Nature of the City

Green Infrastructure from the Ground Up

Tom Armour, Andrew Tempany

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000033779
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Arquitectura general

This is a practical guide to delivering green infrastructure from the ground up and bringing nature in to the built environment. Exploring the process of delivery through an array of design approaches and case studies, it demystifies the concept and provides the tools for practical implementation - highlighting the challenges and opportunities on both small and large projects.

04
MAKING IT HAPPEN: EMBEDDING NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS IN EACH WORK STAGE OF A PROJECT

Opening photo

Incorporating trees into urban design to striking effect in Shenzhen, China.

This chapter sets out a suite of guiding steps to effectively embed nature-based solutions into projects from (pre) inception through to completion, adding detail to the principles introduced in Chapter 3. We have organised this section broadly in relation to the RIBA work stages, for ease of reference and so that those developing projects can get a clear understanding of which processes occur when, and where effort should most usefully be directed.

SPATIAL PLANNING AND VISIONING (GI POLICY-MAKING AND FORMULATION)

Integrating and aligning with existing mechanisms and policies is a key first step in an age of limited public funds and resources. Is effective provision for nature-based and green infrastructure (GI) planning and design already made in the spatial plan for your area? Is additional protection needed? What are the gaps? Can you respond to the macro or ‘super policy’ landscape of big-picture concepts on the international stage, for example the Sustainable Development Goals and others?

Smart thinking is an important approach for spatial planners and their consultants. Decisions must be grounded in evidence of need; plans and proposals need to be justified; above all, they must be achievable. Having a robust and effective plan will help to address later challenges from developers or other stakeholders who may hold different interests. Well-informed conversations and negotiation between planners and developers are vital so that expectations are mutually aligned later, during the consenting process.

An intelligent gap analysis and identification of how nature-based solutions and GI are already addressed in the spatial plan can provide a great grounding for making nature-based policies and proposals that complement, rather than duplicate, existing work.¹ It is therefore important that this baseline exercise is as thorough as possible, to maximise the opportunity and reduce the risk of abortive work.

Consider whether existing policies are primarily regulatory rather than facilitating or project based (providing an opportunity for positive action to help deliver an area’s aspirations for regeneration or landscape scale biodiversity). Does existing work do the job you need and provide a starting point (for example, a properly integrated and outcome-orientated landscape or townscape strategy) or is it high level, in need of further layers of detail to make things happen? For example, a very strategic city- or county-wide GI evidence base, while providing a vital framework in setting the scene for projects to deliver nature-based networks, is often of such a high level that additional detailed GI planning and analysis will be needed to supplement this and to provide the detailed rationale for a project. This kind of approach – drilling down in terms of scale and granularity and providing additional layers of detail – can be thought of as like the RIBA work stages of design development, iteration and evolution.

Understanding existing proposals and projects in an area is useful to avoid duplication of limited resources and effort. Even at the earliest stages of a project, joined-up thinking and understanding existing projects will help to generate effective working with stakeholders and partners.

Certain geographical areas may have a complex character, featuring many interrelated or competing priorities, and lots of stakeholders and partners already working on potentially complementary (and potentially diverging) projects. Long-term visions for an area can require a specific sub-vision or strategy, rather than just a set of policies. This is commonly called a green infrastructure strategy or action plan and is a good way to coordinate resources under a common aim, as a road map or vision for achieving nature-based projects which respond to identified needs and deficits.²

Detailed, area-specific green infrastructure strategies are effective when they are pragmatic and geared towards delivering specific projects. They should include consideration of capital costs and future revenue expenditure, identified project delivery partners/models and funding streams and will have a long-term, flexible view towards on-the-ground delivery and phasing.

They should be driven by a series of planning and design principles to guide the direction future projects can take in delivering the network. If they are flexible enough, they can enable project delivery over a broad period of time, recognising that delivery of the vision will be incremental as funds become available (as seen in the Los Angeles River Revitalization, see page 74). This forms a road map for delivering nature-based solutions.

It should also be remembered that projects need not always be capital projects. They could be concerned with communication, interpretation and outreach or with activity planning and programming to embed community use of the GI network. Alternatively, they can simply entail changes to green-space management that provide benefits in a strategic way. All are equally valuable in making ideas work on the ground, and it’s worth taking a flexible approach to planning, that is, designing projects to be as adaptable to future change as possible. This can often be usefully informed by targeted stakeholder engagement – businesses, operators, communities, user groups and potential users – and effective, intelligent audience development to respond to the findings of this, dovetailing with the project brief and design process.

Equally important is the evidence of need, demand or deficiency in the identification of projects and initiatives. There must be justification for undertaking these projects that withstands challenge and scrutiny, particularly if the projects are being delivered with public funds.

Evidence bases can typically be built through layering in a Geographic Information System (GIS) – a series of mapped datasets capturing environmental and socio-economic and demographic baseline data, to note patterns and to form the basis for spatial analysis and decision-making.

