Landscape Journal Summer 2021: The Landscape of Power

2021 Issue 3

The Landscape of Power

landscapeinstitute.org

DESIGN TANK PHOTO MATTEO GASTEL

Berg & Buzz Produced in

Warranty

Project

Scandinavia

Lifetime anti-rust warranty

Plus X Brighton

vestre.com

Designer

Espen Voll, Tore Borgersen & Michael Olofsson

WELCOME

PUBLISHER Darkhorse Design Ltd T (0)20 7323 1931 darkhorsedesign.co.uk tim@darkhorsedesign.co.uk EDITORIAL ADVISORY PANEL Stella Bland, Head of Communications, LDA Design Marc Tomes, Landscape Architect, Allen Scott Landscape Architecture Peter Sheard CMLI, Landscape Architect.

Harnessing the power of landscape professionals to influence the landscape of power

John Stuart-Murray FLI, Landscape Architect.

Jaideep Warya CMLI, Landscape Architect,The Landscape Partnership.

Jo Watkins PPLI, Landscape Architect.

Jenifer White CMLI, National Landscape Adviser, Historic England.

LANDSCAPE INSTITUTE Commissioning Editor: Paul Lincoln, Executive Director Creative Projects and Publishing paul.lincoln@landscapeinstitute.org Copy Editors: Jill White and Evan White President: Jane Findlay PLI Interim CEO: Jane Swift Landscapeinstitute.org @talklandscape landscapeinstitute landscapeinstituteUK Advertise in Landscape Contact Saskia Little, Business Development Manager 0330 808 2230 Ext 030 saskia.little@landscapeinstitute.org

Print or online?

Landscape is available to members both online or in print. If you want to receive a print version, please register your interest online at: mylandscapeinstitute.org Make sure you also check that your mailing address is up to date.

Landscape is printed on paper sourced from EMAS (Environmental Management and Audit Scheme) certified manufacturers to ensure responsible printing.

The views expressed in this journal are those of the contributors and advertisers and not necessarily those of the Landscape Institute, Darkhorse or the Editorial Advisory Panel. While every effort has been made to check the accuracy and validity of the information given in this publication, neither the Institute nor the Publisher accept any responsibility for the subsequent use of this information, for any errors or omissions that it may contain, or for any misunderstandings arising from it.

Landscape is the official journal of the Landscape Institute, ISSN: 1742–2914

Sylvia Crowe published the Landscape of Power in 1958. Publicity for the US edition stated: ‘The impact of industrialization on the world's landscape has hardly begun. Only in close-coupled nations such as Great Britain can we see the world's future pattern: a landscape increasingly punctuated and criss-crossed by power grids, giant new structures...’

This edition of Landscape pays tribute to Crowe’s legacy and, as the UK government struggles to meet its obligation on carbon targets ahead of COP26, it considers the current impact on the landscape of the infrastructure of power generation.

Hal Moggridge celebrates the legacy of Colvin and Crowe [page 15].

Luca Csepely-Knorr highlights the benign impact of the Central Electricity Generating Board not only on the landscape but on the development of the profession of landscape architecture, saying that, ‘The profession of landscape architecture, both within and outside the Board itself, was instrumental in the realisation of the CEGB’s vision that “conservation is everybody’s business” and a moral duty as well as a statutory one..’

There is a lesson for today’s landscape advocates seeking to heal the landscape in the context of a much more complicated legal framework.

The need to address the relationship between the landscape and the generation of power is illustrated by Marc van Grieken’s argument that as wind turbines become larger, their relationship with the landscape requires a new aesthetic

[page 24]. The contradictions in designing for climate emergency are well illustrated by Rebecca Knight and Paul Macrae who address the safety implications of how turbines are lit as well as the challenge of building a power grid big enough to link the new generation of turbines [page 30].

Simon White looks at the role of seascape sensitivity studies [page 32] and Alister Kratt asks what the stalling of the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon project reveals about the UK’s approach to large-scale infrastructure [page 36].

Much of this edition is relevant to the climate emergency agenda, from helping practitioners to save energy [page 46] to the account of the LI’s Greener Recovery Festival [page 40] and our most recent publication Landscape for 2030 [page 63].

However, making a difference on the issue of climate emergency requires not only an appreciation of the landscape of power, but also a realisation of the power of the landscape practitioner to influence change.

Paul Lincoln Commissioning Editor

2021 Issue 3

landscapeinstitute.org

The Landscape of Power Cover image: Pylon by the Woodhead Reservoir, Peak District National Park. © David Henderson

© 2021 Landscape Institute. Landscape is published four times a year by Darkhorse Design.

