more included. Research shows that girls respond better to smaller sub-areas, so that they are not marginalised in a large communal area, where the boys often dominate. Sub-areas can be built in ways that don’t lead to isolation – rather than be surrounded by high walls, it could be surrounded by low planted beds, so there is always a clear line of sight. Benches can be placed facing each other to create small areas that encourage social contact.

Smart design elements can also include: – Signposts so the user always knows where they are and in which direction they are going – Places should invite all types of people to linger, not rush – More benches and seating, shaded rest spots, interesting things to look at – plants or sculptures, drinking fountains – Increase footfall – create an “active sidewalk ballet” (Jane Jacobs, 1961) – Spaces should be clean and welcoming. They should have obvious escape routes, no hidden dark alleys which cause fear, be well lit, be near public transport

If landscape architecture, and our culture as a whole, truly embraced intersectional equality, our landscapes would be more creative, innovative, forward-thinking and safe.

Naomi Maguire studied Horticulture at Threave Garden and RHS Wisley, and is currently in her final year of BA Landscape Architecture at the University of Greenwich. She also works as a writer and voice artist, specialising in mindfulness content.

2. Landscape scheme at Canary Wharf © Naomi Maguire

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Ramp Rage A founding member of Access Thanet, a disability campaign group in East Kent, looks at designing landscapes fit for disabled people.

Christine Tongue

Access Thanet

As you get older, gravity becomes your enemy. Your legs need help from sticks and wheels, and your surroundings take on a whole new aspect – often hostile! I have been dependent on a walking stick for many decades, but recently I’ve gained a new lease of life by acquiring a mobility scooter. But I’ve also become a Dalek — before they learned how to fly. Steps can stop me in my tracks. My town, Broadstairs, is a small Victorian seaside resort, with narrow streets, listed buildings, music festivals, and Dickens Week, where the whole town dresses in crinolines. 40

It’s beautiful. But for people with mobility problems, it’s a nightmare. In my scooter, I depend on dropped kerbs on the pavements to get me from one side of a road to another. But they’re in short supply, and in many streets, I have to depend on houses which have drives and dropped kerbs for their cars. With narrow pavements blocked by parked vehicles and A-boards, I’m constantly being forced into the road. In the centre of Broadstairs, on the other hand, is a kind of shared space, made of bricks, and with rounded kerbs marking the road edge. My scooter can easily move from pavement to road with only minimal shaking. Why aren’t all kerbs like that? Our main beach, Viking Bay, has a tiny harbour and all the facilities a day tripper could wish for. But not for us wheelies! To get to the beach there are steep slopes on two sides — a scary trip for me, as tipping backwards is1always a hazard on a scooter — but

if I were in a wheelchair, it would be nigh-on impossible. Down to the harbour is another steep slope. It’s all ancient stuff: the arch over the road is probably Tudor and can’t be widened, and so it narrows to a single track with no pavement. This means, again, I’m forced into the road with the traffic. Most drivers are nice and wait for me to go through, but why can’t priority be given to pedestrians and wheeldependents? (Speed bumps, by the way, give me bigger bumps than cars so that’s not the answer.)

1. Parking on narrow pavements and accross dropped kerbs. © Christine Tongue

2. Shared space in Broadstairs. Rounded dropped kerbs. © Christine Tongue

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3. Christine demonstrating outside Broadstairs seafront lift. © Christine Tongue

4. The step into Pierremont Hall. © Christine Tongue

5. Ramp consisting of two planks. © Christine Tongue

I’m forced into the road with the traffic. Most drivers are nice and wait for me to go through, but why can’t priority be given to pedestrians and wheeldependents?

There is a lift down to the main beach from the cliff top. Hurray! But frustratingly, it’s closed for most of the year! Boo! The local disability campaign group, Access Thanet (of which I’m a member), has campaigned for it to be open all year round, but the council who runs it is short of cash. There are so many good things on the main bay: a bar, tea kiosk, chips, sandwiches — but no access at all for people like me when the lift is closed. That’s a terrible shame because when it’s open it gets me to the beach where there’s a wooden walkway right across the beach which leads to … guess what? Some steps! Talk about unjoined-up thinking! Just getting into buildings around town has been a big campaign for Access Thanet. A group of us go round with a wheelchair user who asks “How do I get in?”. Sometimes it only needs a tiny homemade wooden ramp to allow wheels up a single step. But why are buildings still made with steps at all? What has recently infuriated me more than anything is our lovely town centrepiece, Pierremont Hall, built in 1785, where Princess Victoria spent her childhood hols. It’s now used for town council meetings, voting at elections, and local events, like craft fairs. To get in there is a choice of wide impressive steps (no handrail) or four smaller steep ones. Access Thanet campaigned for many years to get a decent ramp. What they used to have was a nightmare: two planks linked

together and balanced on the top step. It was wobbly and prone to collapse. I was so pleased to find that a long metal walkway had been installed which twists around the building from the car park to the hall’s patio thus bypassing the impressive flight of steps. Up I went on this elongated zigzag, only to find myself confronted by, surprise surprise, yet another huge step. Just to rub it in, there was even a notice: MIND THE STEP! A craft fair, mulled wine, and homemade cake was inside the hall. I was stuck outside. A staff member explained that no builder they’d asked so far wanted to take on the task of adapting a listed building for disabled use: “But we do have a ramp at the other side of the hall.”

“Is it two planks?” I asked. She nodded. “No thanks!” I said. As it is, there is a lot in Broadstairs for me and other disabled people to enjoy. But there’d be so much more if those people in charge of the world who are not living with a disability could imagine what would happen if their legs, too, were to pack up one day and what that would mean to them.

Christine Tongue is a disabled writer and film maker, and a founding member of Access Thanet, a disability campaign group in East Kent.

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Auditing Accessibility The City of London Corporation have been looking, as part of their 25-year Transport Strategy, to define an accessible street, identify and resolve conflicts between different street users, and create an audit tool, the City of London Street Accessibility Tool (CoLSAT). The Tool’s creator explains the approach. Ross Atkin

Trying to improve the accessibility of our streets is not a new idea. British street designers have been installing dropped kerbs since at least the 1930s, and tactile paving since the early 1990s. The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA, subsequently replaced by The

Mobility Impairment

Equality Act 2010) was passed in 1995 and made street accessibility a legal obligation in 2005. It is perhaps a surprise then that what an ‘accessible street’ actually looks like remains highly contested, with organisations representing disabled people often highlighting serious issues with both individual schemes and widely deployed design features. Back in 2005, when the DDA came into force, I was working for a street furniture company trying to design a compliant range of products. I became very frustrated with

Sensory Impairment

the rather abstract guidance that was available, as it contained no explanation of the user needs that should be met; there was no sense of the lived experiences of actual disabled people. A few years later, I jumped at the chance to collect this lived experience first-hand, working with The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design on a research project focused on shadowing blind and partially sighted people on journeys on UK streets. I have worked on six similar

Neurodiversity

Electric wheelchair user

Long cane user

Acquired neurological impairment

Manual wheelchair user

Guide dog user

Autism/Sensory -processing diversity

Mobility scooter user

Residual sight user

Developmental impairment

Walking aid user

Deaf, deaf or hard of hearing

Person with walking difficulties 1.

1. There are 13.9 million disabled people in the UK and every one of them has slightly different needs and preferences. The toolkit tried to cover this diversity by using 12 needs segments which capture the most significant differences in how disabled people interact with streets.

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2. This level crossing area provides advantages for this electric wheelchair user but could disadvantage the long cane user. Conversely the tactile paving deployed provides an advantage for the long cane user but can cause discomfort to the electric wheelchair user.

In order to ensure as complete a representation of the disabled community as possible within the limitations of the consultation, we identified 12 segments with a distinctive set of needs with respect to street design.

projects over the last twelve years, for government agencies, disability charities and highway authorities, following people with a wide range of impairments on journeys, documenting their experiences and feeding these back in ways I hoped were helpful to people making street design decisions. Each of these projects created a rich and informative body of insights and experience, but I realised that there were two major limitations to the approach I was taking. Firstly, arranging these insights in a long report full of quotes (or even a web-based ‘insight bank’ with video clips) was not particularly helpful to the intended end user – the person who is actually designing and does not have time to read through a 50 page report every time they have a question about accessibility. Secondly, by looking at how people with different impairments and mobility strategies experienced the same streets, it became clear that the needs of different groups of disabled people could sometimes be contradictory; improving accessibility for one group could make it worse for another. This meant that the ideal ‘accessible street’ was not straightforward to define. It turned out that The City of London Corporation had been grappling with some similar questions and were looking, as part of their 25year Transport Strategy, to define an accessible street, identify and resolve conflicts between different street users, and create an audit tool, the City of London Street Accessibility Tool (CoLSAT). In partnership with Urban Movement, I was appointed to undertake this work. We realised that it would be the audit tool that end users would be using, so we worked out its mechanics, and then worked backwards to design the research methodology that would collect the views and experiences of disabled people necessary to make it work. Conceptually, we started by acknowledging that, for many disabled people, accessibility and exclusion is not a binary situation, but is more of a spectrum; some features make things more difficult but can be tolerated,

whilst others might be negotiable once on a journey but deplete levels of energy and confidence so much that, if they are common, they end up putting the person off making the journey, and so exclude them. Being able to negotiate between these two situations was critical to working out the best trade-offs between the needs of different groups of disabled people, where they are in conflict. In order to ensure as complete

a representation of the disabled community as possible within the limitations of the consultation, we identified 12 segments (each representing a combination of impairment and mobility strategy) with a distinctive set of needs with respect to street design. These covered mobility and sensory impairments (in combination with different mobility aids) as well as neurodiversity. We worked with various London based 43

