Integrating green space into existing urban areas

In built-up urban areas it is often difficult to create significant new green spaces. This makes thinking creatively and making the best of use of existing green areas especially important.

Green space around council housing estate in Islington, London. Photo by Jane Sebire

Opportunities for designing new or improved green spaces include planting street trees, creating green roofs and walls on buildings, creating linkages to nearby green spaces, or reintroducing natural water features.

Neighbourhood renewal projects should take the chance to increase the green provision of an area. For example, the EC1 New Deal for Communities programme has been transforming public space in south Islington. Parks, streets and the landscaping of local authority housing estates have been redesigned to feel safer, look more attractive and be more popular with residents.

Some examples of action at the neighbourhood level can be seen in Manchester: Red Rose Forest and the Oxford Road Development Partnership is hoping to combine tree planting and innovative building greening along a heavily used road corridor in the Oxford Road i-tree project. The ‘Green Streets’ project is planting street trees in areas of socio-economic deprivation where there is currently little green cover. The project involves local communities in the planning process and ultimately in watering trees once they have been planted.

Improvements to existing green spaces were a central part of the successful regeneration of Augustenborg in Malmo, Denmark. Green spaces were used to create allotments, play areas and wildlife habitat.

Opportunities at the individual site scale to provide easily accessible and useable new green space for the local area should be explored, particularly in areas where there is a deficiency in access to green space.

Priority: integrate green infrastructure into urban areas
Tags: green infrastructure, public space, neighbourhoods