From improving public health to reducing the impact of climate change, nature offers solutions to many of the challenges we face. As part of our “Making the Most of…” series, our expert panel explored why cities are turning to urban nature.
Climate change has brought a new political imperative to greening the city. Now there’s an opportunity to make use of the multiple roles urban nature can play and encourage people to embrace messier, biodiverse urban landscapes.
The final panel event in Future of London’s Making the Most of…What we’ve got series explored how to unlock benefits from nature in our cities. Meeting at Kew Gardens, our expert panel brought perspectives from diverse backgrounds in science, politics, academia and a housing association.
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Speakers
- Professor Phil Stevenson, Head of Trait Diversity and Function, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
- Dr Meri Juntti, Associate Professor of Environmental Governance, Middlesex University
- Nicola Mathers, Chief Executive, Future of London (chair)
- Elizabeth Connelly, Senior Landscape Construction Manager, Peabody
- Cllr Deirdre Costigan, former Deputy Leader of Ealing Council, Cabinet Member for Climate Action and now MP for Ealing Southhall
Phil Stevenson, Head of Trait Diversity and Function, Kew Gardens
“We need to think carefully about maintaining our urban forest environment now and into the future… it’s about planting the right trees, in the right place, at the right time.”
It’s important that place-makers get messaging right when encouraging city residents to steward urban nature. Trees and bees are both important parts of the story of nature in the city, Phil said.
- When people have a positive experience with nature, issues such as recycling, conservation and reducing carbon emissions become more meaningful to them.
- Bees are a great example place-makers can draw on to make sure residents understand how to support biodiversity. Honeybee keeping has escalated in cities, reflecting people’s desire to ‘save the bees’. This is inadvertently threatening wild bees through competition for floral resources in the city.
- Developers need to work with natural scientists to ensure regeneration creates the conditions for nature to thrive. Kew Gardens partnered with property developer Mount Anvil to create a metric measuring if a site is sustainable for pollinators.
- London has around 8 million trees which provide multiple ecosystem services such as a refuge for wildlife, supporting pollinators, drawing down carbon, and helping to mitigate increasing temperatures and flooding.
- City-makers need to be planning for the climate we will have in 50 years. Kew Gardens are exploring which of their exotic species could help to support native ecosystems in warmer and drier climates.
Elizabeth Connelly, Senior Landscape Construction Manager, Peabody
“Let’s celebrate that landscapes do change and fall in love with the seasons again.”
Regeneration must create environments with longevity for people and place, Elizabeth said. The built environment sector is seeing an important shift to designing more diverse green spaces in conversation with residents.
- Developers should focus on creating climate resilient landscapes with a greater understanding of soil quality, formation, hydrology and biodiversity.
- Some 80% of Londoners don’t have access to private green space, so we need to make sure their local shared spaces work hard to meet their wants and needs.
- Peabody has a 160-year history of creating neighbourhoods including quality public realm to benefit people and the environment. The next 160 years will present new challenges and opportunities for us and the rest of the housing sector. We need to be ready for these.
- Housing associations are uniquely placed to work meaningfully with local people and evolve our landscapes.
- Diverse, climate resilient landscapes will look and feel different to what we’ve been used to. We want residents to get residents excited about thriving urban nature and enjoy the benefits it brings
Councillor Deirdre Costigan, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Climate Action, Ealing Council
“It’s about making nature a political priority: creating leadership, setting clear targets and putting our money where our mouth is.”
As Ealing Council’s first climate action cabinet member, Deirdre sees a renewed political imperative for urban greening. Climate change and population growth have brought urgency to the provision of green spaces.
- Urban nature is the answer to many of the core challenges cities face, including air quality, carbon emissions, flooding, wellbeing and health inequalities.
- Ealing Council’s 2022 manifesto has ‘turbocharged’ investment in nature in the borough. It has committed to creating ten new parks, including a regional park that will create a green corridor through the borough.
- Ealing is using local development to introduce new green spaces. For example, the council worked with property developer Berkeley Homes to ensure enhancing nature was central to the Green Quarter development in Southall.
- The council has also planted 19,000 trees this year and plans to grow fruit trees in every town in the borough. Redoubling their efforts in Southall and Acton is helping to drive equitable tree coverage across the borough.
- Ealing’s ‘biodiverse front gardens and balconies competition’ is encouraging residents to create wildlife-friendly private spaces.
Dr Meri Juntti, Associate Professor of Environmental Governance, Middlesex University
“Benefits don’t just flow from nature to people… they are realised through engagement.”
Equitable access to nature is about more than just people’s physical proximity to green spaces. It’s important the public sector understands how design features and social context can prevent some groups feeling ownership over spaces. This can ensure urban nature delivers for everyone living in an area.
- Whether people benefit from green spaces comes down to complex factors, such as if someone feels welcome there. People’s comfort can depend on physical features of a greenspace as well as social factors, such as fear of crime.
- Many people report feeling safer in areas with more trees, and tree cover has been linked to reduced crime rates.
- People want different things from nature and perceive it as signifying different things, according to research conducted in Acton Gardens in Ealing and Woodberry Down in Hackney. For example, thriving nature reserves may ease people’s anxiety about climate change, even for those who never visit the site.
- In mixed tenancy estates, not everyone feels that the nature present there is intended for their use. In particular, young people (15-25 years of age) often feel unwelcome in public greenspaces.
- Research has shown that spaces with more canopy cover encourage people to be active, whilst hard infrastructure such as benches and picnic areas are important for social activities.
Our conclusion: experiencing nature motivates climate action
Urban nature can help us meet many of the challenges cities face. It can provide regenerative solutions to health inequalities, flooding, air pollution, carbon emissions, declining biodiversity, and even crime. The built environment sector needs to take nature seriously as a strategy for urban management and integrate it across the board into different policy agendas.
As climate change brings a new context to urban governance, so is there need for new types of collaboration between developers, scientists and councils. Supporting natural ecosystems to be resilient in fraught circumstances requires scientific precision. And developers must work with researchers to integrate our academic understanding into new developments. Mount Anvil and Kew Garden’s pollinator value metric is a prime example of effective collaboration and Future of London hopes to see more initiatives like this.
People living in cities have an important role to play as foot soldiers of biodiversity. Even micro-gardens and balcony areas can support wildlife to thrive and create safe green corridors across the city. Ealing Council’s biodiverse balconies and gardens competition highlights this well. In many ways, biodiversity and climate change are twin challenges. People who get to experience thriving urban nature will have renewed motivation to recycle and make lifestyle changes to reduce emissions.
Embracing the messiness of nature
Ultimately, we need a culture shift, to recalibrate our understanding of what an environment that’s cared for looks like. Nature is at its healthiest when it can be messy and changing with the seasons. If we are to have a healthy planet, our urban landscapes can’t afford to look sanitised. So we need to rewire old cultural assumptions that suggest that respectability means tidiness.
Community engagement is an important tool for the sector to create strategies that resonate. It can get residents invested in stewarding nature. And it’s important to help the sector understand how parks and green spaces can be managed to unlock benefits for London’s diverse inhabitants. How do we embed signifiers that allow different people to feel like a space is for them?
Finally, it’s important to remember that mature trees provide key ecosystem support in London can be upward of 50 years old. Being a good ancestor means looking far beyond legal defects liabilities, and planting trees we can expect to be flourishing in fifty years’ time.
Read other write-ups from our event series on retrofit and making the most of public assets.
Thanks to Arup, Montagu Evans, Mount Anvil and Potter Raper for supporting the Making the Most of… What We’ve got events programme.