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disability networks and organisations to recruit three or four participants in each segment. The original plan was to shadow each participant on a route through the City that included examples of the different street types and design treatments for a range of street features present in the square mile. The pandemic ruled that out, so we created a methodology that could work remotely over video call. We showed each participant a video of the route; for those with sight loss, it was audio described and accompanied by a box of tactile models of the more complicated layouts and features (which we would post to them and then collect and sanitise before reusing). We asked participants to comment on anything along the route that would make things either easier or harder for them. We then worked through a list of all of the individual elements that make up a street (like footway width, street furniture, dropped kerbs, tactile paving, crossing type etc.) and all the possible configurations for each one. Each participant scored each configuration for each element on a scale of 0 to 4, from “I’m always

excluded by this no matter how I feel” to “This makes things easier for me relative to what I normally expect from a Central London Street”. All the information we collected ended up in a spreadsheet, with the interface for the audit tool as the first tab. A designer can model a section of street (either existent or on the drawing board) by setting the value of a series of drop-downs covering all the elements, and the likely impact of each choice on each of the 12 needs segments is shown as the score and a colour (white for neutral, green for positive and shades of red for degrees of negative). Hovering next to each colour/score brings up a pop up with direct quotes from participants in that segment explaining how and why they are impacted by that element. In this way, the designer is presented with the lived experience of the participants at the point it will be most useful to them. We have worked with City Corporation officers working on live design projects throughout the creation of the tool, and they are finding it useful as a way to flag up potential issues early in the design process, and identify what are likely to be good trade-offs where

P02

needs conflict. This should allow them to use the expertise of their access groups on the more complex issues, where their input can have the biggest impact. Even with our carefully designed methodology, we still were not able to resolve all conflicts around street accessibility. There is one element in the tool that cannot be configured in a way that does not identify a significant issue for people in at least one needs segment. However, for all the others there do seem to be design treatments that, at least for the people who participated in our research, genuinely do represent good compromises between different needs. The better we get at listening to the people who use our streets, the better we will get at finding those compromises. Ross Atkin is an independent designer and researcher based in London. He has a longstanding interest in the accessibility of the public realm and works on both research and design projects in this area for highway authorities, charities and manufacturers of streetscape products.

P03

P04

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I'd go for what we call a shore line. Here there is a railing to the right, I'd feel quite secure to be close to that and touching it with my stick.

The bumpy pavement would be a little uncomfortable.

I'd be making sure I align myself in one l don't have to dart between pedestrians.

I can see the crossing to my right and ahead. I'm using my white cane to make sure it is clear in front of me. There is, here, blister paving but I missed it first off.

The paving stones are a little uneven so that might make me slow down, I would be looking at the people to make sure I can swerve around them.

I feel quite wary. This is an unmarked crossing as far as I can see, I can't see any wait signs. Somebody has stopped for me I can see a cyclist, I'm now onto some more tactile paving, this is the sort of crossing I am totally unfamiliar with.

The crossing seems fine, I like the dimples on the tactile paving, they're easier to cross than the lines. I have to be extra careful looking both From a wheelchair user's perspective it looks ways when crossing the cycle lane. It is very smooth, but I don't like the idea of needing awkward to zoom around the cyclist on the to be very, very alert for the cyclists. pavement.

I can see differentiation colourwise between this very narrow pavement and the roadway, the kerb edge is almost undetectable though. I'm warily staying on the cycle side not the main road side as I'd rather be hit by a cycle than a bus.

I don't like the idea of crossing a cycle lane to get to a bus stop, it's not safe.

I'm back on the building line. I heard a beeping crossing so I'm moving along and waiting to hear the bleeper.

The cycle signs on the road are very useful as This is all fine but the paving stones are a little they tell you which way the cyclists are coming; even so I'd be looking down and watching my I'd hate to be without them. speed so I don't knock into one.

I can see the yellow box and the stud lines. The wait box, it hasn't got a rotating knurled cone on this left side which I consider bad, that it hasn't got it. There's a wait sign on the other side, I'm going across this wide crossing to the I understand why the dotted tiles are there but other wait box. they are really horrible for a wheelchair user.

3. A small extract from the part of CoLSAT that contains the comments participants made on the video shown during the interview (the first column contains comments made by one of the first participants who was shadowed on the route before the start of the pandemic).

Sometimes hard to perceive height of ke may have to wait and watch someone e it or else assume, visual indicators i.e. c could be good to indicate height.

I would have to do a little bit of maneuvering in and around the bus stop.

All fine.

I'd get the feeling on this journey that I'm fairly accessible part of town.

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1. Witness Walls project © Hood Design studio

Black Landscapes Matter The recent publication of a book of essays by American landscape architect Professor Walter Hood has prompted a reflection on comparisons with the UK. Sabina Mohideen

Diversity. Inclusion Underrepresented voices. All words and phrases I hear repeatedly to take into account, and somehow prove a commitment to, in a variety of contexts. I tick plenty of the boxes – female, Muslim, Asian immigrant – but even to me they sometimes feel like words that are invoked to the point of almost losing their meaning. The built environment sector is as insistent as any other on invoking diversity and inclusion, and it is hard not to become cynical about tokenism. And then you encounter a place or a room or a group in which

your marginalised status has been meaningfully taken into account. The response you have is visceral. And powerful. Wonder. Disbelief. Joy. Tears. Often all of these together. Suddenly you know what it is to have your personhood, and the experiences of your life, recognised and reflected back at you. It is not that we cannot respond appreciatively to a built environment designed by a dominant straight, white, non-disabled aesthetic and mindset; of course, we can – in the same way that Black and Asian audiences can enjoy a period drama with a strictly white cast, or an LGBTQ+ audience can enjoy a history of romcoms featuring straight stories. The expertise and hard work that went into the creation is not in doubt. But it requires marginalised people to operate within a double existence, in which we are constantly adapting ourselves

to what is around us without having access to what is consequential to our (significant) community. Nothing can adequately capture for people who have always had their existence, tastes and needs catered to, what it feels like for those who have not. However, it is not just we, the marginalised, who edit. The collective editing that takes place at a wider structural and political scale, with the potentially more serious consequences for society, is illustrated by Kofi Boone in Enabling Connections to Empower Place, one of a collection of essays in the award-winning Black Landscapes Matter. Edited by Walter Hood and Grace Mitchell Tada, the book covers the critical contribution of Black people to shaping the American landscape, how their history and culture is being recognised and incorporated into landscapes now and the importance of doing so, along with case studies and 45

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Grace Mitchell Tada

Professor Walter Hood

photographs of Hood’s work, among others. The contributions come from academics and practitioners in the built environment sector, each telling their stories of the ways in which Black Landscapes Matter. Kofi Boone, Professor of Landscape Architecture at NC State University, points out that “...we have an implicit professional bias toward not only European landscape, but privileged European landscapes. One can track European innovations in landscape architecture to their alternating dominance as colonial powers. In some ways, their landscape architecture contributions were funded and created through the domination of other peoples and landscapes. We marvel at the craft but edit the meanings and context…Celebrating the everyday landscapes for the nonpowerful and non-wealthy may send a different message about what landscape architecture may mean to diverse people.1” Elsewhere, in his essay Site of 46

the Unseen, Austin Allen, Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Texas in Arlington’s School of Architecture and principal at Design Jones LLC, references writer Teju Cole’s wonder at the apparent lack of discomfort among white people at the homogeneity of their spaces, while examining the ways in which Black spaces are erased and are only able to live in nostalgia and memory. The disservice we all do to ourselves in not genuinely embedding diversity into our ways of working is all too clear. It is easy to regard Black Landscapes Matter as a book that caters exclusively to a North American audience. Indeed, many of the contexts and reflections do draw upon that very specific background, taking into account the history of slavery, agriculture, farming, segregation and even planning and legal frameworks, such as redlining, that may appear alien to a wider readership. I am neither American nor Black and have not lived in the USA, so I have probably quite a different experience of the complexity of this book and what it signifies. That does not mean, however, that I cannot see the relevance to our landscapes in general; we can use this work to develop an understanding, through this American context, of how our built environment can honour the past, present and future of minoritised communities. And through this

honouring, we can vastly enrich our places as a whole. Commemorating the people, the events and the activities (cultural, religious, political) that have shaped and influenced places, communities and even nations’ fortunes has long been accepted tradition. In Walter Hood’s practice, he moves beyond the men on horseback prevalent in western public spaces. In his Seventh Street Gateway project, pictures of people that “once populated Black family living rooms”2, graces a public art structure designed as a freeway exit sign. The people featured were advocated for by residents and provide a sense of ownership, allowing their heroes to be celebrated publicly. Commemoration, however, is not just for recognised heroes. The Witness Walls project creates sculpted

2. Seventh Street Gateway © Landscape Institute

3. Walter Hood presentation at the University of East London conference © Landscape Institute

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Celebrating the everyday landscapes for the nonpowerful and non-wealthy may send a different message about what landscape architecture may mean to diverse people

