Green Infrastructure Planning: Reintegrating Landscape in Urban Planning

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Why Do We Need Green Infrastructure?

Green infrastructure encompasses many different spaces and activities. It includes where we take our children to play on a Sunday afternoon, the spaces where we see ducks and squirrels when living in the city, and the areas in which many seek peace, quiet or relaxation after a busy week. For my part, these activities all take place in Heaton Park in north Manchester; this location provides recreational and leisure activities and access to 642 acres of nature in an urban setting. It is also less than five minutes’ walk from my house. All of these factors are key principles when discussing green infrastructure.

Heaton Park is used to highlight the multiple benefits of green infrastructure, and to illustrate that it can be something very simple: a park. It can also be something more complicated, a reconstructed wetland for example, as the following chapters will explore. Thus, when we talk about ‘green infrastructure’ this book argues it is something we are all inherently familiar with, although we might not give it much thought or use that terminology.

Any discussion of green infrastructure therefore starts with the question: what does it constitute? This depends on who you are and where you are from. In my experience it comprises trees, green spaces, waterways, rivers and lakes, meadows and woodlands that are part of our urban areas. However, it is also the forests, moorlands, river systems and coastlines that populate our wider landscapes. In addition to these natural spaces, green infrastructure can be thought of as the man-made, i.e. managed parklands, formal gardens, allotments, canal paths, and the green walls and roofs that we see increasingly across our cities. Thus, green infrastructure is the wide range of green, blue and open spaces that we interact with in our urban, urban-fringe and rural landscapes. Due to such variability, green infrastructure can be thought of as a jack-of-all-trades term in landscape and urban planning, as it encompasses the spaces that are, at the most basic level, not made of concrete or bricks. Moreover, how we interact with and experience these various green spaces is key to how we value and plan for the landscapes around us.

At its heart, green infrastructure constitutes the places, the elements, the experiences and feelings, and the benefits that we derive from the physical landscape around us. This does not mean we disregard aspects of the built infrastructure, i.e. grey infrastructure such as roads or buildings, but focus more directly on the ecological resources, which we see around us. Consequently, it has proven difficult to arrive at a definitive record of what aspects of the environment can be considered as green infrastructure, although Natural England provided a thorough list in their 2009 guidance. This is both an asset and a drawback. It allows those interested in ‘landscape’ to draw on a range of examples to promote the development of green infrastructure. Those less sold on its value, however, point to a lack of clarity about what green infrastructure is and how it should be used. To address this, there is a growing evidence base supporting investment in green infrastructure as an approach to landscape and urban management within planning, among architectural and landscape professionals and even in community discussions.

This book sets out to explain what green infrastructure is, how we should be using or investing in it, what problems there are with this process, and how we can use the knowledge to create better places to live, work and recreate using green infrastructure. This is a complex process, and indeed one that requires an understanding of the various political, economic, socio-cultural and ecological factors that influence development. Whilst this text does not assume it can or will provide the solution to how best to ‘do’ green infrastructure, it will set out why we should, how we can and what benefits it can provide. It draws on over a decade of experience researching, teaching and implementing green infrastructure projects in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia, and a corresponding engagement with the policy, practice, design and financial aspects of landscape enhancement.

Providing the foundations for this discussion, this chapter sets out where the ideas of green infrastructure planning have developed from, and shows how greenways, landscape ecology, sustainable communities and, more recently, ecosystem services and Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) have influenced its use. It introduces the key principles of green infrastructure, namely: connectivity, access to nature, human-environmental interactions, the value of nature and multi-functionality. It goes on to link these principles to the disciplines that work with the concept: planning, architecture, landscape, ecology, engineering, environmental management and sustainable place-making advocates. The chapter concludes by outlining the key themes of scale, the scope of investment and how different people use green infrastructure in policy and practice, which structure the discussions in subsequent chapters.