3

Contents BRIEFING

FEATURES

6

The power of sunlight

Light and power

Fighting for light at the Garden Museum

The impact of lighting on wind turbine installation

8

4

30

15

31

Data-driven landscape

Post-war power

Grid capacity

All-consuming power at the Venice Biennale’s Irish Pavilion

Celebrating Brenda Colvin and Sylvia Crowe’s work on the landscape of power stations

Building a grid that meets the needs of climate emergency

10

18

32

Shaping the world

Landscape in the making

Seascapes and offshore wind power

How water power triggered the industrial revolution

How the nuclear landscape empowered the profession

Applying seascape sensitivity studies

12

24

36

Stewardship in the city

Preparing for 2030

The power of water

Caring for the environment with Open City Stewardship Awards

Developing a new aesthetic for wind turbines

Making the case for fresh thinking about tidal energy

LI Policy Paper | Autumn 2020

GREENER RECOVERY

Delivering a sustainable recovery from COVID-19 CLIMATE EMERGENCY

How investing in better places can support the UK’s recovery from Coronavirus while tackling climate change

RESEARCH

40

52

Greener Recovery Festival

Research and practice: working together?

Supported by

Building closer contact between academia and practice

Showcasing greener recovery

46

50

55

Hidden power

Exploring research requirements

The COVID-19 Lockdown Papers

Calculating the cost of hidden energy use

What do we know and what is needed?

Reflections and implications for urbanism and landscape

LI LIFE

63

Landscape for 2030 Establishing landscape as a leader in the fight against climate change

58

Highgate Cemetery competition Restoring one of London’s most-loved cemeteries

64

Entry standards update Who are you designing for?

66

National Grid visual impact provision Reflections on volunteering

69

Landscape Institute CAMPUS

Learn from anywhere

5

BRIEFING

By Christopher Woodward 1. Enjoying old Paradise Gardens © Matt Collins

The power of sunlight The power of sunlight is rarely discussed within the profession, but as the director of the Garden Museum explains, it needs our attention.

S

unlight is power. Ten years ago, I planted a fig tree in the park opposite the Garden Museum.

Each year the fruits swell a tight green – and that’s it. The figs never ripen.

The park is where William Blake’s garden was a fruitful and lush Eden in the early 19th century; two hundred years later, there is too little sunlight to release the energy within the fig by which it ripens into a sweet fruit.

I can buy figs from a shop, of course.

But in East London, this sunlight deprivation has been a cause for the return of rickets in a new generation of children. Sir Sam Everington OBE, who leads an admired GP practice in Bow, estimates that 50% of the children at his surgery are deficient in Vitamin D. ‘It’s going back forty years’, he exclaims.

This is not a futuristic disaster movie

6

in which the sun is vanishing from the earth. No. Very simply, London is selling off the sky above to developers. The London Skyline Campaign calculates that 525 tall buildings are in the development pipeline. Each tall building takes away a sliver of the sun. Forever.

We have begun a campaign to ask the Greater London Authority to guarantee a minimum of six hours of sunshine in London’s green public realm. The GLA’s proposed policy is that it is acceptable for a park to receive 2 hours of sunlight in 50% of its area, as measured on 21st March, the annual equinox. (This is a policy proposed in the Supplementary Planning Guidance “Good Quality Homes For All Londoners”, which is part of The New London Plan, and is about to be signed into law).

At a Lambeth Planning Committee, I spoke with our neighbours against a scheme by developer u+i to build three towers of luxury flats and overshadow the little park in which we work on community garden projects. But that objection was struck out: the Planning Officer explained that it is acceptable for a park to be in shadow – or in night – for twenty-two hours of the day on 21st March.

I didn’t believe it at first, but it is true. In 2011, Dr Paul Littlefair of the Buildings Research Establishment was asked to come up with a single number for sunlight hours for all outdoor amenity areas across Britain, from a tennis court in Tunbridge Wells to a parking space in Sunderland. (Dr Littlefair is one of the good guys: at our Inquiry he appeared on behalf of a community

BRIEFING

group called Lambeth Village against against a development worth half a billion pounds and consultancy fees to match). He didn’t know that the two-hour number would be used to remove one more impediment to urban overdevelopment.

At this level, sunflowers and figs will not bloom, bees will not buzz, and in winter the earth will be too cold for the chemical trigger by which a bulb bursts into spring. And children can’t play in the sunshine.

We are Curators, not lobbyists, but with a green alliance of everyone from the London Wildlife Trust to Friends of Burgess Park, we have begun a petition to ask The Mayor of London to consider the right measure of sunlight in a city park, playground, or wildlife reserve.