1 Black Landscapes Matter pp70-71 2 Ibid p32 3 Ibid p46 4 Ibid p90 5 Ibid p55

friezes of events that took place during the civil rights movement in Nashville. People can walk among the friezes, for which the pictures were taken from historical photos, and place themselves in the centre of the events. What it also creates is an opportunity to honour events that were every day, and not just the “events and actions that occur at the extremes of human experience.”3 But is this enough to protect communities, especially in rapidly developing and often gentrifying cities? Lifeways gives examples of how we can draw on people’s diversity to enable the ways they live to flourish. The Rosa Parks neighbourhood masterplan project incorporates the cultural history of the neighbourhood to create a place which includes an art house, market, infrastructure trails, a sculpture garden, greenhouses and jobs. The combination of these elements creates the conditions to accommodate and build on evolving cultural practice and ways of living. Maurice Cox, takes this approach to a city-level. In A Tale of the Landscape, he describes his ethos as the City of Detroit’s Director of Planning and Development, which was to pay back those who had lived there, committed and with pride, during the city’s most challenging times. The approach was to democratise design “allowing new design and planning to emanate from the residents’

own values – and not ours as city officials and design professionals”4. Starting with a comprehensive engagement programme, Cox then details the process of converting the characteristics of a failed city from negative to positive by placing community identity and ownership at the heart of development strategy. Ultimately, however, if we are to preserve a future for our communities that genuinely enables thriving in diversity, we must tackle systemic issues. Addressing the lack of diversity in our professions is a crucial measure. In Enabling Connections to Empower Place, Kofi Boone also ponders the ways in which we can centralise marginalised voices, an aim of the BLM movement. He connects long term success to “the professions charged with giving form to the places that enable these processes”5. He identifies the cost and length of education in built environment professions and the high levels of capital involved in developing our buildings and landscapes as barriers to success, and justice, that need tackling. In parallel with this, the importance of creating places that are resilient to a future of climate change impacts, political instability and growing inequality is consistently shown to be fundamental to an inclusive approach. The landscape profession is uniquely positioned to address crises around water, food, biodiversity, health and

wellbeing, as well as creating the places in which, critically, people fight for their rights through protest and citizen action. Communities that are provided with these necessities are made resilient and the projects detailed throughout demonstrate consequent community empowerment.    In 2019, I was lucky enough to attend the University of East London’s conference, Just Landscape? Ethnicity, Diversity and Representation, organised by Senior Lecturer, Dr Bridget Snaith. The conference was a transformative and joyful experience. Those of us present had a common desire to learn about, and share experiences, of how we can design just environments that work for the diversity of society. From creating places that welcome refugees and asylum seekers to feminism in the landscape profession, the sessions provided an opportunity to understand where we are and where we go next to create an inclusive society. One of the speakers was Walter Hood himself, talking about his work – including some of the projects described in this book. My overwhelming memory of the day is being moved to tears by his achievements in listening, understanding, reflecting and celebrating Black communities’ culture and history in the USA. I could only imagine the joy of having these places in our everyday lives and not just in descriptions at conferences, and this book is a good guide for how to make that happen. Black Landscapes Matter is edited by Walter Hood and Grace Mitchell Tada and is published by the University of Viginia Press.

Sabina Mohideen worked as Events and Competitions Manager at the Landscape Institute and is currently Programme Manager at Design Council. Sabina writes in a personal capacity. 47

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Statues Redressed Last summer, Sky Arts and Liverpool Council invited a group of artists and designers to dress statues across the city to challenge, celebrate and debate the role of monuments. Some statues were dressed for a day and some a month – just a moment in the long life of a statue. Photography by David Edwards. by Paul Lincoln Chosen because of its rich history, Liverpool has the highest number of statues in the UK outside of London, including cultural icons like The Beatles through to sporting heroes, royalty, and monuments depicting people linked to slavery and Britain’s colonial past. Some of the artists’ interventions ranged from the celebratory to the confrontational. The project addressed many of the city’s statues, from Peter Pan in Sefton Park to the Queen Victoria memorial in Derby Square. Landscape architects frequently create meanwhile spaces, and Statues Redressed takes a similar approach by playing with existing infrastructures and challenging the viewer to see an object through new eyes. In the Sky Arts documentary, former director of the British Museum Neil McGregor notes, “Liverpool is a city that has had to think about what it is.” He sees this project as a new way to engage citizens in a conversation about the city. A number of the statues and their redressing make specific reference to Liverpool’s colonial past and its engagement with the slave trade. 48

These include the statue of William Huskisson which, long before the toppling of Colston in Bristol Harbour, was displaced during the 1981 Toxteth Riots. The artist responds to an empty plinth by creating a recording of one of the witnesses to the event. The response to the Queen Victoria monument has been created by fashion designer Karen Arthur and historian Laurence Westgaph, historian-in-residence at National Museums Liverpool. The statue of Disraeli is redressed by Daniel Lismore. His work acknowledges Disraeli’s role in the declaration of Victoria as Empress of India and makes a number of observations on the history of gay rights over this period. And a group of three statues, including Christopher Columbus, ‘the maker of Liverpool’, are provided with ruffs in an examination of the power, wealth, and control that they exercised. For McGregor, the redressing of these statues raises important questions about how we want to occupy our public spaces. He also reminds us that in most cases, although an important part of the public realm, statues are ignored, pointedly noting that “every statue finds its pigeon.”

Every statue finds its pigeon

Disraeli, St Georges Hall, Charles Bell Birch, 1883, Redressed by Daniel Lismore © David Edwards

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Descriptions of each ‘redressing’ have been provided by the documentary film makers Queen Victoria Monument Derby Square. CJ Allen, 1906 Redressed by: Karen Arthur & Laurence Westgaph

Fashion Creative Karen Arthur collaborated with historian Laurence Westgaph, to create a cotton and hessian dress for the Queen Victoria monument inspired by Gone With The Wind. During Victoria’s reign, cotton played a crucial role in Liverpool’s trading activities, and the wider economic success of Britain, but up until the American Civil War in the 1860s, this cotton was being picked by enslaved people in the United States as depicted in the film. The upcycled hessian transported goods from the African continent which added to Britain’s wealth. This satin patchwork cloak pays homage to a handmade quilt gifted to Queen Victoria by Martha Ricks, a black woman who travelled from Liberia specially to meet her idol. This piece reflects on Liverpool’s complicity with slavery, and how Queen Victoria and Britain were beneficiaries of that as recently as 150 years ago.

Disraeli St Georges Hall Charles Bell Birch, 1883 Redressed by: Daniel Lismore

Historians and biographers have debated at length the life of Disraeli. Renowned as a flamboyant dresser, and with a history of intense relationships with men, there seems a duality that under his watch vicious anti-homosexuality laws were imposed by Britain across the Empire. Building on the title which Disraeli established for Queen Victoria, ‘Will the real Empress of India please stand up?’’ asks us to consider the extreme impact and discrimination of these laws for the LGBTQ+ community throughout history and to the present day, while also questioning what historical social structures did to stop individuals living their own truths.

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William Huskisson Princes Avenue, Toxteth John Gibson, 1847 Redressed by: Harold Offeh

Artist Harold Offeh has made a sound piece telling the story of an event that took place nearly forty years ago – the toppling of the statue of William Huskisson. The statue was toppled during the Toxteth riots by a group of activists offended by Huskisson’s support for slavery. Harold Offeh has recorded the testimony of one of the people there on the night it happened, Stephen Nze. Stephen’s story can now be heard by anyone visiting the plinth.

Christopher Columbus  Sefton Park Leon-Joseph Chavalliaud, 1898 Redressed by: Taya Hughes

For centuries, historical accounts have celebrated the Empire-building endeavours of European explorers, claiming they ‘discovered’ whole continents, while ignoring indigenous populations. It’s a version of history that’s now inspired this three-part installation by designer Taya Hughes, from fashion label Tayamika. Three elaborate Elizabethan style ruffs made from traditional fabrics associated with the indigenous populations of Africa, New Zealand and Australia, speak to Taya’s personal experience of growing up in Zimbabwe as well as a wider critique of colonial rule and the cruelty and exploitation inflicted across the globe on peoples whose stories and cultures were cut out of history for so long.

Statues Redressed is available to watch on the NOW streaming service: www.nowtv. com Details of the ‘redressings’ can be found at: www.statues redressed. com

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Reading Green Unpleasant Land Green Unpleasant Land explores the English countryside’s colonial past. It covers many aspects of the history of landscapes, parks and gardens. The potential lessons for landscape practice will be explored over the next few editions of the journal. 1. ‘Green Unpleasant Land’ book cover Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections - by Corinne Fowler.

Lucy Pickford

Landscape Institute

1 Pg 246 Green Unpleasant Land – Report of the House of Commons, PKS315

Green Unpleasant Land looks at the origins of the money that built the English countryside and its parks and greenspaces. It considers the impact of this on our interpretation as well as the use of space today. Through the investigation of creative responses to this history, it raises many questions about how we not only acknowledge this history, but also ensure that it is contextualised and that its impact is addressed. Fowler’s work has received considerable publicity. In addition to being a research expert at the University of Leicester, she is also Director of Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted. The reports published by the National Trust have led to signficant controversy for both the author and the organisation. Fowler explains her motivation for writing the book is both political and emotional. One of her starting points is a family link to Caribbean sugar wealth. She notes, “our relatives either profited from empire, or were impoverished by it.” The book looks at the opening ceremony for the London Olympics and the National Trust’s publication of a report on the colonial connections of the properties that they manage. It then explores the changing features of rural Britain, and then considers

English rural writing in a global setting. There is also an analysis of the country house and of moorlands. One particular area of focus for landscape practitioners that the book addresses is the cultural history of gardens as shaped by empire and migration. Throughout the book, Fowler highlights the history of forms of control over the use of land employed by governments and landowners over the last few centuries. She looks at the Enclosure Acts of the 1700s as well as changing attitudes to the provision of allotments for those displaced within the UK. She notes that to this day there is still regulation over the use of space. Just recently this has been the case with people being locked out of parks and police officers sent to reprimand sunbathers and benchsitters during the COVID crisis. This may be in the use of public space for demonstrations, or ‘keep off the grass’ and ‘no ball games’ signs employed by the local administrators. Funding and the structural inequality in parks provision plays a large part in access limitations. Fowler cites research that showed “20% of the most affluent wards in council areas has on average five times more green space than the 10% of the most deprived areas.”1

The history of parks reflects a constant struggle between users seeking their self-defined pleasures and the municipal and other would-be circumscribers of behaviour in parks Alongside this, Fowler looks at access to the countryside and explains the way in which many minority groups feel unwelcome in a seemingly

