Green

Green Streets
Streets Merseyside
Merseyside
February 2007-December 2008

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Introduction

This Business Plan sets out the rationale for investment of ERDF Objective 1 Funds
in the Green Streets project. The project was originally developed and has been
successfully delivered in Red Rose Forest in Greater Manchester.

The project is targeted at improving the environmental quality in key areas of

Merseyside that have environmental deficit and involving local people in long term
consultation and involvement in making the changes to their local area.

The project uses innovative software and an approach to community engagement

that has worked well to deliver sustained and valued environmental improvements in
areas where it has been delivered.

The total project has a value of over £402,000 with support from Forestry
Commission as well as local authorities and LSP’s.

Greenstreets helps to deliver National, Regional and local strategic priorities ranging
from Green Infrastructure improvements to improving Liveability.

The Project Aim

Green Streets aims to reduce environmental deficit, increase community cohesion
and demonstrate the efficacy of improvements in Green infrastructure to help create
sustainable regeneration in urban areas by:

 Targeting the project at areas of greatest need

 Creating a green backdrop to the urban setting, enhancing the physical
appearance of streets and providing a range of benefits to health and wellbeing
 Developing a community’s sense of ownership over where they live and work and
giving them the power to change to their neighbourhood
 encouraging community interaction, allowing local people to get involved in the
design of their scheme and helping residents to lead on the consultation process
and in long term stewardship of schemes
 providing residents with new skills in the area of consultation, resource
procurement, project delivery and project maintenance
 making urban areas more attractive to inward investment, inward migration and
stemming the flow of outward migration by creating high quality street
environments
 Demonstrating the efficacy of the approach to “mainstream” regeneration
organisations.
Project Description

Once viewed as the ‘lipstick’ on an urban area, urban greenery now has a well-
established and respected reputation for tackling environmental problems associated
with city living – air pollution and noise pollution for example. By having a positive
effect upon the local environment in urban areas, greenery also helps to improve the
health of those living in urban communities – reducing the ‘triggers’ to ill health.

Green Streets is using urban greenery to tackle other problems that are not directly
related to health. Greening projects can have a great impact upon the local economy
and community spirit, provided the schemes are well planned and designed to meet
the needs of the individual communities.

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Businesses within well-greened areas stand a higher chance of attracting customers
and skilled employees than those within less green areas. This in turn boosts the
economy of the whole area, as new businesses are attracted and greater investment
occurs.

What the project is:

Green Streets is an initiative that uses urban tree planting as a mechanism to
improve the quality of life for people in our towns and cities. Green Streets works at
the heart of the community with residents, businesses and partner organisations to
promote the value of greenery as a means of tackling a range of social, health and
economic issues. We produce sustainable tailor-made greening schemes to meet
the very personal needs of each community.

However the basis of this project is very much orientated to the needs and
aspirations of people living in areas of environmental deficit, helping them to take
control of their local environment, creating improvements that improve not just their
quality of life but also that of all residents in an area. In addition it has been proven
time and again that this approach builds community cohesion, improved community
safety and can act as a catalyst for other community based projects and
programmes.

Urban Greenery - Benefits to local community:

The effect that greenery has upon a community greatly depends on the way in which
it is delivered and maintained.

On a very basic level, planting greenery within a community can enhance the street
scene, detract from aesthetic problems like graffiti and vandalism, improve residents’
perception of their neighbourhood and encourage local pride.

The impact of Green Streets within communities goes way beyond the aesthetic,
stimulating communication between neighbours, encouraging a sense of community
and providing common ground for many different people.

Following the delivery of Green Streets projects many residents have reported that
not only has the appearance of their street improved but they also know and interact
with a greater number of people living there. This is the result of the Green Streets
public meetings, consultations carried out by local people and participation in planting
/ celebration events (a mainstay of the Green Streets process).

Encouraging local people to assist with the planting and future maintenance of urban
greenery can also have an impact on other aspects of community life. Residents
claim to feel an increased sense of ownership and control over where they live as a
result of their personal involvement in their respective greening projects.

This is especially noticeable with groups within the community who traditionally
struggle to feel any ownership over their local area, such as children and young
people. For one particular street tree-planting project, children from a residential
facility for young people with behavioural problems were invited to take part in the
planting event. Not only did the children stay for most of the day to help plant the
trees they also regularly watered the trees during the first summer after planting. Not
one of the trees has been vandalised five years after the project was established.