Please sign, this could be our last chance.

Do we want to be the city which sold off the sun?

Christopher Woodward is Director of The Garden Museum, Lambeth, which reopened after a prize-winning redevelopment in 2017. The Museum is currently working with Dan Pearson Studio on a 5.3 acre public realm project named Lambeth Green.

PETITION Six hours’ sunlight for parks, playgrounds and wildlife. https://www.change.org/p/londonmayor-six-hours-sunlight-for-parksplaygrounds-and-wildlife

there is too little sunlight to release the energy within the fig by which it ripens into a sweet fruit

1. Aerial view of Old Paradise gardens, Lambeth, showing (left) the 24- and 26-storey high towers proposed by Fred Pilbrow Architects for u+i. © Fred Pilbrow + partners

7

BRIEFING

By Paul Lincoln

Data-driven landscape By the year 2027, data centres are forecast to consume a third of Ireland’s total electricity demand. The Ireland Pavilion at the Venice Biennale demonstrates the astonishing impact made on the landscape by these hidden facilities.

E

ntanglement, the 2021 Irish Pavilion which opened at the Venice Biennale, looks at the material impact of data on the landscape. It shows how data production and consumption which is at the heart of every digital interaction is sensationally and adversely affecting the physical landscape. Curated by ANNEX, a collective of architects, artists, and urbanists, the exhibit responds to this year’s Biennale theme – “How will we live together?” The exhibition illustrates the impact of the internet and cloud services, which is interwoven with the Irish landscape, and which is evident by the vast range of data centres, fibre optic cable networks, and energy grids that have come to populate its cities and suburbs over recent decades.

Ireland has played a significant historical role in the evolution of global communications and data infrastructure.

In 1866, the world’s first commercially successful transatlantic telegraph cable was installed on the West coast of Ireland. In 1901, the inventor of the radio Marconi transmitted some of the world’s first wireless radio messages from Ireland across the Atlantic Ocean to Newfoundland. Today, Dublin has overtaken London as the data centre hub of Europe, hosting 25% of all available European server space. And by the year 2027, data centres are forecast to consume a third of Ireland’s total electricity demand.

Entanglement draws from both contemporary and historical data storage objects as building blocks to

8

1. Entanglement at the Venice Biennale. © ANNEX

1

form the structure of the pavilion.

These artefacts are assembled in a ‘campfire’ formation, referencing this primitive architectural arrangement where early human civilisations formed alliances, built social networks and eventually developed complex societies.

The pavilion suggests that, from the burning of campfire logs to the management of waste heat generated by contemporary data infrastructure, the production and distribution of information is intrinsically connected to the production and distribution of heat.

These complex series of energyintensive thermal transformations in the pavilion illustrate the extent to which people are producing, consuming and disseminating data across the globe,

for example, how a Facebook ‘like’ in Malaysia can trigger the emission of heat from a server on the outskirts of Dublin.

ANNEX is an international multidisciplinary research and design collective, comprised of a core team of architects, artists, and urbanists, whose work operates between and beyond the subject areas of computer science, gaming platforms, technology and public space, data centres, sensor technology, and large technical systems.

Members include Sven Anderson, Alan Butler, David Capener, Donal Lally, Clare Lyster and Fiona McDermott.

Paul Lincoln is commissioning editor for Landscape

BRIEFING

2. Drone thermographic image of agricultural land in Ireland, highlighting the heat generated from data infrastructure. © ANNEX

3 Agricultural land in Ireland. © ANNEX

2

3 9

BRIEFING

By Tony Butler

Shaping the world Where the Derwent meets the Trent, the power of water to build industry is at its most dramatic. The director of the new Museum of Making explains its significance.

1. A Prospect of Derby, by an unknown artist, c.1725, oil on canvas. © Derby Museums

1

T

hree hundred years ago, on the banks of the River Derwent, the first stirrings of industrial society were felt. Derby Silk Mill, recognised by many as the site of the world’s first modern factory, opened in 1721, and is now ascribed by UNESCO as part of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.

Emboldened by the spirit of scientific discovery and by a belief that man might subdue nature, the River Derwent was harnessed to drive the huge water wheel which powered the mill. Nearly 100 years before, Francis Bacon anticipated the Enlightenment view of a completely knowable and controllable earth, he wrote in 1623, “For you have but to follow and as it were hound nature in her wanderings.”