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open space that should be accessible to all. Fowler notes the experience of poet Benjamin Zephaniah, ‘whose countryside jog launched a police helicopter searching for a ‘suspicious jogger’. She also mentions the experience of poet Lemn Sissay ‘who speaks of the incendiary racism that is in the country and is never challenged’, leading her to the conclusion that “rural belonging is often predicated on people’s sense of historical relationship to the land.” Much of Fowler’s book explores the influences and interpretations of beauty of landscape in poetry and other cultural responses, demonstrating the breadth and depth of an individual’s response to a

landscape. It would be remiss not to note – William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem (And did those feet in ancient time)’ was the inspiration for the book’s title. Whether it’s the gardens of country houses, parks, or the wider countryside, it is likely that many of the sites on which landscape professionals will work have a complex history linked to the colonial past of Britain, and much of it has been funded through slave-produced wealth. As Fowler notes, a lack of acknowledgement of this will simply support and perpetuate the structural issues that marginalise communities to this day. Penrhyn Castle provides a good example here. It is part of a World Heritage Site, but much of its surrounding landscape and

infrastructure was funded by profits from the Pennant family plantations. The National Trust has since revised its listing for the property, prominently acknowledging this history. The approach to how community outreach and engagement is conducted on a site is routinely a part of the process of understanding that site’s history. A creative response might include improved signposting and accompanying resources such as relevant poetry. Kew Gardens, for example, has taken this approach to its history, and acknowledges it as an ongoing challenge that must be addressed.2 Another example is the debate on the retention or removal of statues that are a part of a colonial history which, as Diana Crouch3 noted in an article for the LI blog, was an act “about the need for public spaces to reflect a sense of respect and inclusion for the people who live in and use them.” As Fowler has experienced firsthand, these issues are complex and emotive, often triggering a variety of, at times, aggressive responses. Ultimately the key issue is addressed in the final chapter of the book. She asks, ‘are our parks and green spaces not a representation of the ‘interconnectedness of continents, peoples and histories? Should they not be for all a ‘green and breathing tolerance’4? Green Unpleasant Land is written for a wide range of audiences. There are however specific questions that might usefully be addressed by the landscape profession. Whether these are creative responses to the history of a site, community led development and ownership or signposting to help others learn, a starting point will be to have the questions raised by Fowler’s book in advance of beginning work. It is important to take active steps to ensure that not just the full history of a site, but also the impact, respect and consideration is taken into account.

Lucy Pickford is Membership Marketing manager at the Landscape Institute. Lucy has a degree in Landscape Architecture and a Master’s in the History of Art.

2. Gilt of Cain A city-centre response to the history of the abolition of slavery. This artwork is located in the City of London financial district. It commemorates the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery. The artwork was created by Michael Visocchi and incorporates a poem by Lemn Sissay. © Michael Visocchi 2020

2h ttps://www.kew.org/ read-and-watch/ time-to-re-examinethe-history-ofbotanical-collections 3h ttps://www. landscapeinstitute. org/blog/ relationshipplacemaking-inclusion/ 4 Pg 247 Green Unpleasant Land - Nichols, ‘In the Shade of a London Plane Tree’, Passport to Here and There (Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books 2020), p. 33.

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Look up: Further resources on inclusive environments from the LI Make the most of resources created by the Landscape Institute. All of these items have been published in the journal or are available to view on Campus.

Black Men Walking

Dyslexia – the bigger picture

Maxwell Ayamba co-founded the Black Men Walking for Health Group in 2004. He reflects on why Britain still has a diversity problem when it comes to the countryside.

Ashley D Penn, a landscape architect based in Finland, explains why his way of processing information has found an ideal home in the landscape profession.

https://campus. landscapeinstitute.org/ https://issuu.com/landscapeinstitute

Just Landscape? Diversity, Ethnicity and Representation Conference Dr Bridget Snaith and Carole Wright look at the outcomes of the conference organised by the University of East London Landscape Department in autumn 2019.

SUMMER 2018

Issue 2 - 2019

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Landscapes for living How public health and landscape practitioners are changing the face of health and wellbeing

Landscape Summer 2018

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The Human Skills issue How AI and advanced digital technologies are creating new demand for human skills

Issue 1 – 2020

Landscape Spring 2019

The ground we stand on

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Landscape Winter 2020

RESE ARCH INTO PR ACTICE

Issue 3 – 2020

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Bringing nature into the city

Bringing nature into the city Place and health in the age of COVID-19

Sandeep Menon examines the challenges of urban open space in the post-pandemic global south. Landscape Summer 2020

2021 Issue 4

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Advocating for Making COP26 count climate justice and climate equity

Greener Recovery Festival: How to influence systemic changes

Judy Ling Wong argues that bringing together landscape practice and citizen energy is essential to achieving justice and equity.

Speakers: Dr Mya Rose Craig, Back2Nature; Tatiana Garavito, Wretched of the Earth; Asad Rehman, War on Want.

Landscape Autumn 2021

https://campus.landscapeinstitute.org/ video/day-2-2c-question-time-stylesession-how-to-influence-systemicchanges/

People from minority ethnic groups are less likely to have access to a private garden Percentage of people with access to a private garden, by ethnic group, England, 2014 to 2019 All White Mixed Asian Black Other % 0

LI Webinar: Designing for User Experience – mobility, sensory and neurological

100

I don’t have access to a garden I have access to a private outdoor space (balcony, yard, patio area) but not a garden I have access to a private communal garden I have access to a private garden 2020 Issue 4

Equity and Landscape

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https://campus.landscapeinstitute. org/event/inclusive-environmentsdesigning-for-a-diversity-of-mobilitysensory-and-neurological-experiences/

Greener Recovery: tackling climate emergency and COVID-19

Graham Duxbury asks if we can fashion a green and fair COVID-19 recovery Landscape Autumn 2020

2021 Issue 2

Sharing a light on inequality

LI East Midlands: Skateboarding Landscapes – Designing for Diverse and Active Cities

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Illuminating the landscape How light and sound are changing the face of landscape practice

Elletra Bordonaro demonstrates that public housing estates are often lit with a view to the security of the landlords rather than to the satisfaction of residents. Landscape Spring 2021

Jellicoe 2020: Diversifying a Profession – An Opportunity for Change Speakers: Diana Crouch, Priya Shah, Romy Rawlings, Sarah Atkinson, Jane Fortescue, Donald Roberts, Kush Kanodia and Martin Pong https://campus.landscapeinstitute. org/event/jellicoe-2020-diversifying-aprofession-an-opportunity-for-change/

https://campus.landscapeinstitute. org/event/skateboarding-landscapesdesigning-for-diverse-and-active-cities/

Health and Wellbeing CPD: Designing for an active future https://campus.landscapeinstitute.org/ video/day-2-2a-designing-for-an-activefuture/

RESE ARCH INTO PR ACTICE

Conference: ‘Future History: teaching history in landscape schools’ A conference will be taking place in September, looking at human dignity in a changing climate – reflecting on contemporary trends and the ways in which history is taught in the landscape profession. Increasingly, the perception within the profession of landscape architecture regarding its contribution to the environment is coming to reflect societal issues and environmental justice. This extends to the stories we tell. In the field of landscape architecture, it has been customary, after explaining the various terms and exploring the origins of the word landscape, to narrate development chronologically. But rather than investigate trends in the vernacular landscape, we tend to concentrate on what happened in, and follow the fashions of, the gardens of nobility. That is until the nineteenth century, when we were able to investigate public parks. We continued to address the public landscape of cities when we moved into the twentieth century. This seemed to reflect an established order of things as well as the source material available. While ‘gardens’ within ‘landscape architecture’ have often been derided, they have continued to be a way to express the notion of styles in historic narration in a European tradition; Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Augustan, Brownian, Picturesque, Reptonian, Victorian, Arts and Crafts, Modernism, Postmodern, etc. #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and debates on decolonisation have in the last couple of years brought the focus landscape histories, many aspects of 2 which had been accepted as a matter

of fact and are now being critically questioned. The houses and gardens of nobility are male and white and are recognised as an expression of colonial exploitation and suppression. Their use in historic narrative ought to be carefully considered; should their use be restricted? Clearly it is not whether we should respond to these international trends, but how we should (re)present the history of landscape design. In addition, the climate urgency has put a new perspective on the profession which puts past designs and practices in a different context. Some landscape schools have avoided these issues altogether and have stopped teaching history, an act of capitulation which in the current climate can also be interpreted as unacceptable, but it unfortunately reflects a general trend where student interest in history is waning. Yet history is important as a basis for any profession, as a point of reference, and as an inspiration for new design. No self-assured profession should avoid facing up to its past. With the landscape profession’s commitment to the long term, should we not use learning from the past as a prerogative to improve future landscapes and make them more sustainable? It is for this reason that a conference is being organised to discuss different philosophies and approaches to the teaching of history at landscape schools. In order to

Jan Woudstra

University of Sheffield

derive some sort of consensus, it questions what history should be narrated in the education of landscape architects; how students may be engaged in the history of their chosen profession; what methods and tools may be devised to improve student engagement in history teaching; and what resources are required to improve teaching history? The conference ‘Future History: teaching history in landscape schools’ is intended for those involved or interested in delivering the history of the profession and will be held on 8 and 9 September 2022 at the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield. It is organised in collaboration with FOLAR, the Friends of the Landscape Archives at Reading, and will be preceded by a series of online lectures hosted by Landscape Matters.