GIS can form a valuable basis for making creative decisions about visioning and project identification. It can be helpful to think about this needs analysis in terms of a set of environmental or social functions (spatial attributes or ‘services’ which can be provided by a GI network) to frame proposals that respond to specific needs that resonate locally. Functions are inevitably specific to an individual locality and its character, but may consider some, or all, of the following:

access to green space/access for healthy green recreation/access for all

provision of environments for physical and mental health, and healthy ecosystems

nature conservation, habitat provision and protection

providing, conserving or enhancing a landscape experience

conserving historic character and legacy

mitigating extreme weather events and providing microclimates

productive landscapes - for food/fuel/green energy/materials for craft industries/green construction

contribution to ecosystems’ functionality.

Evidence is vital for a project’s success. There should be some clear basis or rationale for projects – for example, that they are grounded in an identified need and that the project will be measurably effective in answering such a need. Analysing projects against a set of environmental or social benefits, such as improved air quality or other ‘functions’, can be a helpful and transparent way to achieve this. To put it in an architectural design context, ‘form follows function’ – the GI functions are the framework for the proposals.

This evidence baseline is important later for creating robust business cases which can withstand challenge and scrutiny in the face of competing priorities for limited resources. It is also a useful layer to have when projects may be dependent on the development sector, to provide justification when seeking developer investment and contributions.

Evidence can be gathered in numerous ways. GIS projects, apps and associated spatial analysis are powerful ways to state the case. Spatially referenced map layers stand up well to interrogation and can be used to build evidence anchored in robust sources of information. They can also be a powerful basis for partnership working and for sharing information in a mutually beneficial way.

Case study: Hertfordshire and GreenArc Strategic Green Infrastructure Plans

This is a notable example of an almost entirely GIS-driven evidence base for spatial planning for green infrastructure. The project was commissioned from LUC by Hertfordshire County Council in 2010 as a partnership with the Hertfordshire local authorities and the authorities making up the GreenArc Partnership around north London and Essex.

Eleven GI functions were defined as the basis by which to measure provision, performance, barriers and therefore deficit using an extensive array of GIS layers. These functions considered various themes highly relevant to planning multifunctional green infrastructure networks, including access to recreation (such as addressing barriers), environments for physical and mental health, nature conservation, landscape experience, historic environment and legacy (Figure 4.1), flood management and sound ecosystems. The added value came in the interrogation of the GIS data to define a comprehensive set of data queries and to generate statistics and statements in relation to GI provision, functional performance and need. This is effectively an example of intelligent GIS intuitively directing spatial planners to identification of opportunities and proposals to respond to needs. The work formed a logical, function-led response to a problem and a creative way to generate a comprehensive green infrastructure evidence base for very large spatial areas, where funds were limited.³

4.1 Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe’s mid-20th-century Water Gardens, Hemel Hempstead. The gardens were identified as a strategically important urban green infrastructure and conservation project in the Hertfordshire and GreenArc Strategic Green Infrastructure Plans due to their national significance. They have subsequently been restoredby HTA with a Heritage Lottery Fund/Big Lottery Fund Parks for People grant.

Partnership and shared vision

Partnership working is a form of stakeholder identification and analysis to build collaborations and working relationships. A collaborative approach is vital since projects tend to interlink many complex environmental strands and are interdisciplinary. No one professional does everything on such a project and it is important that they are aware of their limitations, and understand where other specialists are needed.

Partnership working is applicable at the strategic-planning scale in setting the policy landscape for projects described, but becomes even more prevalent in the detail of design, business planning and activity planning, implementation and ongoing management of the projects. This ensures they remain viable well into the future and can continue to benefit communities over the long term.

Consider the following questions:

What skills does our project need?

What are the team’s skills?

What are the skills gaps and how can they be filled?

What can other specialists bring that we cannot?

What other complementary projects are already happening in the area?

Can our projects be mutually beneficial?

Is there scope for us to work together?

What is in it for us and for them?

Profile?

Leveraging funding?

Efficiencies and reduced costs of investment?

How well do our aspirations match?

Are expectations aligned?

Are there any conflicts, and how might they be resolved?

How will management, governance and interaction work?

How will the design team work together?

How can true collaboration be best achieved?

Where does our contribution end?

What happens at project handover and to ensure the project is managed sustainably during operation (forward planning)?

What other partners need to be brought on board before we reach this stage?

Good partnership requires individuals and/or organisations coming together under a common aim to achieve a lot. Think back to the Los Angeles River Revitalization (see page 74) and the many layers of complementary organisations working together synergistically to effect huge change over time, or the effective way that supply chains are managed to produce food ‘from farm to tabl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• About the authors
• Sponsors page
• Introduction
• 01 Interweaving the human and natural worlds
• 02 A framework for green infrastructure
• 03 Key principles for nature-based solutions
• 04 Making it happen: Embedding nature-based solutions in each work stage of a project
• Final words
• Annexe
• Notes and references
• Index
• Image credits