9 minute read
More than the sum of our parks
Planting for the Plymouth and South Devon Community Forest, which will connect and increase canopy cover from rural areas into the heart of the city. © National Trust Images/ Paul Harris
The Future Parks Accelerator programme, which was set up by the National Trust and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, is enabling urban local authorities to rethink the role of parks and green spaces and design new ways to look after them.
‘The need of quiet, the need of air, the need of exercise … the sight of sky and of things growing seem human needs common to all.’
In 2019, as the National Trust was planning its 125th anniversary, these words from founder Octavia Hill still resonated deeply. With 84% of the UK’s population living in urban areas, the need for quality green space in our towns and cities had never been so acute. But a dramatic reduction in local government funding and capacity was threatening the quality and existence of these spaces. As an organisation that believes access to nature is a fundamental human need, we wanted to help find solutions.
We teamed up with the National Lottery Heritage Fund – the UK’s largest funder of public parks and urban natural heritage – to create the Future Parks Accelerator (FPA). Our goal was to enable urban local authorities to rethink the role of parks and green spaces and design new ways to look after them long-term with their communities and partners. We recruited a cohort of eight authorities that shared our passion for making nature-rich green spaces accessible for all their residents. They saw the opportunity to address challenges faced by urban areas around the UK and globally – climate change, low-quality local environments and, particularly, health and social inequalities. Their approach was to develop and share solutions that would help other towns and cities across the UK.
Covid brought a whole new sense of focus. Parks and green spaces took centre stage not only in the headlines, but also in people’s daily lives, especially for those without gardens. People (re)discovered the places on their doorsteps, (re)gained the simple pleasures of connecting with nature on their daily walks, and they noticed how it made them feel better.
While Covid showed that we all need access to nature near us, it also highlighted the significant inequalities of provision.
While Covid showed that we all need access to nature near us, it also highlighted the significant inequalities of provision; many neighbourhoods lack quality, accessible green space. Just looking after existing parks and green space is not enough.
As talk turned to a green economic recovery from the pandemic, this fuelled the Future Parks ambition: what role could nature play in building back healthy, resilient, thriving and just cities and towns of the future?
But as much as everything had changed, nothing had changed. Those systemic barriers persisted; local capacity and funding was even more scarce from dealing with the pandemic. It only fuelled the determination of our partner cities and towns to remain ambitious in designing nature-rich green and blue infrastructure into their recovery and future. It also galvanised partnerships across councils and sectors and with communities to harness their energy, capacity and leadership for change.
These are some of the stories from Future Parks. All the resources are freely available at www.futureparks.org.uk
Putting Communities At The Heart Of Parks
In Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP), local charity The Parks Foundation has grown to become a core partner to the new unitary authority. They bring the social and environmental mission, fundraising capability and social entrepreneurship of a charity to ensure a city’s green spaces can become a popular cause and attract money and support using sources a council cannot.
BCP Council and the Foundation developed a Green Heart Parks model, which brings together community and nature recovery in neighbourhood parks at risk of neglect. So far, this has lifted 11 community parks out of a spiral of decline, with 40 in their sights. Interventions respond specifically to the needs of local communities, such as café, toilets, family activities and events, volunteering opportunities, while also boosting biodiversity through creating wildflower meadows and planting hedgerows and trees. Communities are empowered to take a long-term role in stewardship of the space.
Camden and Islington boroughs repositioned all their parks as public health assets for the 21st century. Comprising some of the most densely populated and deprived areas in London and the UK, with high numbers of people without gardens and cars, their parks are essential ‘open-air living rooms’, and the only opportunity for many people to connect with nature. The boroughs developed a highly replicable ‘parks for health’ model, focused on: reducing barriers that prevent people from using parks; developing both universal and targeted offers for health and wellbeing in parks, including green social prescribing; and partnering with voluntary and community sector organisations to run activities and recruit participants. Their work also informs infrastructure planning and investment to ensure that spaces and facilities are designed to improve health and wellbeing.
Urban Nature Recovery
Creating space for people to connect with nature and enabling nature recovery across cities and towns is a core motivation for all FPA places. This includes easy wins, like changing maintenance regimes to create wildflower meadows from mown municipal grassland across 30–40% of a green estate. There are also more ambitious long-term plans to improve the quality and connections of a whole green infrastructure network that meets the framework and standards published in January by Natural England.
The City of Edinburgh Council became the first Scottish city to develop a Nature Network, mapping supply and demand of a range of ecosystem services provided by green space. The Linking Leith’s Parks project, delivered with the Scottish Wildlife Trust and Atkins Landscape Architects, will be the first major project driven by the Nature Network. It will design a spatial plan to connect a neighbourhood of parks in Leith, identified as one of the areas most in need of enhanced access to quality green space. The team is working hand-in-hand with the local community to develop detailed plans to make each park a nature-rich space to benefit people and wildlife. The approach will inform the development of Local Nature Recovery strategies, using this mandatory requirement as a hook to deliver greater benefit for those communities most in need, while restoring biodiversity.
Plymouth City Council is developing the UK’s first urban habitat bank to drive biodiversity net gain payments from developers into the creation of nature-rich spaces where they will most benefit people and nature across the city’s ‘Natural Grid’. This approach has been tested in the creation of a major new green lung at the heart of the city – Derriford Community Park – which aspires to be a leading centre for youth skills and training, outdoor learning and community wellbeing. Plymouth’s urban landscape is also being transformed by the new Community Forest for Plymouth and South Devon – 1,900 hectares of new forest from city centre to rural fringe will increase carbon capture across the area by 83% from current levels once fully established, supporting the city’s path to net zero.
Cities Of Nature
Birmingham City Council has put environmental justice and natural infrastructure growth at the centre of its vision and plan, Our Future City: Central Birmingham Framework 2040,¹ Having mapped the environmental and social inequalities facing communities across the city, Birmingham identified wards and neighbourhoods most in need of nature for people’s health, wellbeing and resilience. The actions to advance this environmental justice are now embedded in their exciting Future City Plan, with a programme of improvements to both existing green spaces and the creation of new ones, and green connectivity being planned with their communities.
Nature-based solutions at an urban landscape scale
Cities and towns in FPA and beyond are showing how the healthy, resilient and connected green infrastructure underpinning their places brings everyday joy and wellbeing for people living in them; but more than that, it can provide nature-based solutions to the existential problems of health and social inequalities, the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.
Of course, there is no silver bullet for sustainable funding, but FPA places have shown there are many good sources of existing and new finance to capture and blend. The benefits of access to nature and green space for everyone are a powerful motivation for many funders and investors across the public, private and philanthropic sectors.
Perhaps the most important lesson of all is the power of partnerships, within and across local government, with voluntary and private sector partners and – most importantly –communities at the heart of decisions about their green spaces. This requires a change of culture from us all and a real sense of shared vision and ambition to gain the big prize of nature rich cities and towns.
Ellie Robinson has led the National Trust’s strategic programme and partnerships on urban green space since 2016. Together with Drew Bennellick at the National Lottery Heritage Fund, she set up the Future Parks Accelerator. Previously she was Assistant Director of External Affairs at the Trust, influencing decisions on environment and land use policy, funding and practice.
