UEL researchers key to urban greening plans
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Published
04 March 2024
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A new strategy to make Europe’s cities greener will see researchers from the University of East London (UEL) play a key role in the scheme. A team from UEL’s Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) will monitor and evaluate the plans of five European cities taking part in the Urban Greening Plan plus (UGPplus).
The scheme was launched in Barcelona in February, with the aim of supporting Barcelona, Paris, Mannheim, Belgrade and Burgas in crafting and implementing urban greening plans. It’s led by the Politecnico di Milano and involves eleven academic partners, including UEL’s SRI, Trinity College Dublin and the University of Helsinki. The cities will be used as testbeds to explore innovations and challenges to implementing current urban greening plans. Urban greening plans are landscaping and planning projects that aim to bring nature back on a city-wide scale.
SRI Director Dr Stuart Connop said he was excited to be part of UGPplus,
We are working with a fabulous team, focused on understanding the experiences of five cities across the EU on developing urban greening plans. We will use their experiences as a foundation to support other cities in delivering effective urban greening plans.”
Cities can play a key role in combating temperature rises and the global biodiversity crisis. They can provide a home for flora and fauna, reconnect communities with nature, and provide broad health and well-being benefits. The UGPplus project builds on the work of an earlier UG plan that was developed to reverse the loss of biodiversity in cities and reach the goals of the 2030 EU Biodiversity Strategy. It provided urban areas with tools to understand their current green spaces and a better understanding of how they can improve biodiversity.
Sam Jelliman, Research Assistant at SRI, noted the new project would be a significant upgrade on the original UG plan. He said, “This project will take urban greening plans to the next level, helping cities across Europe to embed nature into their local area.”
The meeting in Barcelona was the first UGPplus project milestone, with participants engaging with external stakeholders in the city to explain their aims and ambitions. The event was also an opportunity for the project partners to begin planning and co-producing the scheme. One goal will be to produce an urban greening framework, complete with capacity-building tools to support cities in engaging with the process.
UEL’s Dr Caroline Nash discussed the way forward for UGPplus. She said, “The next steps after the kick-off meeting are establishing an evaluation culture to monitor
the impact of project activities. We'll also begin embedding a practice of reflexive monitoring with the cities, to understand the impact of UGPplus processes.”
The team from SRI is comprised of Dr Stuart Connop, Dr Caroline Nash and Sam Jelliman. It will collaborate with the city teams to explore their experiences of bringing nature back to cities. This will involve supporting them in documenting and sharing their innovative approaches to urban greening and strengthening their skills, processes, and resources to support their future urban greening plans.
UGPplus will run for three years and is a Horizon Europe project. With a budget of £85 billion, Horizon Europe is the world’s largest transnational research and innovation programme. Britain rejoined as an associate member last year.
This work was funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number 101135386].
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