Jan Woudstra is a Reader in Landscape History and Theory at the Department of Landscape Architecture of the University of Sheffield. For further details and updates see: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ landscape/events

RESE ARCH INTO PR ACTICE

Building research links Following our recent article on the links with academia, Sheffield academic Clare Rishbeth offers her top ten approaches to engaging with professional practice. Clare Rishbeth

University of Sheffield

In a recent article for Landscape, Alison Galbraith explored the potential of academic research to inform professional practice, and some of the limitations around how this happens in reality. I agree that peer reviewed papers do not make for very digestible reading to gain insights for practice but would argue that in nearly all cases this is not the intent of that particular writing output, just as contractors’ drawings are not expected to be accessible for local residents. Whether practitioner or academic, we all have to be skilled in creating

opportunities for communication and learning that are meaningful for different audiences. Alison’s article started me thinking of all the different ways university research shapes practice. Two key points are that much of our ‘knowledge exchange’ isn’t even in written form, and that primarily it is directed ‘outward’ of the profession itself – representing landscape architectural values and applying landscape skills and approaches within interdisciplinary and inter-sector settings. Below I outline the ‘top 10’ ways in which academic research engages with professional practice. Examples are from the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield because this is where I am based and chosen for broad representation rather than providing a conclusive list. Of course, academics from other institutions will also be involved in many of these activities. Evidence of

planning for ‘Impact’ or ‘Knowledge Exchange’ is required for most grant funding and derives directly from the findings of these projects. However, time is always tight, with these roles fitting in alongside our commitment to teaching and learning, research fieldwork and management, and academic writing. 1. We collaborate with non-academic stakeholders on designing and running research projects, including producing non-academic outputs such as reports, training etc. (Improving Wellbeing through Urban Nature with Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust, outputs included practice guides1, a three year long series of open access seminars, with the findings intrinsic to SRWT successful bid as a Green Prescribing national pilot2). 2. We contribute to advisory boards for national and international organisations (Natural England Social Science Expert panel, International Play Association: access to play for children in situations of crisis.3 ) and are involved in internationally significant events (Chair COP26 panel: Nature for Climate & Biodiversity in Cities). 3. Academics provide commissioned and collaborative expertise in design projects and competition entries. Sometimes as a design lead (Bergamo Green Square, Italy.4), sometimes as specialist contributors (community engagement Camden Highline shortlist5), often on a consultancy basis. 4. Our department initiates and facilitates cross sector events on current debates (Street Trees and Politics conference 20196, in 2022 to be published in book form as ‘The Politics of Street Trees’.7).

1h ttp://iwun.uk/ findings/ 2h ttp://iwun.uk/ building-a-strategy-forgreen-prescribing-insheffield and https://sybics.co.uk/ green-socialprescribing 3h ttp://ipaworld.org/ wp-content/ uploads/2018/02/ IPA-APC-ResearchSynthesis-Report-A4. pdf 4h ttps://www.sheffield. ac.uk/landscape/ news/nigel-dunnettdesigns-greenrecovery-squarebergamo-italy 5h ttps://www. architectsjournal.co.uk/ news/finalists-incamden-highlinecompetition-named 6h ttps://sola-blog. com/2019/08/19/ the-environment-ishotting-up-but-is-itour-political-climatethat-is-bad-for-streettrees/ 7h ttps://www. routledge.com/ The-Politics-of-StreetTrees/WoudstraAllen/p/ book/9780367516284

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8 https://campus. landscapeinstitute.org/ 9 h ttps://campus. landscapeinstitute.org/ 10 https://www.sheffield. ac.uk/landscape/news/ demystifying-worldbuilt-environmentdesign 11 https://www.sheffield. ac.uk/landscape 12 h ttps://www.sheffield. ac.uk/landscape/news/ academics-launchpublication-makeresearch-accessiblelandscape-architects 13 https:// theconversation.com/ nature-doesnt-judgeyou-how-youngpeople-in-cities-feelabout-the-naturalworld-148848 14 h ttps:// theconversation.com/ how-the-trees-in-yourlocal-park-help-protectyou-fromdisease-160312 15 h ttps://filbertpress. com/our-books/ naturalistic-plantingdesign-the-essentialguide/ 16 h ttps://www.cabi.org/ bookshop/ book/9781780641386/ 17 h ttps://www.routledge. com/Natural-BurialLandscape-Practiceand-Experience/ Clayden-GreenHockey-Powell/p/ book/9780415631693 18 https://www.pure. ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/ portal/52725747/ Design_Commission_ EV4_Briefing_for_ Witnesses.pdf 19 h ttps://www. conexusnbs.com

5. Academics often deliver Landscape Institute CPD (e.g. Healthy Plants, Healthy Places: Embedding biosecurity in landscape projects 20198 and Inclusive Environments 20219 ). 6. Academics contribute in various ways to local and national events on place to raise the profile of landscape architecture expertise (Big Local Learning workshop ‘Demystifying the world of built environment design’.10 ). We occasionally provide a ‘landscape architecture’ voice on TV and radio programmes. Recent ‘talking head’ slots include climate sensitive design, comparative tree cover and the value of benches. 7. We write articles, blogs and reports for both public and specialist audiences. Some are linked from our homepage under ‘Hopeful Greener Futures’ and ‘Equality Matters’11, and more are featured in the ‘Research for Landscape Practice’ brochure mentioned by Alison 12. We also publish in The Conversation, for example, young people valuing nature in cities13, microbes and trees and disease protection14. 8. More specialist than a blog and packed with CPD? Writing books (and usually getting them published at non-academic prices) is core to some of our research dissemination (Nigel Dunnett: Naturalistic Planting Design The Essential Guide15, Ross and Hitchmough: Environmental Horticulture: Science and Management of Green Landscapes16, Clayden: Natural Burial: Landscape, Practice and Experience17). 9. Influencing policy is largely behind the scenes but vital. Academics have served as expert witnesses in the House of Lords, recently on the evidence session for Neighbourhoods and Housing18, but policy is also changed through long-term research collaborations such as with EU-Brazil policy sector dialogue on NatureBased Solutions19.

10. Lastly, but probably the most important in terms of core landscape architecture practice, our alumni. Landscape architecture students enter the profession having engaged with research informed teaching and have scope to then apply and communicate this in their places of employment. Some return to our studios to give guest lectures, providing case studies on how their engagement with research during their education continues to inform their approach and practice. We have global reach with our many international PhD graduates who then practice or teach within academia across the world.

Dr Clare Rishbeth is a senior lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield and has led a number of research projects on social inclusion in public open space. Her research focus and social values are focused on profiles of marginalisation – shaped by intersections of ethnicity, class and gender – and how these should inform the civic ambitions of our shared environments.

www.solusdecor.co.uk info@solusdecor.co.uk

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LI life: AGM 1 https://europa.eu/ new-europeanbauhaus/index_en 2 https://www.ucl.ac.uk /bartlett/publicpurpose/publications/ 2021/jan/new-bauhaus -green-deal 3 https://www. designwest.org.uk/ shape-my-city/ Shape My City is supported by the Landscape Institute

Beauty, diversity and design highlighted at LI AGM Sue Morgan

CEO, Landscape Institute

I was delighted that within my first few months at the LI, I was able to attend both the LI Annual Awards and the Annual General Meeting. I was keen to see the AGM as an opportunity to be more outward focused and engaging to members and non-members. So, in addition to voting on business issues, the AGM explored the work of a number of fascinating speakers.

Dan Hill is Director of Strategic Design at Vinnova, the Swedish Government’s Innovation Agency, and Professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. His most recent work has

been in responding to the European Commission’s New European Bauhaus1 initiative, a project which “calls on all Europeans to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future that is beautiful for our eyes, minds and souls.”2 Dan posed a number of important questions which I feel should influence our work: “What does it mean to live with circular products and services?” and “is this way of living, meaningful, equitable, beautiful?” His work in Sweden invited those that he welcomed to his workshops to think creatively about the role of bodily decomposition, cemeteries, forests, woods, and how places that we might use for burial grounds might link to how we design the landscape. Provocative and slightly disturbing, there was a freshness to Dan’s thinking about landscape design and the way in which we think about our towns, villages, and cities. He concluded by saying that “social and cultural infrastructures and landscape like gardens, streets, playgrounds, housing, energy, museums, buses, libraries, parks, pools, squares, markets, saunas, co-op housing......can embody and engender the beauty, dignity and utility of shared things in everyday life.”

Kay was followed by Shankari Raj, head of Education at Design West and an architect. Shankari spoke about the Shape My City3 Courses which she runs, and which are focused on inclusion and diversity. She explained how they offered an opportunity for young people to come together to speak out about their environment and to address the climate anxiety which many are now facing. She argued passionately that within our built and natural environments we should be including young people in the design and consultation process. It is important to make parks and green spaces really inclusive and to ensure that everybody had a say on quality of design in the environment. A good example of this approach, she argued, is the Olympic Park, which has many great spaces for children to play and to feel safe. If you missed the AGM, do have a look at the presentations and get in touch.

Sue Morgan is CEO of the Landscape Institute.

1. A New Bauhaus for a Green Deal.

Kay Hughes, Design Director for HS2 talked about the landscape that was being restored, changed, created and in some cases, recreated as part of an overview of this massive project.

Watch the AGM, including all of the speaker presentations: https://vimeo.com/662547765

LI life: Code of Conduct

Ethics in Practice: Creating a new Code of Practice for LI members by Ben Gosling Three years in the making, the new Landscape Institute Code of Practice embeds internationally recognised ethics principles into UK landscape practice – a huge milestone in the realisation of a global landscape community. In October 2014, the United Nations headquarters on New York’s East 42nd Street hosted the inaugural meeting of the International Ethics Standards (IES) Coalition. Its mission: to temper the global real estate profession – integral as it is to societies and communities, and responsible as it is for two thirds of the planet’s wealth – with a shared set of ethics principles. The Coalition published its ethical framework for the global property market in December 2016. The following month, the Landscape Institute became the first organisation in the landscape sector to join the IES Coalition. Thus began the journey towards our new Code of Practice. Joining the Coalition represented a shift in perspective for the LI. In an increasingly connected, global society, the profile of a profession hinges on how it can answer global challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, resource security, population growth, and more. An ethics framework is one of many tools that helps us ‘think 60

globally’ when delivering services locally, implementing infrastructure that meets global needs consistently, ethically, and with integrity. In 2019, the LI brought to the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) World Council a proposal for a shared a set of global ethical principles for landscape. The draft principles found overwhelming support among members, and in

President of the Landscape Institute, Jane Findlay comments: I’m thrilled that our new Code of Practice is now here, supporting our members to deliver the very highest standards of practice at such a crucial time for our profession. In aligning us with IFLA’s global ethics principles, this new Code cements us as part of a global community of landscape professionals – one that stands ready to tackle today’s foremost challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and public health and wellbeing. The language in the Code has also undergone some much-needed modernisation. It’s not about monitoring behaviour, but about

October 2021, achieved formal ratification. The LI’s new Code of Practice updates our 2012 Code of Conduct in line with these global principles. Emphasising encouragement over enforcement, it provides a supportive, modern framework for practitioners to deliver the best possible service.

helping our members deliver quality work. It’s not about enforcing compliance, but about supporting it. With regular reviews planned, this Code of Practice will continue to underpin and champion global ethical practice, ensure public confidence in landscape, and promote environmental wellbeing for years to come.

