Reimagining urban green spaces in a changing climate

Across England and Wales, urban green space has significantly declined over the last two decades, with many public spaces suffering the impacts of both extreme weather and shrinking local authority budgets. These issues pose a significant challenge as green assets such as public parks, woodlands, street trees and wetlands play a vital role in helping urban communities adapt to the climate crisis. 

A potential solution to this may involve changing our perception of what successful green space looks like and how we interact with urban nature. To explore these issues this article draws on expert insight from Kim Stoddart, gardening journalist and author who specialises in climate resilient gardening, Nkechi Okeke-Aru and Elliot Newton who are championing the development of resilient green spaces in Kingston Borough Council.

The impact of a changing climate is diverse and critical 

2022 was one of the hottest years on record. From droughts to flash flooding, extreme weather events have put visible pressure on urban green spaces across the UK.

“Unfortunately for us, we had one of the hottest summers for a while and so that had a real impact on some of the planting,” said Nkechi Okeke-Aru, Highstreet Recovery Lead at Kingston Borough Council.

This concern was echoed by Elliot Newton, Kingston’s Biodiversity Officer, who noted that it had “definitely been a challenging year for maintaining the green landscapes” with teams having to water plants and trees more frequently and even having to top up ponds. 

The storms and flooding events brought by warmer weather threaten green spaces as well as the safety of people, transport infrastructure and buildings. In February, Storm Eunice brought down thousands of trees causing loss of life and millions of pounds worth of damage to houses and infrastructure. 

Warming temperatures also bring ecological challenges, including the added threat of new pests such as the Mediterranean Fruit Fly and the Rose Jewel Beetle. These insects pose a serious risk to plant species across the UK and in Kingston this is already having an impact on local trees. 

“We see a lot of diseases in trees at the moment,” said Elliot. “Things like leaf miners on our Horse chestnuts or even like Dutch Elm and ash dieback are still prevalent”.

All of these impacts will result in more demanding landscape maintenance which will stretch local authority budgets further. 

These are the places we escaped to during lockdown and found shade during the summer heat wave. They support local wildlife, save money, provide important flood defences and offer vital social spaces for people of all ages. Reflecting on one of the projects in Kingston’s town centre Nkechi Okeke-Aru notes that although “this is a very urban space (…)  it’s becoming a kind of outdoor Community Centre”. Green spaces are also having an impact on urban development plans and regeneration. Policies and investment guidelines increasingly require more stringent compliance with environmental, nature and low carbon standards. One example of a policy tool that is being used for this purpose is the London Plan Policy G5 (Urban Greening) which requires any new planning development to score either 0.4 or 0.3 on the urban greening factor.

A changing view of successful greenspace

Cities are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. Kim Stoddart notes, “There has a lot been a lot of short-term thinking and there's a lot of vulnerability that's becoming quite starkly clear in cities.” 

Green spaces are a vital part of developing more sustainable, resilient urban neighbourhoods. From mown paths and drought-tolerant plants to swales and no dig gardening, there is an amazing range of techniques ready to be deployed in our green spaces to increase their resilience. 

Projects across the country have demonstrated the success of utilising some of these techniques. One example of this is Hyde Hall’s dry garden in Essex which hasn’t been artificially watered in 22 years. Located in one of the driest parts of the country, the garden is planted with drought tolerant plants that have are able to withstand heatwaves and hold soils together during heavy rainfall.

The shift towards wilder and more climate-resilient green assets will necessitate a culture change in what we view as a successful green space, as well as the ways we design and manage urban landscapes. While manicured lawns and well-weeded flowerbeds look nice, these landscapes are often very water-intensive and do not utilise nature’s full adaptive potential.

While these changes challenge cultural norms around gardening and landscape design, they are vital if we are to adapt to the escalating crisis. As Kim says, “rather than fighting nature we need to work with it and let it show us how to adapt.”

While the surge of interest in local green spaces is incredibly positive both Nkechi and Elliot were quick to caution against relying too heavily on communities. “I think one thing we have to recognise is that you can't just leave it up to the community to do those things” said Elliot “We have to facilitate them and support them. You can't just say, OK, the community will look after this. We have to think about how we are going to empower and support local people to do this.”

As Elliot points out, this is particularly challenging for local authorities as “in a challenging funding environment, we haven't got the ability to spend the money that we probably would want to so we do need the help from the community to deliver these schemes”. 

The balance between empowering people to take ownership and shifting responsibility onto communities is a challenging one. Going forward, exploring new ways of working with local people to encourage, support and maintain green space will be vital.