(De Augmentis Scientiarum 1623) The Silk Mill was an outlier of the industrial revolution. Built 50 years before Richard Arkwright’s famous factory further up the Derwent valley 10

at Cromford, it was a wonder of its age. It was lauded by Daniel Defoe in 1726, who described it as an ‘engine’, as if parts of the machines and people who worked them were one and the same. Derby has always been a place of confluence of nature, people and ideas. The Derwent meets the Trent three miles to the south and was already an established source of power and communications. The Romans, and later the Vikings, established urban communities here based on trade, and by the 18th century Derby was, according to Defoe, ‘a fine, beautiful and pleasant town; it has more families of gentlemen in it that is usual in towns so remote.’ Prosperity created a flourishing cultural and intellectual life.

Works by Joseph Wright of Derby, one of England’s greatest 18th century painters, are on display at Derby Museum and Art Gallery, and capture the spirit of the age of Enlightenment. His works, The Alchymist (1771) and A Blacksmith’s

Shop (1771), revealed how science and experimentation stimulated new industry. Wright also painted the new men of industry. In Derby Museum and Art Gallery hangs a huge painting of Richard Arkwright, the founder of Cromford Mill. Arkwright sits, comfortable, with a pot belly, a man growing rich on the new industrial society, where the resources of the landscape and people and machines were made part of the same system.

The Silk Mill was relatively late in transitioning from water-power to coal, and by the 1830s, its reliance on the flow of nature was diminished to be replaced by dependency on locallymined fossil fuel. Fossil fuel powered the engines which moved people and goods, creating supply chains, growing trades and encouraging new products to be developed and consumed throughout the world.

In the 1800s the Derwent Valley had been a landscape of power. In the

BRIEFING

2. Arkwright’s Mills,

by Joseph Wright, circa 1795. Purchased with assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Art Fund (with a contribution from The Wolfson Foundation), the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, and the Friends of Derby Museums. © Derby Museums

2

20th century, its waters too were extracted. To meet the industrial and human needs of the cities of Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield, two enormous dams were built at its headwaters, changing the landscape forever. The Derwent dams played a key role in World War Two, used for test runs for the so-called ‘Dam-Busting’ raids on German cities in the Ruhr.

Today the valley is marketed to visitors for its heritage and beauty, as a protoindustrial idyll – probably a far cry from the experiences of those mill workers three centuries ago.

As the world seeks a future repudiating fossil fuels, it is looking for new narratives of how to learn from the past. This year, three hundred years after the Silk Mill was commissioned, a new chapter begins in its story, as the Silk Mill is reborn as the new Museum of Making. It will explore creativity and manufacturing in Derby, showing how this medium-sized city in the Midlands

shaped the Industrial Revolution, and how this affected its people and landscape. As Naomi Klein writes in This Changes Everything (2014), “as they industrialised long before anyone else, the British should bear more responsibility than most for climate change.” This is visceral for the Museum of Making, as during construction, the building was partially flooded in 2019 as the river Derwent rose to dangerously high levels – an occurrence likely to increase in the future, and something that has influenced how we have developed the building.

The museum has been built with the help of local companies and several thousand citizen curators, inspired by the stories of ingenuity and discovery, and also the lessons of exploitation.

It will feature a myriad of trades from trains to textiles, aeronautics to ceramics. It will show the codependency of creativity with science and the importance of understanding

of materials. For example, visitors will learn importance of ceramics to the manufacturing of jet engines.

Through hands-on making activity in fully equipped workshops, the museum hopes to inspire a new generation of makers who can address the challenges of the future, such as how we might live well together on a crowded planet within finite limits of nature.

Tony Butler is Executive Director of Derby Museums The Museum of Making in Derby is now open. For more information, and to book a visit, go to www. derbymuseums.org/museum-ofmaking

11

BRIEFING

By Rhea Martin

Stewardship in the city Open City is a charity dedicated to making London more open, accessible and equitable.

In partnership with Construction Declares, Open City has launched a new programme recognising industry leaders in ongoing, long-term, strategic urban care: The Open City Stewardship Awards.

1

O

ver the past year, we have relied more than ever on our cities’ green spaces – a treasured respite from the enduring monotony of the great indoors. Local parks have hosted celebrations, commiserations, and moments of togetherness and solitude alike. That so many of us live without access to an outdoor space of our own has raised timely questions about the role of open spaces in our communities, their critical function in everyday life, the types of people they serve, and crucially, the types of people that serve them.

As I am writing this in late April, I have crossed the road from my flat to sit on a shaded bench. The Parks and Outdoor Spaces team has come to take care of it, and I am surrounded by the smell of freshly cut grass, a small act of care that feels important to focus on as we adjust to yet another change of pace. Many conversations about the change we are yet to see seem to deal in absolutes – everyone will continue to work from home, the face of the high street will be unrecognisable, and parts of the city like Canary Wharf are ‘over.’ Our cities’ open spaces are not just places of 12

leisure, they are often home to vital pieces of industry and infrastructure, play a vital role in mitigating drainage and heat retention, and must respond to the messy complexity of urban life.

