February 2007-December 2008


Introduction

This Business Plan sets out the rationale for investment of ERDF Objective 1 Funds in the Green Streets project. The project was originally developed and has been successfully delivered in RedRoseForest in Greater Manchester.

The project is targeted at improving the environmental quality in key areas of Merseyside that have environmental deficit and involving local people in long term consultation and involvement in making the changes to their local area.

The project uses innovative software and an approach to community engagement that has worked well to deliver sustained and valued environmental improvements in areas where it has been delivered.

The total project has a value of over £402,000 with support from Forestry Commission as well as local authorities and LSP’s.

Greenstreets helps to deliver National, Regional and local strategic priorities ranging from Green Infrastructure improvements to improving Liveability.

The Project Aim

Green Streets aims to reduce environmental deficit, increase community cohesion and demonstrate the efficacy of improvements in Green infrastructure to help create sustainable regeneration in urban areas by:

  • Targeting the project at areas of greatest need
  • Creating a green backdrop to the urban setting, enhancing the physical appearance of streets and providing a range of benefits to health and wellbeing
  • Developing a community’s sense of ownership over where they live and work and giving them the power to change to their neighbourhood
  • encouraging community interaction, allowing local people to get involved in the design of their scheme and helping residents to lead on the consultation process and in long term stewardship of schemes
  • providing residents with new skills in the area of consultation, resource procurement, project delivery and project maintenance
  • making urban areas more attractive to inward investment, inward migration and stemming the flow of outward migration by creating high quality street environments
  • Demonstrating the efficacy of the approach to “mainstream” regeneration organisations.

Project Description

Once viewed as the ‘lipstick’ on an urban area, urban greenery now has a well-established and respected reputation for tackling environmental problems associated with city living – air pollution and noise pollution for example. By having a positive effect upon the local environment in urban areas, greenery also helps to improve the health of those living in urban communities – reducing the ‘triggers’ to ill health.

Green Streets is using urban greenery to tackle other problems that are not directly related to health. Greening projects can have a great impact upon the local economy and community spirit, provided the schemes are well planned and designed to meet the needs of the individual communities.

Businesses within well-greened areas stand a higher chance of attracting customers and skilled employees than those within less green areas. This in turn boosts the economy of the whole area, as new businesses are attracted and greater investment occurs.

What the project is:

Green Streets is an initiative that uses urban tree planting as a mechanism to improve the quality of life for people in our towns and cities. Green Streets works at the heart of the community with residents, businesses and partner organisations to promote the value of greenery as a means of tackling a range of social, health and economic issues. We produce sustainable tailor-made greening schemes to meet the very personal needs of each community.

However the basis of this project is very much orientated to the needs and aspirations of people living in areas of environmental deficit, helping them to take control of their local environment, creating improvements that improve not just their quality of life but also that of all residents in an area. In addition it has been proven time and again that this approach builds community cohesion, improved community safety and can act as a catalyst for other community based projects and programmes.

Urban Greenery - Benefits to local community:

The effect that greenery has upon a community greatly depends on the way in which it is delivered and maintained.

On a very basic level, planting greenery within a community can enhance the street scene, detract from aesthetic problems like graffiti and vandalism, improve residents’ perception of their neighbourhood and encourage local pride.

The impact of Green Streets within communities goes way beyond the aesthetic, stimulating communication between neighbours, encouraging a sense of community and providing common ground for many different people.

Following the delivery of Green Streets projects many residents have reported that not only has the appearance of their street improved but they also know and interact with a greater number of people living there. This is the result of the Green Streets public meetings, consultations carried out by local people and participation in planting / celebration events (a mainstay of the Green Streets process).

Encouraging local people to assist with the planting and future maintenance of urban greenery can also have an impact on other aspects of community life. Residents claim to feel an increased sense of ownership and control over where they live as a result of their personal involvement in their respective greening projects.

This is especially noticeable with groups within the community who traditionally struggle to feel any ownership over their local area, such as children and young people. For one particular street tree-planting project, children from a residential facility for young people with behavioural problems were invited to take part in the planting event. Not only did the children stay for most of the day to help plant the trees they also regularly watered the trees during the first summer after planting. Not one of the trees has been vandalised five years after the project was established.

