Exploring the need for innovation in greening urban environments: Reflecting on radical practice in Greater Manchester, UK

Abstract

The green agenda is high on the list of priorities of local, national, and global governments. In the UK, a new £40 million scheme aims to encourage a sustainable recovery alongside policies—such as the 25 Year Environment Plan—and other tools pushing more investment into the area. With this push, we are now seeing innovation in urban green infrastructure: from pocket parks, to Americanised models of community gardens both becoming more frequent across our cityscapes. This paper critically explores the rise of “radical sustainability” and the need to embrace new forms of urban green infrastructure. The focus of the paper is explicitly on enabling urban food growing in cities. We begin with an overview of the practice before proceeding to review current policy tools and, finally, reflecting on a case study in Salford. With the latter, we reflect on a model which enables larger-scale farming in the heart of one of the region’s most deprived areas. We present a case study of a multifunctional forest school in Salford, reflecting on our work in enabling the project, along its potential impacts. The multidisciplinary team, formed of an urban geographer, a contextual studies scholar, and an illustrator, present a visual methodology framework which could be replicated in future studies. In this sense, we also reflect on the use of methodologies in allowing for radical visions to be constructed and enabled within the planning system. The paper demonstrates the transformative nature of innovative greening schemes and calls for more funding to push forward the practice in the UK and beyond.

Keywords

• Urban agriculture
• green infrastructure
• planning
• regeneration
• geographical methods