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Green Streets provides opportunities for residents to learn a variety of new skills
through their involvement in consultation, resource procurement and project
maintenance and building up working relationships with authority partners. Residents
are also given the opportunity to develop their IT skills with the Green Streets CD-
ROM. The Green Streets CD-ROM is a community engagement tool that enables
residents to see what their street would look like with a variety of greening elements
on it. The package works by simply taking a digital image of the street scene, loading
this on to a PC or laptop and then transposing greenery onto the street picture.
(Appendix 1).

Where it will be allocated:

The project will be directed at mainly at pathway and New Heartlands Housing
Market Renewal Initiative areas on Merseyside. It will cover and has the support of all
5 local authorities.

There are links to a number of projects managed by The Mersey Forest Partnership,
including The Mersey Forest Phase III, the Timber Network project, the Brownfield
Land Recycling project (all ERDF funded), and The Mersey Forest Skills Scheme
(ESF funded). The work links in to the local authority trees and Woodlands Plans and
also the Urban Tree Strategy for The Mersey Forest. The project has potential to link
to the emerging City Region Plan Environment Action.

The project will complement programmes such as Operation Eden, New Heartlands,
Home zones and Neighbourhood Renewal as well as local health and activity
Strategies such as the Active Liverpool Strategy.

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Need for the Project

The need for the project is mainly focused on two areas;

Local environmental deficit linked to deprivation. – Our most deprived areas are also
areas that often display poor environment quality that reinforces the image of the
area as being run down and neglected. Green Streets aims to target these areas and
start to enable environmental improvements.

Community Engagement – the long term sustainability of the environmental

improvements can only be achieved through effective community engagement and
involvement. This is the main cost area of this project. Green Streets seeks to build
long term involvement by local people in the project, helping them to develop a wide
range of skills and community structures (whether informal or legally constituted) that
not only assist in the development and delivery of Green Streets but can also be
used by the community for a wide range of other environmental or non-
environmental programmes,

The Green Streets programme is a development of the existing work in The Mersey
Forest that supports urban tree planting and long term stewardship of Mersey Forest
sites. However this programme is a significant enhancement on current provision in
that it provides much greater opportunities for involvement by local people and is
strictly targeted at the areas of greatest need in the area.

At present there is no urban tree planting programme focussed on the pathway and
HMRI areas. This is due to a lack of resources focussed on this type of activity at
present. However there is good evidence of the benefits that this work can deliver.

Green Streets is part of a strategic and multifunctional approach to greenspace

planning and management. The green infrastructure in urban and urban-fringe areas
includes trees, parks, gardens, canal, road and rail corridors, housing landscapes
and other green open spaces. There is increasing evidence of the economic value
this Green Infrastructure, through its stimulation of investment and its critical role in
enhancing quality, changing image and underlining competitiveness of place. Green
infrastructure can also provide a wide range of functional benefits such as shelter
and improved energy efficiency of buildings, dispersed pollution filtration and
improved air and water quality, reduced storm water run-off, lower local flood risk and
more accessible wildlife habitats for people to enjoy. There is also clear evidence
that a green and leafy local environment reduces stress, improves public health and
increases productivity amongst the people who live and work there. For all these
reasons, functional green infrastructure is able to serve as the natural life support
system for towns and cities.

Some of the issues that have led to the development of Green Streets on Merseyside
are:

 In the 1970s Merseyside lost over 100,000 urban trees through Dutch Elm
disease alone; these were never replaced. The trees were often in areas that
are now seen as being environmentally deficient and deprived – this project
can help to restore the green infrastructure that once existed in these areas,
though the scale of this intervention means that we are making a small
contribution to the restoration.
 Poor environment and access to environment is very often linked to areas of
economic deprivation. Whilst green infrastructure may not be top priority in

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 regenerating these areas, there is a good body of evidence that it can play an
important role in sustainable regeneration.
 The value of properties in deprived areas is depressed by the reputation of
the area, the economic condition and the image of the area. Research on
Merseyside by the Valuation Office has shown that having a good quality
environment adjacent to “deprived” areas can lift property values. We are not
seeking to create house price “booms” but to prevent housing market failure,
by helping to create attractive places to live that offer a good quality of life,
where people want to live.
 People in environmentally deficient areas have as much desire and right to
good quality local environments and Green Streets provides an opportunity
for providing some environmental as well as social equity with other urban
areas. There are clear issues of social and environmental justice associated
with the delivery of the Green Streets programme.
 Greening is not seen as a key element of other mainstream infrastructure and
regeneration projects. This is mainly because it is seen as an optional extra,
possibly the last thing to be planned and the most likely to have its budget cut
when there are other project budget overruns. Green Streets as a project
seeking to develop urban Green infrastructure tries to put across the
message that Green Infrastructure needs to be:

 Designed holistically - Like our transport system, green infrastructure

should be designed to link diverse green space elements into a
system that functions as a whole, rather than as separate, unrelated
parts.