Green Streets provides opportunities for residents to learn a variety of new skills through their involvement in consultation, resource procurement and project maintenance and building up working relationships with authority partners. Residents are also given the opportunity to develop their IT skills with the Green Streets CD-ROM. The Green Streets CD-ROM is a community engagement tool that enables residents to see what their street would look like with a variety of greening elements on it. The package works by simply taking a digital image of the street scene, loading this on to a PC or laptop and then transposing greenery onto the street picture. (Appendix 1).

Where it will be allocated:

The project will be directed at mainly at pathway and New Heartlands Housing Market Renewal Initiative areas on Merseyside. It will cover and has the support of all 5 local authorities.

There are links to a number of projects managed by The Mersey Forest Partnership, including The Mersey Forest Phase III, the Timber Network project, the Brownfield Land Recycling project (all ERDF funded), and The Mersey Forest Skills Scheme (ESF funded). The work links in to the local authority trees and Woodlands Plans and also the Urban Tree Strategy for The Mersey Forest. The project has potential to link to the emerging City Region Plan Environment Action.

The project will complement programmes such as Operation Eden, New Heartlands, Home zones and Neighbourhood Renewal as well as local health and activity Strategies such as the Active Liverpool Strategy.

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Need for the Project

The need for the project is mainly focused on two areas;

Local environmental deficit linked to deprivation. – Our most deprived areas are also areas that often display poor environment quality that reinforces the image of the area as being run down and neglected. Green Streets aims to target these areas and start to enable environmental improvements.

Community Engagement – the long term sustainability of the environmental improvements can only be achieved through effective community engagement and involvement. This is the main cost area of this project. Green Streets seeks to build long term involvement by local people in the project, helping them to develop a wide range of skills and community structures (whether informal or legally constituted) that not only assist in the development and delivery of Green Streets but can also be used by the community for a wide range of other environmental or non- environmental programmes,

The Green Streets programme is a development of the existing work in The Mersey Forest that supports urban tree planting and long term stewardship of MerseyForest sites. However this programme is a significant enhancement on current provision in that it provides much greater opportunities for involvement by local people and is strictly targeted at the areas of greatest need in the area.

At present there is no urban tree planting programme focussed on the pathway and HMRI areas. This is due to a lack of resources focussed on this type of activity at present. However there is good evidence of the benefits that this work can deliver.

Green Streets is part of a strategic and multifunctional approach to greenspace planning and management. The green infrastructure in urban and urban-fringe areas includes trees, parks, gardens, canal, road and rail corridors, housing landscapes and other green open spaces. There is increasing evidence of the economic value this Green Infrastructure, through its stimulation of investment and its critical role in enhancing quality, changing image and underlining competitiveness of place. Green infrastructure can also provide a wide range of functional benefits such as shelter and improved energy efficiency of buildings, dispersed pollution filtration and improved air and water quality, reduced storm water run-off, lower local flood risk and more accessible wildlife habitats for people to enjoy. There is also clear evidence that a green and leafy local environment reduces stress, improves public health and increases productivity amongst the people who live and work there. For all these reasons, functional green infrastructure is able to serve as the natural life support system for towns and cities.

Some of the issues that have led to the development of Green Streets on Merseyside are:

  • In the 1970s Merseyside lost over 100,000 urban trees through Dutch Elm disease alone; these were never replaced. The trees were often in areas that are now seen as being environmentally deficient and deprived – this project can help to restore the green infrastructure that once existed in these areas, though the scale of this intervention means that we are making a small contribution to the restoration.
  • Poor environment and access to environment is very often linked to areas of economic deprivation. Whilst green infrastructure may not be top priority in regenerating these areas, there is a good body of evidence that it can play an important role in sustainable regeneration.
  • The value of properties in deprived areas is depressed by the reputation of the area, the economic condition and the image of the area. Research on Merseyside by the Valuation Office has shown that having a good quality environment adjacent to “deprived” areas can lift property values. We are not seeking to create house price “booms” but to prevent housing market failure, by helping to create attractive places to live that offer a good quality of life, where people want to live.
  • People in environmentally deficient areas have as much desire and right to good quality local environments and Green Streets provides an opportunity for providing some environmental as well as social equity with other urban areas. There are clear issues of social and environmental justice associated with the delivery of the Green Streets programme.
  • Greening is not seen as a key element of other mainstream infrastructure and regeneration projects. This is mainly because it is seen as an optional extra, possibly the last thing to be planned and the most likely to have its budget cut when there are other project budget overruns. Green Streets as a project seeking to develop urban Green infrastructure tries to put across the message that Green Infrastructure needs to be:
  • Designed holistically - Like our transport system, green infrastructure should be designed to link diverse green space elements into a system that functions as a whole, rather than as separate, unrelated parts.
  • Planned comprehensively - Like our electrical and telecommunication systems, our green space systems need to be planned comprehensively to provide ecological, social and economic benefits, functions, and values.
  • Laid out strategically - Like our roads our green space systems need to be laid out strategically to cross administrative boundaries.
  • Planned and implemented publicly - Like our transportation systems, our green infrastructure systems should be planned and implemented with input from and involvement of the public, including community organisations and private landowners. This is a fundamental aspect of The Mersey and RedRoseForests and indeed all CommunityForests.
  • Grounded in the principles and practices of diverse professions - Like the design and planning of transport systems, green space systems should be based on sound science and should build on the knowledge of professional disciplines such as landscape ecology, community forestry, urban and regional planning, and landscape architecture – no one profession has all the answers.
  • Funded up-front - Like other infrastructure systems, our green space systems need to be funded as a primary public investment. In other words, green infrastructure should be funded with other essential services, rather than with money that is left over after all other services have been provided.