In the face of interrelated climate, ecological and societal challenges, awe should look past prophecies of sweeping and dramatic change and instead embrace incrementalism, maintenance and care as our tools.

As landscape architect Johanna Gibbons, co-founder of J&L Gibbons and one of the judges for the new Open City Stewardship Awards, puts it: “Stewardship is about having a long- term vision and dedicated resources to work towards it. In understanding the inevitable dynamics of change, we can implement caretaking that is responsive, inclusive and innovative, nurturing urban habitats in which we cannot just survive, but thrive.” In other words, our knowledge and understanding are always provisional, and subject to adjustment over time.

My own understanding of stewardship has tended to lean towards the traditional, be it the preservation of a historic estate, forest or swathe of agricultural land, but it is vital to the success of our urban environments as

well. We see failures in an inflexible approach when promised public spaces do not remain truly open to the public, or when new buildings cannot be adequately maintained by their users; the Stewardship Awards aim to dig beneath the gloss of a newly completed scheme.

The work that underpins the process of stewardship is not glamorous, and by its nature is less prominent than a new structure, gleamingly hewn – but just as the pandemic has revealed that key workers are not only those working in hospitals, the time has come to celebrate the unsung heroes of our built environment. For the team at Open City, the launch of the Stewardship Awards is not just about announcing a winner, but a statement of intent that will inform our work over the coming months. In the lead up to the awards ceremony in 2022, a public programme including a strand of the annual Open House Festival will explore the different forms that stewardship can take. From care of open spaces and communities to the management of estates and material supply chains, to achieve the goal of a truly open city we must first demonstrate a commitment to a perpetual process of learning and adjustment guiding each of our decisions.

Rhea Martin is Open City’s programmes and communities manager, and leader of the Open City Stewardship Awards, a new awards programme recognising holistic longterm care of the urban environment.

Find out more about the Open House Festival on the 4 and 5 September on our website: open-city.org.uk/ stewardship-awards

1. Dalston Eastern Curve still from a film

by Open City. © Jim Stephenson and Nyima Murry

Extraordinary

for Landscape Architects Product: Free Form Tree Isle with All Black, recycled plastic beams

Location: Verneuil Sur Seine, France

TWIN Concept After many years of research and development, we have now introduced our TWIN Concept, a series of materials that form a fully-fledged alternative to hardwood. All Black is made from industrial and household waste plastic. The material is essentially composed of two thermoplastics: PE and PP. All Black has a matt appearance and a rough texture and is black throughout due to the use of a natural dye (carbon).

Rough&Ready Hug A Tub Circular

Rough&Ready Tree Isle Italic

Solid Industry Picnic Set

Rough&Ready Curved Bench All Black

TWIN

Drifter Bench Upcycled Hardwood

F E AT U R E

The Landscape of Power Exploring our complex relationship with landscape and power from post-war public ownership to the aesthetics of the wind farm

14

F E AT U R E

By Hal Moggridge

1. Ratcliffe Power Station: aerial view of model of Gordon Patterson’s landscape design. © Journal of the ILA 1968

2. Eggborough Power Station, an early view of the recreation area in use for staff allotments. © Colvin and Moggridge

2

Post-war power Brenda Colvin and Sylvia Crowe were at the heart of landscape developments in the post-war period – Hal Moggridge explores their impact.

https://research. historicengland.org.uk/ Report.aspx?i=15846

1

L

andscape architects enjoyed opportunities during the 1960s-70s when working on landscapes of power in the rural context. Historic England’s (2016) ‘England’s Redundant Post-War Coal and Oil-fired Power Stations’ confirmed that “landscape architecture became a key aspect of the Central Electricity Generating Board’s (CEGB) policy from its formation in 1958,” with early landscape appointments. Dr Luca Csepely-Knorr explains this in her article, mentioning many of the landscape architects involved.

It was partly due to effective campaigning by the Institute.

For instance, I remember the LI’s splendid 50th anniversary international dinner at Kings College Cambridge in 1979, when CEGB chair Glyn England, a guest, discussed potential with British and international landscape architects; within weeks landscape architects were appointed for forthcoming electricity projects.