 Planned comprehensively - Like our electrical and

telecommunication systems, our green space systems need to be
planned comprehensively to provide ecological, social and economic
benefits, functions, and values.

 Laid out strategically - Like our roads our green space systems need
to be laid out strategically to cross administrative boundaries.

 Planned and implemented publicly - Like our transportation

systems, our green infrastructure systems should be planned and
implemented with input from and involvement of the public, including
community organisations and private landowners. This is a
fundamental aspect of The Mersey and Red Rose Forests and indeed
all Community Forests.

 Grounded in the principles and practices of diverse professions -

Like the design and planning of transport systems, green space
systems should be based on sound science and should build on the
knowledge of professional disciplines such as landscape ecology,
community forestry, urban and regional planning, and landscape
architecture – no one profession has all the answers.

 Funded up-front - Like other infrastructure systems, our green space

systems need to be funded as a primary public investment. In other
words, green infrastructure should be funded with other essential
services, rather than with money that is left over after all other services
have been provided.

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In addition, this project will help to fulfil the demands for such projects that The
Mersey Forest Team receives from community groups and community
representatives. At present there are limited resources to respond to this demand.

This project will increase the resources available and enable targeting of resources
more effectively in order to deliver long term benefits to communities and local
economies.

Without this project it is unlikely that the opportunities for community engagement in
urban greening and the influencing of other urban regeneration programmes will be
available; with a loss to the local communities in environmental, social and economic
terms.
Project Objectives

Green Streets will operate over all 5 Merseyside authorities and will deliver the
following outputs

 400 urban trees planted

 20 Communities supported to secure long term benefits for their involvement
in Green Streets as a mechanism for both economic regeneration and
community cohesion.
 2ha of habitat managed/enhanced
 5 Km of Transport routes improved
 2 New jobs, 1 safeguarded
 20 Women receiving training

The new jobs created and safeguarded will be those for the running and
development of the project.

Green Streets will focus on areas that have;

 Poor environmental quality

 Opportunities to make improvements
 Local support to make the improvements

The project will look at all opportunities for urban tree planting. Planting will not
always be possible in streets due to engineering and highways constraints, but
opportunities will be taken to make use of vacant land on streets, grot spots, public
land adjacent to streets and any other land that can be planted and will add to the
environmental quality of an area.

A further objective of the project will be the use and development of the Green
Streets software that is a fundamental part of the success to date of the project. The
software has been developed so as to be simple to use but provides an excellent
visual representation of how environmental changes can be made and what impact
they may have.

Project Organisation and Management

The accountable body will be CFNW. A Merseyside Green Streets Advisory board
made up a of a range of advisors from the 5 local authority areas, community
representatives, engineers, utility managers and The Mersey Forest Team will
provide guidance, advice and support to the accountable body.

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CFNW will employ one programme coordinator, support will be brought in from
outside organisations.

Line management of the staff will be through The Mersey Forest Team Community
Development Officer with the support of the Green Streets Manager within CFNW.

The development of the new officer will be aided by the knowledge on delivery of
Green Streets that exists within CFNW and by the understanding of the Merseyside
context provided by The Mersey Forest Team.

For further details contact:

The Mersey Forest Offices
Risley Moss
Ordnance Avenue
Birchwood
Warrington
WA3 6QX
Tel: 01925 816217

Fax: 01925 821793

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Appendix 1 : Greenstreets Software

In recognition of a need for a visualisation aid to present proposals for change to

community groups, Green Streets pioneered the creation and development of Green
Streets software as a CD-ROM based product.

The Green Streets software in its present form is an interactive CD-ROM product,
distributed as a PC-only Macromedia Director projector. Allowing the user to work
either with a stock background image, or to load a photographic scene of their own,
the software provides a library of scene elements (trees, plants, street furniture etc)
which can be composited into the scene, to visualize environmental improvements.

The software overlays a range of specific trees and generic street furniture onto
digital photographs of the road street or area being looked at, and does so in a way
that gives a true, perspective correct, view. The real beauty of the software is that it is
very quick and easy to use by untrained users compared to CAD packages or virtual
reality visualisations.(using a laptop and digital camera it is possible in five minutes
for a community to see how their street could be improved).

Using the software to show how improvements could be made to the street
scene

Before

After

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