Nature-based solutions (NBS- social programmes and physical interventions involving nature/natural environments aimed at addressing urban environmental, social and economic challenges) are an emerging priority in post-Covid ‘building back greener’ urban agendas. Engaging with natural environments boosts human physical and mental health, and is effective in addressing health inequalities. However, urban populations with high levels of health inequality may struggle to benefit from NBS due a lack of high-quality green space where they live, poorly designed interventions that do not respond to the needs of local communities, and limited previous positive life experience of nature and green spaces. The Nature’s Way project explores a way of addressing these deficits through a hyper-local, place-based approach to the creation of NBS.
A collaboration between the Royal College of Art and the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield, together with a cross-sectoral consortium of partners from the public, private and third sector, Nature’s Way is an 18 month project piloting an asset- based, systemic, community-led method of NBS co-creation: design and implementation. It takes a trans-disciplinary approach, combining academic expertise in service design and landscape architecture with know-how from diverse sectors involved in service provision to create a socially innovative approach to the design and implementation of NBS. The pilot projects are located in Walsall and Bradford, two medium-sized British cities, in urban areas with high levels of deprivation and health inequality. Nature’s Way will adopt an action research methodology within a four stage innovation process:
Reframe key challenges in city localities to identify opportunities for intervention.
Co-create an approach to design and implement our NBS.
Piloting and validation of our approach.
Building our dissemination platform and scaling capacity.
This paper will report on the findings during the first nine months of the project addressing the questions:
How are place, systems and asset- based approaches framed across relevant disciplines/sectors e.g. landscape architecture, health and social care, policy, housing, city planning, technology, and volunteering and community action?
How does this intersect with design thinking and practice, co-creation and community led design?
What are the merits and demerits of our place-based approach to creating NBS?