Developing a green infrastructure strategy

Green infrastructure strategies need to link to policy making and routes for implementation at a range of different levels.

A map showing the green infrastructure in the city of Gloucester. Copyright CABE and Morag Myerscough

Key issues include that they focus on all green infrastructure assets regardless of ownership, tackling the urban heat island effect and understanding different wildlife habitats.

A good starting point is CABE's open space strategy guide. However, green infrastructure strategies need to focus on all green space and water environments regardless of ownership and consider a wide range of possible functions for them.

Regional spatial strategies can embed green infrastructure in regional policy. For example in the North West a region-wide approach successfully employs planning and advocacy to embed green infrastructure as a regeneration and sustainable development tool. Their strategy for the North West includes a policy on green infrastructure which states that: ‘Plans, strategies, proposals and schemes should: identify, promote and deliver multi-purpose networks of green space, particularly where there is currently limited access to natural green space or where connectivity between these places is poor; and integrate green infrastructure provision within existing and new development, particularly within major development and regeneration schemes.’

At a sub-regional level, green infrastructure strategies can be particularly powerful in ensuring a cohesive vision and strategy across administrative boundaries. They can incorporate a number of strategies including those on green spaces, water assets and trees. Considering the role of green infrastructure in energy production and supply can also usefully be considered at this scale. The South Essex Green Grid strategy provides a framework for planning and managing green infrastructure at a sub-regional scale, as does the Cambridge sub-region green infrastructure strategy.

Photo by Green infrastructure north west

North West Green Infrastructure

The Liverpool and Manchester city regions have produced a challenging green infrastructure strategy which calls on decision-makers and investors (both public and private) to take integrated, committed and sustained action to ensure that economic growth advances with integrated social and environmental benefits.

Strategies can:

• set out the context and identify the priorities for improving the delivery of green infrastructure, with a range of case studies at different scales, for example the Liverpool and Manchester strategy for the strategy developed by the Liverpool and Manchester city regions
• establish partnerships and priorities, undertake a data audit and resource mapping, functionality mapping, a needs and opportunities assessment and result in an intervention plan (for example the North West guide)
• recognise the functional importance of green and blue infrastructure in adapting and mitigating climate change
• demonstrate where components are highly functional and need protecting, as well as where there are needs and opportunities to improve functionality either by creating or enhancing the green infrastructure.

At a city level, the strategy needs to establish managing the urban heat island effect as a priority. Partners could include representatives from the primary care trust to reflect the health benefits and implications.

The intervention plan would need to:

• protect areas such as city centre parks which are critical environmental capital for moderating urban temperatures
• protect water courses, flood plains and areas with permeable soils which help to manage flood risk
• ensure no net loss of green cover
• highlight areas for additional greening such as the public realm in city centres, areas with low green cover and high socio-economic deprivation and/or human vulnerability
• stress the need for improving green provision during urban restructuring and new development
• seek sustainable water supplies to irrigate vegetation, for example by designing in sustainable water use during regeneration and new development.

The strategy also needs to incorporate ecological networks. These can be built on landscape ecological theory where the landscape is composed of patches, corridors and the matrix - or dominant landscape (which in cities is residential areas.) This would help to incorporate biodiversity into wider plans by identifying synergies and conflicts between the multiple functions that green infrastructure can provide.

Plans can be informed by an awareness of the rareness of different habitats. New linkages can be made between these habitats and species likely to be using these networks in a changing climate can be identified. That means using both habitat and species biodiversity action plans.

Green infrastructure strategies also need to identify large-scale barriers to species movement. For example, motorways surrounding and connecting conurbations, and especially those with an east-west orientation, can affect northwards shifts in range. Strategies can also draw on landscape character areas to inform opportunities for the creation of new habitats.

Priority: integrate green infrastructure into urban areas
Tags: green infrastructure, regions and subregions, cities and towns