GreenHeart Project

Devel­op­ing a net­work of green­space oases across the city

The Green­Heart Pro­ject aims to develop of a net­work of green­space oases in urb­an areas across the city.

The Green­Heart Pro­ject received £1,000 in the first round of fund­ing to develop the of proof of con­cept for the ini­ti­at­ive.

THE CHALLENGE

Peterborough’s aspir­a­tion to become UK’s Envir­on­ment Cap­it­al: The Green­Heart Pro­ject sup­ports this through the gen­er­a­tion of nat­ur­al envir­on­ments with­in the urb­an envir­on­ment to halt biod­iversity loss.

Skills Devel­op­ment: Inspir­ing higher aspir­a­tions and sup­port­ing skills devel­op­ment is vital in encour­aging every­body at any age to improve their skills base to become more employ­able. Mar­gin­al­ised groups and the long-term unem­ployed are in par­tic­u­lar need of ment­or­ing and sup­port.

 

THE SOLUTION

The Green­Heart Pro­ject is a com­munity devel­op­ment scheme work­ing to trans­form people and places through land­scape man­age­ment activ­it­ies. It aims to engage, inspire and edu­cate unem­ployed Peter­bori­ans through the gen­er­a­tion of a net­work of urb­an green­space oases.

Green­spaces have mul­tiple bene­fits asso­ci­ated with them and can be defined broadly as provid­ing Eco­sytem Ser­vices. We can design green­spaces to provide dif­fer­ent ser­vices for spe­cific loc­a­tions but they will almost always without fail provide us with a sen­sa­tion of tran­quil­ity when view­ing them, a sali­ent remind­er of our city’s ambi­tion to become the Envir­on­ment­al Cap­it­al of the UK.

THE STRATEGY

The Green­Heart Pro­ject is innov­at­ive in that it has been designed to meet mul­tiple city chal­lenges through stack­ing func­tions thereby cre­at­ing mul­tiple out­comes from one single pro­cess provid­ing eco­nom­ic, social and envir­on­ment­al bene­fits.

There is a huge amount of space across Peter­bor­ough that is not cur­rently being util­ised. With the cor­rect tech­no­logy and invest­ment, green­space oases can be designed into unpro­duct­ive loc­a­tions to add visu­al, eco­lo­gic­al and social value to the city.