In their report 86/2016 ‘High Merit’, Historic England1 recognised the profession’s historic contribution to power station design: “It was Brenda Colvin and Sylvia Crowe who early on helped shape the CEGB’s attitude and approach to landscape design [...] during the 1950s and 60s [...] Colvin was the first to become directly involved with the landscaping of power stations (from 1952).” Brenda Colvin recognised the impossibility, and in her opinion, undesirability, of screening the larger components, seeing the problem as one of how to ‘integrate and relate them to their surroundings’. Her approach to the new generation of 1960’s stations was to employ massed planting of trees and shrubs (often raised on linear banks), to give strong horizontal base lines that balanced the height of the cooling towers and principal buildings while 15

F E AT U R E

3. Eggborough Power Station. Distant view of edge mounding obscuring coal store. © Colvin and Moggridge.

3

concealing only the ‘unsightly and nondescript’ low elements such as coal stores, railway sidings, car parks, sheds, stores and operational space.” The report lists ten of the practices which became landscape consultants for CEGB schemes, broadly following this approach, the outcome of exchange of ideas within the then small profession.

For example, here are four successful 1960s power station landscapes. Brenda Colvin’s layout for Eggborough coal-fired station, where the eight cooling towers spread across half a kilometre, surrounded the whole site in continuous tree belts, many on mounding; thus setting the huge buildings above long horizontals, these trees provided shelter for a green staff recreation area. Beside Wylfa nuclear power station, Sylvia Crowe created wooded hills with material from excavations beneath the reactors. At Sizewell nuclear power station, Peter Youngman located the reactors in a space between existing woodlands, open only towards the wide expanse of the sea. The model of Ratcliffe power station by Gordon Patterson shows an arrangement of spinneys around the power station, which similarly provide a horizontal setting; the coal store, accessible by rail, is to the east. These landscapes are now approaching maturity when the stations themselves are becoming redundant; it is to be hoped that they will be understood as valuable potential settings for new industrial or other future functions.

Derek Lovejoy extended this approach outwards beyond the West Burton site to include new tree planting and Tree Preservation Orders in locations within a 3-mile surrounding 16

radius. Views of the power station were screened where considered intrusive and framed between tree groups where attractive. His regional landscape plan was carried out and maintained by the County Council. Consideration was also frequently given to the grouping of cooling towers; for instance, at Didcot, Frederick Gibberd had two triangular tower groups positioned half a mile apart to integrate them into the wide Vale of White Horse. Some projects were enriched by special attention to nature conservation, particularly when this interested the station engineer who had powers to influence the character of the station.

Drakelow was an example of this, where lakes for gravel to build the station were made into a wildfowl nature reserve, and a nature walk with a dipping pond for visiting school children was included within the enclosing woodland.

Coal-fired power stations produce large quantities of pulverised fuel ash (PFA), a product of burning, the disposal of which has led to two different long-term hill-building projects in Yorkshire. Arnold Weddle designed a slowly expanding PFA hill alongside Drax power station, starting in the 1970s, and it is still being constructed under Weddle Landscape Design four decades later. Profitable farmland has been established with at least 300mm of soil from beneath the hill over the PFA – a quiet elegant landform.

A different hill has been built at Gale Common, where water-logged PFA was pumped from two nearby power stations, Eggborough and Ferrybridge. This is a steep sided lagoon structure, including shale from the nearby mine

F E AT U R E

4. Wylfa nuclear power station – wooded hills created

by Sylvia Crowe © image from LDT monograph edited by Collens and Powell.

5. Drax PFA hillview of restored southern end in 1986 to the design of Arnold Weddle. © HSL UK 86-0271

6. Drax PFA hill in 2020 by Weddle Landscape Design. © Google Earth.

4

...landscape architecture became a key aspect of the Central Electricity Generating Board’s (CEGB) policy from its formation in 1958...

supplying coal. Brenda Colvin prepared the original design in the late 1960s, sitework starting in 1972. CEGB’s ecologist solved a problem of dust blowing from the lagoon surface by establishing a floating mat of vegetation which rose upwards as the lagoon was filled. Stage 1 of this hill was completed by 2005 with sides to the original contours, but in other respects to Colvin & Moggridge’s gradually evolving design, in response to changing priorities. In particular, the hilltop, originally conceived as level arable farmland, was constructed to an irregular profile for nature conservation, which indeed became a high priority throughout. The whole soil body from a wood beneath stage 2 was successfully moved to become a stage 1 hillside bluebell wood; native wild daffodils were replanted onto the hillside; habitats for birds were created, even temporary faces in ash piles formed each year for sand martins to nest. Though stage 1 of this hill has become a 1km2 new landscape 60m high, interestingly, unfinished later stages are now being quarried for PFA, for building blocks and cement manufacture. The cessation of coal-fired electricity production to help meet carbon targets means that no PFA will be made in future, so that which exists from the past has gained an unexpected value. This is part of the ever-evolving character of landscape challenges, all of which now need the same careful input which characterised the former handling of the sites of coal-fired power stations. In the LI’s present invaluable promotion of urban landscape, we should not forget also to promote full involvement of our profession in rural contexts.