At a glance: Changes in the new Code of Practice

Landscape Institute I December 2021

– Modern and supportive: Emphasising practice rather than ‘conduct’, the new Code focuses on supporting best practice rather than monitoring behaviour. The LI has removed outdated language.

The Landscape Institute Code of Practice

– Clear and concise: The new Code clearly explains its purpose and processes. It clearly divides standards into Rules and Guidance, providing a clear and consistent point of reference. Where duplication existed in previous standards, the new Code merges them, reducing the overall number. – Internationally relevant: With language genericised and reference to specific legislation removed, the Code is applicable and easy to monitor internationally. New rules emphasise modern global best practice including environmental enhancement, service quality, conflict of interest, data protection, equity, diversity and inclusion, and sustainable development. Find out more about the new LI Code of Practice at: www.landscapeinstitute.org/ about/professionalconduct.

Appendix 1

As a professional organisation constituted under a Royal Charter, the Landscape Institute (LI) seeks to protect, conserve and enhance the natural and built environment for the benefit of the public through the promotion of landscape architecture. It places a strong emphasis on the integrity, competence and professionalism of its members, and therefore requires them to act in accordance with a professional Code of Practice.

This Code sets out the standards of professional conduct expected of all members of the Landscape Institute, irrespective of grade or membership level. Where an individual is approved to join the Landscape Institute as a member, approval is conditional upon the individual’s acceptance to be bound by the requirements of this Code.

Principle 1:

RULE

Landscape architects promote enhancement of the environment and quality of life for now and future generations. Principle 2: Landscape architects are respectful of others and do not in their provision of landscape services unlawfully discriminate against others.

Global Ethical Principles This Code has also been designed to align with the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) Global Ethical Principles. The aim of these principles is to ensure and promote global ethical practice, public confidence in the landscape profession, and environmental wellbeing. Landscape architects who are members of national associations that belong to the IFLA would be required to act in accordance with these principles. However, it is understood that different national associations and countries will adopt the use of the phrase “landscape architect” according to their own requirements and translation from the English term.

The Rules – in detail

IFLA Global Ethical Principles

Introduction

Principle 1: Landscape professionals promote conservation and enhancement of the environment and quality of life for now and future generations. Principle 2: Landscape professionals recognise the issue of climate and biodiversity emergency and practice in a manner consistent with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Principle 3:

In the Landscape Institute’s context, the definition of landscape architect has a wider connotation captured in the description of “landscape professional”. This includes landscape architects, technicians, scientists, planners and managers, urban designers, garden designers, place managers, parks managers, academics, and those who give professional advice within the landscape sector.

You must deliver landscape services in ways which promote sustainable development and the environmentally responsible use of resources. Linked to Global Ethical Principles 1 and 2.

Landscape architects comply with national and international law.

R1g a) Landscape professionals have responsibilities to the character and quality of the environment. Landscape professionals should seek to manage change in the landscape for the benefit of both this and future generations and should seek to enhance the diversity of the natural environment, enrich the human environment, and improve them both in a sustainable manner. This will mean considering the impact on the environment, people, place, and nature in all aspects of landscape activities and in landscape projects before work takes place. In some cases, this will take the form of a full, formal, environmental impact assessment. In other cases, the assessment will be less formal and landscape professionals should use their professional judgement. Such assessment should include considering the impacts on the environment as a whole (both positive and negative). Such assessment should include consideration of any activity that could mitigate or remove detrimental impact, where this is identified.

Principle 4: Landscape architects are committed to continuing professional development and ensure they only provide services they are competent to deliver. Principle 5: Landscape architects deliver quality landscape services and clients and/or the public are able to provide feedback or raise issues about service. Principle 6: Landscape architects uphold the integrity of the landscape profession and are honest and transparent in their relationship with their national body/regulator. Principle 7:

b) “People, place and nature” includes the cultural and social heritage of place as well as the environmental place. Landscape professionals should take time to understand the cultural and social history of places to understand the impact of landscape work.

Landscape architects recognise the issue of climate and biodiversity emergency and employ sustainable development practices.

Landscape Institute Code of Practice December 2021

c) Landscape professionals understand the issues raised by the global climate and biodiversity crises and how these impact on their work. They understand that working in the public interest means working to reduce negative impacts on the environment. Landscape professionals should undertake an impact assessment, in the context of the climate crisis, for work they intend to undertake. Such an assessment should include consideration of any activity that could mitigate or remove detrimental impact, where this is identified. It should also include consideration of any activity that would actively combat climate change. d) Landscape professionals understand and are committed to the principles of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2030 and the environmentally responsible use of resources both in their organisations/businesses and in the provision of professional advice. This may be demonstrated through the use of sustainable procurement policies, understanding carbon impacts, and involvement in government/ society initiatives linked to the UN SDG.

LI life: Policy update

The Environment Act by Theo Plowman After a slow journey from Bill to law, perhaps the most significant piece of environmental legislation in a generation has passed. Enter The Environment Act, a monolithic framework that outlines the regulations that hold the UK government and others account over environmental issues. The new Act builds on the regulations previously implemented by the EU. It is a crucial Act for our members and provides an important foundation to enable us to deliver real change for climate, people and nature. The high-level environmental laws and some specific sections are of real importance to our membership. This article will cover the key headlines for landscape practitioners. The Act seeks to provide a post-Brexit legal framework for environmental governance and make provision for improvements to the natural environment. The Act is broken down into a number of key parts: Parts 1 and 2: Environmental governance Part 3: Waste and resource efficiency Part 4: Air quality and environmental recall Part 5: Water Part 6: Nature and biodiversity Part 7: Conservation covenants

Environmental Governance The Environmental Governance section is where the bulk of the toplevel legal frameworks, targets and principles lie. It is formed of roughly six key areas of interest.

Process for setting legally binding, long-term environmental targets There is a new duty to set at least one long-term target in each of the following priority areas by 31st October 2022: ir quality A Water • Biodiversity • Resource efficiency and waste reduction • •

In addition to these 4 priority areas, the Secretary of State must also set targets for: ine particulate matter (PM 2.5) F (in addition to the air quality target above) • Species abundance (related to biodiversity) •

Importantly, the targets must outline a standard to be achieved, which must be capable of being objectively measured, and a date by which it is to be achieved. The Secretary of State has a duty to meet the targets. A consultation on draft targets will likely take place in February 2022.

Environmental improvement plans These plans require government to establish strategies to improve the natural environment, linked to the aforementioned targets. It is intended to make long-term, dependable commitments to policy making, outlasting political cycles. The DEFRA 25 Year Environment Plan is considered the first Environmental improvement plan, and these must be reviewed every five years.

Policy Statement on Environmental Principles This places a requirement on Ministers to take account of key environmental principles when making policy affecting the environment, consisting of: Ministers having “due regard” to the policy statement when developing policy. • Developing the policy statement explaining how principles should be interpreted and applied. • Principles must contribute to improvement of environmental protection and sustainable development. • The key principles are, prevention of pollution; rectification of damage at source; the polluter pays and integration into policy and business as usual. •

The LI consulted on the draft environmental principles in March 2021.

Non-regression and improvement statements This is a provision which requires Ministers to make a statement to Parliament explaining whether or not clauses in a Bill (a draft law) would reduce the level of environmental protection provided under existing law. In an effort to maintain pace with environmental protections internationally (i.e., the EU) every two years, the Secretary of State must report on developments in international environmental protection legislation which appear to be significant.

LI life: Policy update Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) The Act establishes the OEP, an independent body. It has existed in an interim capacity since July 2021, however is not yet fully operational. The OEP is expected to be fully established in early 2022. The Secretary of State will appoint the chair and board and determine the budget. This body will: dvise, scrutinise and enforce A environmental law • Monitor the implementation of environmental law, reporting on any matter it chooses • Advise on changes to environmental law • Receive complaints where a public authority has failed to comply with environmental law (includes climate change), which the OEP may investigate. • Issue information and decision notices setting out the steps required in response to “serious failure” – with the power to take cases through the new “environmental review” mechanism in High Court • Provide Parliament with annual reports •

Other relevant sections Air Quality & Environmental Recall argets on PM2.5 (small T particulate matter) • Require better cooperation within the Local Air Quality Management Framework – power to designate a lead local authority (LA) to monitor local air quality and write a local air quality plan, requiring LAs to cooperate with each other • Make national air quality performance more transparent – requiring SoS to make an annual statement to Parliament on air quality, updating the national air strategy more regularly.