In addition, this project will help to fulfil the demands for such projects that The Mersey Forest Team receives from community groups and community representatives. At present there are limited resources to respond to this demand.

This project will increase the resources available and enable targeting of resources more effectively in order to deliver long term benefits to communities and local economies.

Without this project it is unlikely that the opportunities for community engagement in urban greening and the influencing of other urban regeneration programmes will be available; with a loss to the local communities in environmental, social and economic terms.

Project Objectives

Green Streets will operate over all 5 Merseyside authorities and will deliver the following outputs

  • 400 urban trees planted
  • 20 Communities supported to secure long term benefits for their involvement in Green Streets as a mechanism for both economic regeneration and community cohesion.
  • 2ha of habitat managed/enhanced
  • 5 Km of Transport routes improved
  • 2 New jobs, 1 safeguarded
  • 20 Women receiving training

The new jobs created and safeguarded will be those for the running and development of the project.

Green Streets will focus on areas that have;

  • Poor environmental quality
  • Opportunities to make improvements
  • Local support to make the improvements

The project will look at all opportunities for urban tree planting. Planting will not always be possible in streets due to engineering and highways constraints, but opportunities will be taken to make use of vacant land on streets, grot spots, public land adjacent to streets and any other land that can be planted and will add to the environmental quality of an area.

A further objective of the project will be the use and development of the Green Streets software that is a fundamental part of the success to date of the project. The software has been developed so as to be simple to use but provides an excellent visual representation of how environmental changes can be made and what impact they may have.

Project Organisation and Management

The accountable body will be CFNW. A Merseyside Green Streets Advisory board made up a of a range of advisors from the 5 local authority areas, community representatives, engineers, utility managers and The Mersey Forest Team will provide guidance, advice and support to the accountable body.

CFNW will employ one programme coordinator, support will be brought in from outside organisations.

Line management of the staff will be through The Mersey Forest Team Community Development Officer with the support of the Green Streets Manager within CFNW.

The development of the new officer will be aided by the knowledge on delivery of Green Streets that exists within CFNW and by the understanding of the Merseyside context provided by The Mersey Forest Team.

For further details contact:

The MerseyForest Offices

Risley Moss

Ordnance Avenue

Birchwood

Warrington

WA3 6QX

Tel: 01925 816217

Fax: 01925 821793

Appendix 1: Greenstreets Software

In recognition of a need for a visualisation aid to present proposals for change to community groups, Green Streets pioneered the creation and development of Green Streets software as a CD-ROM based product.

The Green Streets software in its present form is an interactive CD-ROM product, distributed as a PC-only Macromedia Director projector. Allowing the user to work either with a stock background image, or to load a photographic scene of their own, the software provides a library of scene elements (trees, plants, street furniture etc) which can be composited into the scene, to visualize environmental improvements.

The software overlays a range of specific trees and generic street furniture onto digital photographs of the road street or area being looked at, and does so in a way that gives a true, perspective correct, view. The real beauty of the software is that it is very quick and easy to use by untrained users compared to CAD packages or virtual reality visualisations.(using a laptop and digital camera it is possible in five minutes for a community to see how their street could be improved).