Hal Moggridge CBE is an architect and landscape architect, co-founder of Colvin & Moggridge with Brenda Colvin, former Professor of Landscape Architecture at Sheffield University, and a past president of the Landscape Institute.

5

6 17

F E AT U R E

By Luca Csepely-Knorr

Landscape in the making The landscapes surrounding power stations commissioned by the nationalised electricity industry and the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) offered significant opportunities for landscape architects in post-war Britain, and had a huge impact on the development of the profession in the UK.

1 18

F E AT U R E

1. 'Landscape in the making – a commentary by Glyn England Chairman of the CEGB and Rex Savidge Architect to the Board' London © CEGB Press and Publicity Office 1982

2. Wacher, R. E. 'Power and the Countryside' London © Public Relations Branch of the CEGB, 1965 The booklets illustrated here were published by the CEGB and are published under fair dealing guidelines https://www. gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-tocopyright#fair-dealing

...electricity generation and transmission probably had a more immense impact on Britain’s landscape than any other activity.

I

n their book ‘Landscape by Design’, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Landscape Institute, Tony Aldous and Brian Clouston paid particular attention to the unique situation of the post-war nationalised electricity industry and its relation to the transformation of the British countryside. As they argued, “Here was a major state industry, set up by Parliament working under statutory guidelines which required it not simply to produce electricity as cheaply as possible, with little cosmetic landscaping tacked on as a gesture; but consciously to balance in each project the twin objectives of cheap electricity efficiently produced and respect for the environment.”1 The nationalisation of electricity provision in Britain was a result of the 1947 Electricity Act. In 1948, the British Electricity Authority (BEA) was established, and became responsible for generation and transmission to local boards, as well as for the development and maintenance of the supply system. The BEA (replaced by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA in 1955) worked with 14 regional boards, known as ‘area boards’, across the country. The 1957 Electricity Act dissolved the CEA and replaced it with the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) and the Electricity Council. The Board was responsible for the production and transmission of electricity in England and Wales, and in 1987 it operated 79 power stations and almost 8000km route of double circuit transmission lines.

The CEGB became the largest spender (outside Whitehall) in the British economy in the post-war period and had two statutory duties, deriving from Section 37 of the 1957 Electricity Act, the so-called ‘Amenity Clause’.

Firstly, to develop and maintain an efficient, coordinated and economical system of electricity supply, and secondly to take into account any effect which their proposals would have on the natural beauty of the countryside and on the flora and fauna. The ‘Amenity Clause’ was even more crucial if we take into account that, next to road building, electricity generation and transmission probably had a more immense impact on Britain’s landscape than any other activity. It manifested itself in the erection of transmission lines and towers across the country, in the building of nuclear and hydro-electric power stations, in remote coastlands and national parks, and the relocation of coal-fired power stations away from town centres into settings perceived as rural. As Sylvia Crowe phrased it in the 1950s, “in the present influx of gigantic constructions and power lines, the landscape of the British Isles faces the greatest crisis of its history”, and that “never before has the countryside been invaded by so many objects, nor by constructions comparable in size to the modern power stations, hydro-electric schemes and airfields.”2 The CEGB appointed Sir William Holford as a parttime member of the Board with special responsibility for architecture and amenity. The distinguished architect, town planner and educator was also a Fellow of the Institute of Landscape Architects from December 1938. He worked together with a core team of members of the Institute during the War, then led by Geoffrey Jellicoe, to make sure the profession played an indispensable role in the post-war reconstruction. As Aldous and Clouston remembered, “behind the scenes in Whitehall men like Lord (then plain William)

2

Holford were laying the foundations for the profession’s future growth by writing a landscape element into the proposed statutory guidelines for future public clients” – an idea crucial to the work of the CEGB under Holford’s guidance.3 He and his chairman, Sir Christopher Hinton, set out their approach in two papers presented at the Royal Society of Arts in 1959 – and published together under the title 'Power Production and Transmission in the Countryside: Preserving Amenities’ – in which he declared that “the Board now seeks the advice of the best landscape architects they can find, for an appreciation of the amenity problems raised by the location of plant in different kinds of landscape.”4 Archival records of the Institute held at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, as well as the CEGB’s records held at the Special Collections and Archives at the University of Liverpool, suggest that Holford took his promise seriously.