Nature and Biodiversity The Environment Act features the Convention on Biodiversity 2030 Targets from COP15. Here it was stated that, by 2050, biodiversity should be highly valued, conserved, restored, and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet, and delivering benefits essential for all people. Urgent action was needed across society to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ensure the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of genetics resources, to put biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030 for the benefit of both the planet and people. The Environment Act of 2021 has put in the following provisions to achieve this: Biodiversity net gain for new developments and nationally significant infrastructure will be 10% • Biodiversity credits and the establishment of environmental markets. • Conservation covenants. • Local Nature Improvement Strategies. • Extended local authority duty to conserve and enhance biodiversity in their areas. • New biodiversity reporting requirement for local authorities. • New legally binding biodiversity targets – inc. a 2030 species abundance target. • Establishment of nature recovery networks. • Tree planting strategy and new power to control the felling of trees. • Peatland restoration strategy. •

To enter a conservation covenant, a landowner will need to enter a partnership with a ‘responsible body’, which includes charities and governmental organisations as well as private companies. The Environment Act will look to use conservation covenants to: To ensure adequate protected biodiversity within a development site • To enter an ‘offset credit’ agreement with a piece of protected land in another location •

A potential use is when a developer is able to introduce a protected biodiversity feature (such as a wildflower meadow) in a site, the developers would establish a conservation covenant to ensure that this feature would be retained by future owners. On the other hand, in cases where it is not appropriate to introduce biodiverse features within a development, developers will be able to offset this by purchasing ‘credits’ from other landowners. In these agreements, other landowners would offer up an area of their own land to become protected by a conservation covenant in return for payment from the developers.

•

Conservation Covenants The Act saw the formalisation of conservation covenants. Conservation covenants allow landowners to set legally binding duties on their land for themselves and successive landowners. This will allow landowners to secure environmental benefits for the long term. Once they are agreed they cannot be bypassed, and the rules of the covenant must be abided by indefinitely (or for whatever length of time has been specified). 63

LI life: Policy

Spring Update by Hugo Field

Policy consultations The LI responded to the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) review of energy National Policy Statements, in which, the government presented its policy for the delivery of energy infrastructure and provided the legal framework for planning decisions. We supported the review of the energy National Policy Statements (NPS) and welcomed many of the changes to the policy. Consulting with members allowed us to provide a holistic response, in which we reviewed the various relevant NPSs and set out potential areas for additions and amendments. In terms of actions to combat the decline of nature and biodiversity, the government released a consultation on its new Local Nature Recovery Strategies. The LI responded to Defra’s consultation on the Local Nature Recovery Strategies – an England-wide

system of spatial strategies that will establish priorities and map proposals to drive nature’s recovery and provide wider environmental benefits.

Policy and political announcements In mid-October, the LI issued a response to the government’s new Net-Zero strategy, which outlines how it intends to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the UK by 2050. The strategy had some promising funding for the landscape sector, such as an extra £124 million to the Nature for Climate Fund. However, the strategy lacks detailed policies for green infrastructure investment in nature-based solutions and green infrastructure. Towards the end of November, just a few days before COP26, the government released their latest budget. In a briefing in which we reacted to the new budget, it was asserted that the government had failed to deliver appropriate funding and investment in the right areas to tackle the climate change and biodiversity

crisis. A broad issue with the budget was the over-focus on technological solutions to climate change, in lieu of nature-based solutions. As set out above, the LI has addressed the Environment Act, which was given royal assent on the 10th of November. This is an incredibly significant piece of legislation for our members, as it is an overhaul and replacement for EU environment frameworks. The LI has worked with partners to ensure the Act is the best it can be, pushing for amendments, and after its Royal Assent, explaining the effects to our membership.

Partner working With such urgent action needed to tackle the climate and biodiversity emergency, collaboration on policy is more important than ever. The LI has worked closely with partner organisations at the Environmental Policy Forum (EPF) to deliver a response to the Local Nature Recovery Strategies. The LI also contributed to various partner reports, such as supporting the Construction Industry Council’s Climate workstreams. We have also worked hard to reach out to new audiences, publishing an article in the Government Business Magazine on the role of parks and green spaces in the levelling-up agenda. In the past few months, the LI has kickstarted policy work in two key areas, holding the meetings of two newly formed policy panels: the BNG (Biodiversity Net Gain) and Embodied Carbon advisory groups. This brief overview highlights just some of the work the policy team at the LI has been delivering. To learn more, please visit the policy section of the LI website or email: policy@landscapeinstitute.org.

Protecting habitats together through collaborative knowledge sharing Habitat Matters aims to inspire, connect and empower people to improve the quality of our built environment through biodiversity design. Formed through a collaboration of 60 partners and supporters, we have come together to show how collectively we can help address nature and biodiversity decline, and tackle the challenges faced when safeguarding urban habitats.

Webinar and Podcast Series Hear from a range of industry voices, such as renowned environmentalist and campaigner, Tony Juniper CBE. Discover how we can incorporate natural systems into the built environment; protecting the natural world from ecological and climate breakdown.

Learn more about Habitat Matters, and watch all content www.aco.co.uk/habitat-matters

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LI life: access to landscape

Creating safer spaces in the public realm by Johanna Elvidge During the last decade, design and policy focus has centred on environmental sustainability in the urban realm, with emphasis on topics such as ecosystem services, improving biodiversity, optimising the circular economy and minimising the carbon impact of new public spaces. Whilst this shift is imperative for positive climate outcomes, has this step forward affected the balance around public safety? Has it changed the amount of consideration being given to making sure people in communities feel safe and are safe when using public realm spaces? Are our placemaking projects being designed with both night and day in mind, with enough thought given to

the darker hours in particular? And how can we balance the absolutely vital inclusion of biodiverse design – which often features dense planting and dark corridors for nocturnal species – with the need to create familiar, welcoming landscapes that are accessible to all, 24 hours a day? Landscape manufacturer Marshalls is now tackling this topic, in collaboration with the Landscape Institute alongside urban planners, landscape architects, engineers and other building industry experts with a direct influence on the evolving urban environment. A resulting paper will explore common themes around creating safer spaces, from wayfinding, accessibility and security, through to acoustics, lighting and the use of technology. There will be a focus not just in terms of design and construction, but also in maintaining quality safe

spaces without overreaching in terms of cost or time resource. The paper will be published in spring 2022. If you would like to be involved in this work, please contact: karen.ogden@marshalls.co.uk To register for a copy of the paper, register at: https://www.marshalls. co.uk/saferspaces

Johanna Elvidge is head of design at Marshalls. Johanna has a Masters from Leeds Beckett University, is a visiting lecturer in landscape architecture and winner of the Arup Cities Alive: Rethinking Green Infrastructure prize in 2020.

LI life: Fellowship update

Introducing newly elected Fellows of the LI by Lucy Pickford The diverse and extensive experience of our Fellows is a testament to the important role that landscape professionals play in the sector. Whether they’ve consistently provided guidance and support on technical guidance or publications, or played a significant role in inspiring the next generation of landscape professionals, it’s important that we as an Institute recognise and celebrate these contributions. While the election as a Fellow is an important achievement, it’s also a new opportunity and a call to action for these new members. Our fellows work together to bring together their knowledge and experience, and support the LI in shaping our plans and strategies. As well as informing the work of the Institute, they must be ready and willing to champion our response to today’s most important issues – including climate change, biodiversity, and inclusion – and to help attract the next generation to this profession. As well as receiving the deserved recognition for their achievements and the post nominals to demonstrate this, the connections Fellows make as part of a community of leaders, innovators and ambassadors for the landscape profession is an immeasurable benefit. If you are a CMLI or AMLI wanting to apply for Fellowship, or wish to nominate an accomplished peer, please visit our Fellow Membership page (https://www.landscapeinstitute. org/member-content/fellow/), or for any other membership advice, get in touch at membership@ landscapeinstiute.org.

Gary Holliday FLI Director, FPCR A Director at FPCR, Gary joined as a graduate and has been with them since 1988. His focus is on practice development and management, and acting as an expert witness. He is a long-serving supervisor on the P2C system and a professional practice examiner.

Monika Nair FLI Associate Practice Director, Atkins India Monika is a landscape architect with extensive experience as an urbanist and sustainability practitioner in the UK, India, Middle East & the Asia Pacific. She is also the recipient of the New Landscape Professional of the Year Award, 2019 and a proponent of landscape urbanism at both urban and regional scales.

Ian Houlston FLI Associate and Environmental Planning Lead, LDA Design

Robyn Butcher FLI Director and Principal Landscape Architect at Terra Firma

Ian is a qualified landscape architect and archaeologist. He has wide ranging experience, has authored and contributed to several national guidance documents, is a Design Council Expert, and lectures annually at Sheffield and Oxford Universities.

Robyn joined terra firma as university graduate, working her way up to Director; she sits on various design panels, is a university examiner and has won various design awards for civic spaces.

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LI Campus The future of CPD: the digital platform from the LI is now online LI Campus offers access to all LI recorded events including three years of online events and conferences.

campus.landscapeinstitute.org

GreenBlue Urban Green Our Planet Download on LI Campus Our latest webinar looks back at highlights of the COP26 – UN Climate Change Conference (taking place in Glasgow 31 October – 12 November 2021) – the most important summit on climate change for a generation. As part of our #Greenourplanet campaign, we will look at the mitigation and adaptation measures being taken to prevent and reduce the impacts being caused globally, including the commitment to keeping global temperatures well below pre-industrial times, and for all 197 members to set targets to reduce emissions. Tree planting has become the foundation of many environmental campaigns in recent years. The call to plant trees is everywhere, seen as a simple and effective way to help reduce the impact of carbon emissions and restore natural ecosystems. Managing our urban forests to help them retain and, more importantly, increase their carbon storage potential can maximize the ability of trees to mitigate climate change. We must recognize the value of this benefit by providing for our urban tree populations, implementing urban tree planting best practices, and avoiding urban and rural deforestation wherever possible. A UK government cash boost of nearly £4 million to plant hundreds of thousands of trees was announced back in December 2020, £2.5 million of which is to support schemes in our towns and cities, including along rivers to reduce flood risk and help meet the government’s commitment to increase planting to 68