Chapter 2 debates the ways in which green infrastructure is linked to the physical layout of our landscapes and how connectivity with, and between, people and nature is beneficial to society, the economy and the environment. This discussion looks at how different approaches to investment in green infrastructure leads to the design of landscapes that offer multiple benefits simultaneously. Chapter 3 extends this debate focussing on how people interact with and perceive the landscapes around them. This includes a discussion of how different socio-cultural and ecological factors influence interactions with the environment, and asks whether it also limits the value people place on green infrastructure at a local, city and wider scale. Chapter 4 reflects on a fundamental question for many green infrastructure advocates: what does it look like? This outlines the various interpretations of green infrastructure by different stakeholders highlighting how the diversity of investment in landscape planning addresses localised and societal needs and aspirations. The following section, Chapter 5, discusses the scale at which green infrastructure is delivered to explain how bigger, bolder and more innovative interventions in urban greening can be beneficial to our cities. This focusses on the role regeneration, the management of water resources and the ways in which ecological systems can be managed to promote sustainability. Chapter 6 utilises the examples presented in Chapters 1–5 to debate how current policy, guidance and practice influence the development of green infrastructure. This chapter reflects on the variety of advocates coming from planning, landscape, development and community groups supporting green infrastructure, and how this is affecting delivery. The final chapter draws on the content of the previous chapters and outlines a set of policy, practice and financing proposals for those interested in working with green infrastructure. These are key to avoid the mistakes of previous investment and to promote inclusive, innovative and evidenced approaches to landscape management. This final chapter also asks what and where next for green infrastructure, and importantly how we get there.

To contextualise this discussion, it is both necessary and informative to reflect on what green infrastructure is, where the concept has developed from, how we use it, and what benefits it provides for people, society and the environment.

What is green infrastructure?

When discussing green infrastructure, it is important to remember that our understanding of it is shaped by the socio-economic, ecological and political context in which we work. Thus, there is a corresponding need to understand how differences in geography and time influence interpretations of green infrastructure. Consequently, when debating what green infrastructure is we must remember to think about the location we are investing in, what is there already, what difference the project will make to the existing landscape and how an investment in landscape changes over time.

At the centre of this debate is an understanding of what green infrastructure is. This means both conceptually in terms of definitions, as shown in Table 1, and also physically, in the types of spaces and investments that can be considered as ‘green infrastructure’. The latter is significant to organisations looking to invest in urban greening and landscape improvements, as they need to know what they are investing in and what it will look like; something that landscape architects do well and planners maybe less so!

To date, several definitions have been offered outlining what various academics and planning institutions consider green infrastructure to be. A selection is listed in Table 1 for comparison highlighting how they differ in scope, brevity and in the types of landscapes proposed as ‘green infrastructure’. Although these vary in scale and socio-economic and ecological value, they do show a comparability in terms of the key principles and landscape resources they use. Understanding the differences in the way that people view green infrastructure is a good starting point to increase our awareness of how it should be used. It also helps to move beyond the simplistic view of green infrastructure as being grass, gardens and trees, as different definitions allow us to focus on the variation in ecological, social and economic benefits that green space can provide.

Table 1

Green infrastructure definitions

Variation of the type shown in Table 1 suggests that our understanding of what green infrastructure is has changed over time, and is being influenced by the growing evidence base of research, policies, guidance notes and projects that are supporting the use of the concept. What we also see is a focussing of understanding around a discrete number of principles, thematic areas and types of landscape features that are being considered as green infrastructure in mainstream planning. These appear to transcend geographical and disciplinary boundaries and help to generate buy-in from different organisations for green infrastructure. Moreover, the key principles outlined in the green infrastructure literature are, as noted above: connectivity, access to nature, the development of an integrated form of landscape and urban planning, a multi-disciplinary approach to management, a growing awareness of the multi-scalar benefits of investment in landscape, and finally the establishment of multi-functional social, ecological and economic benefits from a green infrastructure resource. Each of these