30,000 hectares per year across the UK by 2025. If trees are to play a part in carbon reduction strategies, a lot needs to happen quickly. GreenBlue can help with urban planning to ensure they reach maturity and offer the full extent of their benefits. GreenBlue Urban has long concentrated on UK manufactured products: this forethought means that shipping delays have little effect on our business and has helped us reduce the carbon footprint of the business. By manufacturing our range of products from 100% recycled materials, GreenBlue Urban are supporting the circular economy – rather than disposing of endof-use plastics in landfill or by incineration, we use this recycled polymer to assist trees to grow and sequester the carbon produced by the manufacture of the original material. We have also launched

the RootSpace Ocean, manufactured from reclaimed marine waste – further reducing the impact on the environment. Tune in to discover more on the efforts GBU is making to reduce their carbon footprint to support the government’s initiative to become carbon net-zero by 2050. – Assistance in evaluating project plans and tree pit designs – Guidance on best practice planting methods – Quality service, specifications & detailed “nothing hidden” costs – On-site support on planting –A rborAdvance, Maintenance guarantee for the health of a tree for a minimum of 15 years Available to download on Campus: https://campus.landscapeinstitute.org/

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to enable supply chains to fulfil obligations and ordering. The trend to be ‘greener’ and the desire to specify in this area requiring more budget considerations were also debated. Weather issues, skills and labour availability also came into the equation, with Hardscape concluding that it was part of their due diligence to inform landscape architects and designers of best availability during the deliberations and specifications processes. Available to download on Campus https://campus.landscapeinstitute.org/ 2 2. The Piece Hall, Halifax © Hardscape

Jupiter Play Hardscape Local or global materials sourcing – the power of choice Download on LI Campus Hardscape’s most recent webinar with the Landscape Institute entitled: ‘Local or global materials sourcing – the power of choice’ on Tuesday 7th December 2021, explored the pros and cons of local vs global paving material supply and sourcing, and discussed the parameters and influences of specifying materials from the UK, Europe and globally, with particular emphasis on:

The positive impact of play in housing developments 15 February 2022 11am In this webinar, Jupiter Play are joined by Laura Bradley of Bradley Murphy Design and Johanne Thomas from Urban & Civic, to discuss the positive impacts that partnership working has delivered and is continuing to deliver at Houlton, a new strategic housing site on the outskirts of Rugby.

Physical Literacy and Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) are key areas in which children (and adults) are measured in how well they can perform certain key activities, such as running, throwing, catching and hopping. The science suggests that if children perform all these well, either with high confidence or high competence and at an early age (before social pressures come in to play), the more likely they are to lead healthy active lives. Urban & Civic are developing some of the most unique strategic developments across the UK, where green space is a priority. Together with Bradley Murphy Design (BMD) and Jupiter Play & Leisure Ltd, Urban &Civic are delivering key developments at Award Winning Alconbury Weald and Rugby’s Houlton, where green space is prime and promoting active outdoor living is fundamental to the strategy. The need to understand the principles of Physical Literacy and FMS is therefore an important part of a successful landscape and open space strategy. Coventry University, together with the consortium, have created an Active Landscapes Collaboration and

– Short-term and long-term lead times – Setting the right volumes required – Larger projects that may have phased plans for further development – Supplier relationship and trust – Green at the expense of cost and supply – The Rock Cycle – Different stone types/geologies have different sizing limiting factors – Material embellishments to be factored in Hardscape’s Mathew Haslam and Anthony Collins debated how working together can save time and energy when sourcing local, European or global materials for scalability to suit specific project requirements. The right balance must be struck between sustainable high and low volume amounts with cost variables for sourcing and transportation, and how pre-management and geological knowledge could influence decision making in the pursuit of British or imported paving materials for future public developments or large domestic projects. An understanding of scalability and factory/quarry capabilities were discussed, as well as the importance of knowing the length of a project timewise

3 Open spaces are one of the most important assets we possess linked to health benefits, mitigating climate change, reducing stress and, for the past year, an important social meeting place. Hundreds of policies are linked to open space, but little actual research has been undertaken on how they can make a direct impact on promoting lifelong active habits for children.

will be carrying out a pioneering piece of research to better understand the principles of Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) and how green spaces can be designed to provide the opportunities for children to develop their FMS. There will be an in-depth analysis on routines, activities and habits formed in the open spaces across the Houlton development and how they contribute to practicing and facilitating FMS. 69

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Vestre An Introduction to Vestre’s New Habitats Range for Biodiversity 21 April 2022, 11am Parks and green spaces can be important habitats in our towns and cities, and biodiversity is vital for all of us because it makes life as we know it possible. Yet the future of a million species of animals, plants, and fungi is now under threat, and we are probably heading for the sixth mass extinction of natural/biological diversity. We must preserve what natural diversity we still have through more knowledge and better protection. In collaboration with experts in the areas of Palaeontology and Biology, Vestre has studied how we can increase biodiversity through innovative furniture design and interventions. Through this approach, research-based knowledge has been applied to the development of new design concepts. High biodiversity is dependent on varied habitats and urban areas can contribute to this by letting nature be nature and by giving plants, animals, and fungi the time and space they need to complete their entire life cycle. Our aim is to work towards greater awareness and reverse the negative trend of biodiversity loss through functional outdoor furniture that supports natural processes, such as the degradation of fallen timber. Many insect species are in decline because of a lack of habitats and food sources in urban areas - yet an apparently lifeless log can hide a teeming universe of flora and fauna in microscopic habitats. If we are to take care of nature, we must realise that are a part of it, and we must understand more about it. We also need to appreciate that natural systems are often small, disordered, and in the process of breaking down. Through this approach, we have developed 70

outdoor furniture that will help to increase biodiversity in urban spaces – Vestre Habitats. During this webinar, you will learn more about the urgent need for action in our urban areas if we’re to halt the destruction of biodiverse habitats and turn the urban jungle into spaces that teem with life. We’ll look at a number of test site case studies, where clients are helping us put users at the heart of our development process through real-life testing. You’ll also meet the designers behind this inventive range that is aimed at both us and our fellow creatures. We’ll consider the designers’ thinking and how their initial enthusiasm led to the creation of these unique products. If we are to prevent a sixth mass extinction, we must develop greater awareness, engagement, and alternative courses of action. Vestre Habitats represents the start of a project to safeguard biodiversity throughout our urban spaces.

Vectorworks Site modelling – beyond the basics 1 March 2022, 11am Working in BIM comes with its own rewards, but also new challenges, and one of these is 3D modelling of the site. I’m sure, though, that if you’ve already started using a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) in your workflow, you can see the benefits. To be free from the restrictions of working only with planar objects and instead approach the surface as an organic, freely malleable object is exciting and liberating. Even if you’re not actively working in 3D, a site model can be incredibly useful. Create one at the beginning of stage 1 and use it solely to extract more information than you get from a top plan.

You can create a shade analysis, get an overview of the water runoff, create a slope analysis, and even analyse different geological horizons of the site, if you’ve added this to the model. In Vectorworks, the site model is created as a TIN model (Triangulated Irregular Network). One of the advantages with this is that you’re actually having two models – one for the existing site and one for the proposed. The difference between these then gives you an accurate calculation of the cut and fill of the project. We have a few tools – the grade tool and the site modifier tool – dedicated to site modelling, but the most powerful and versatile ways of modelling comes from understanding some more general objects. If you get to grips with the concepts of these, you’ll get the freedom to model as ‘real life’ instead of with an idealised ‘would be nice’ approach. A quick example: if you’re working on a plaza with existing building around it, you’ll have different threshold levels to take into consideration for the different buildings – your model would then need to reflect this. By using 3D polys, you can tweak any planar modifiers to reflect these differences. In our next webinar, we’ll be going into more detail of a site modelling workflow – looking at how to use the model both for analysis and for final output. If you’re already familiar with the basics, then this session is for you. We’ll look at extracting edges and using NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines) curves (not as scary as they sound) to create site modifiers. We’ll look at how to build steps into slopes and model them to get a correct cut and fill. We’ll look at how to create root protection areas that create impenetrable borders and protect the trees from being ‘run over’ in the design process. This will definitely be a session you’ll want to revisit to remind yourself of tips and tricks when working in 3D.

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Strand and delivered. The Strand is at the epicentre of Liverpool and surrounded by Grade II listed buildings. The two-kilometre street is a major artery connecting locals and tourists to the historic Waterfront, the Queensway Tunnel, James Street railway station, Mersey ferries, public spaces, retail, and restaurants. Delivered by a dedicated team, working collaboratively to exacting standards of design ingenuity and an environmentally conscious planning and professional execution and implementation strategy.

Above images courtesy of Craig Mitchell at BCAL.

Project: Liverpool City Centre Connectivity: The Strand Phase 1 Client: Liverpool City Council. Landscape Architects: BCA Landscape, Liverpool. Lead Consultant/Engineers: Amey. Contractors: GRAHAM Construction. Paving Materials Supplier: Hardscape Products Ltd. Bespoke Benches Manufacturer: IP Surfaces Ltd. Main materials supplied: Kellen Breccia and Liscio Tagenta E paving. Drainjoint permeable system. Grey Montemuro granite Artscape benches with Iroko Hardwood timber slats and framework. For further information on all our paving products and bespoke street furniture please visit: www.hardscape.co.uk or telephone: 01204 565 500. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THIS PROJECT: https://campus.landscapeinstitute.org/event/li-webinar-green-infrastructure-exposed/

Landscape Journal Spring 2022: Whose landscape is it?

Articles inside

Introducing newly elected Fellows of the LI

Creating safer spaces in the public realm

Spring Update

The Environment Act

Ethics in Practice: Creating a new Code of Practice for LI members

Beauty, diversity and design highlighted at LI AGM

Building research links

Conference: ‘Future History: teaching history in landscape schools’

Reading Green Unpleasant Land

Statues Redressed

Black Landscapes Matter

Auditing Accessibility

Ramp Rage

Intersectionality in the design of landscape

Not all cyclists are Lycra-clad ironmen: A brief introduction to human-centred infrastructure design

Queer Spaces

Aberfeldy – a case study of innovative engagement with young people

Making Space for Girls

Looking at inclusion in London

Slow steps in the move to gender parity

Building an inclusive generation of designers

Inclusive Environments Conference

COP26 - next steps

Locked up and locked out

Making COP26 Count all year round

Designing for Diversity and democracy