He asked then-president Sylvia Crowe to provide a list of practices that could undertake this type of work, and the series of minutes in the archives shows an impressive list of names, including Brenda Colvin, Sylvia Crowe, Sheila Haywood, Ken and Patricia Booth, Peter Shepheard, Peter Youngman, Leslie Milner White and Derek Lovejoy being involved. Their collaboration with the CEGB led to numerous award-winning landscape projects across the country.

However, the CEGB’s role did not stop at employing consultants for the design of the power station sites. It had its own landscape team, responsible for other aspects of 19

F E AT U R E

landscapes. The first landscape assistant to the board, John Herbert, handled preparatory work and research outside the scope of the consultant landscape architects. He was succeeded by Alan Murray, and in 1970 the ‘Generation Development and Construction Division’ was created within the CEGB, which had its own landscape team, led by Ronald Hebblethwaite.

The team had a particular research agenda, and one of the key areas of their work was to develop computer and photogrammetry techniques to assess the ‘Zone of Visual Influence’ (ZVI) of power stations – the equivalent of today's LVIA. This evolving area of research – ‘Methods of Landscape Analysis’ – was the topic of the first symposium, chaired by Lord Holford, of the still active Landscape Research Group, formed in 1967, of which Murray was the first Honorary Secretary. Hebblethwaite later developed the computerized version of the ZVI methods, which he published in 1975. As Moa Carsson’s research showed, both the analogue and computerized methods were used between 1960 and 1970 to select sites and assist the design and configurations of the built structures, the screening and the landscape.5 Hebblethwaite’s collaboration with Derek Lovejoy and Frederick Gibberd led to award-winning power station landscapes, such as West Burton and the now demolished Didcot power station.

3

4 20

3. 'Sutton Courtenay Study Centre: A Handbook of Suggested Activities'

Here was a major state industry, set up by Parliament working under statutory guidelines which required it not simply to produce electricity as cheaply as possible... but consciously to balance in each project the twin objectives of cheap electricity efficiently produced and respect for the environment.

Another significant area of research by the CEGB’s landscape team was to develop techniques for establishing trees in pulverised fuel ash and in the especially difficult conditions of drawdown areas at hydroelectric schemes.

One of the major centres for this research was in the grounds of Drakelow power station, in collaboration with the University of Leeds’ Department of Agriculture. The landscape of Drakelow was designed by Brenda Colvin, and it was – as the CEGB declared – a “site where new concepts in conservation have their beginnings”.6 Beyond the testing of using pulverised fuel ash as a growing medium, Drakelow also gave place to nurseries and greenhouses, where plants destined to be planted in the Midlands Region – consisting of 26 power stations and 116 sub-stations – were grown.

At the same time, Drakelow was the first operating industrial site in Europe to open an 11-acre large field study centre for environmental education for local schools in 1967, and in 1970 they revealed a wildfowl reserve on parts of the site, as part of “an appropriate contribution to European Conservation Year and to Britain’s Countryside in 1970 campaign.”7 Drakelow’s example was followed across the country, and by 1982, more than 20 CEGB sites were used for various public activities as well as environmental centres. Nature trails, bird and wildfowl reserves, environmental study centres, angling and water recreation centres were accompanied by ecological and conservation activities.

Official communications and the CEGB’s own publications show an increased awareness of the importance of landscapes as part of their public image as well as fulfilling their statutory duties. As they wrote in 1982, “the landscapes, created by ‘Capability’ Brown and Repton and the great landowners of the day, now stand in full maturity as a symbol of their confidence and foresight. Through its

© CEGB South Western Region Public Relations Office Illustrations By Vana Haggerty

4. 'Sutton Courtenay Study Centre: Walkabout' © CEGB South Western Region Public Relations Office Text by Frank Poller, Illustrations by Vana Haggerty

F E AT U R E

5. 'A Natural Concern' Solihull © CEGB Midlands Region 1970

1

ldous, T & Clouston A B (1979) Landscape

by Design. London: Heinemann p. 53

2

rowe, S. (1958) C Landscapes of Power, London: Architectural Press

3

ldous, T & Clouston A B (1979) Landscape

by Design. London: Heinemann pp 19-20.

4

inton, Christopher H and Holford, Sir William (1960): ‘Power Production and Transmission in the Countryside: Preserving Amenities’ Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 108:5043 pp 180-210

5

arlsson, M C 2019, ‘Locating the observer in computerised view analysis for urban and environmental planning’, Social Studies of Science. p. 17

6

EGB (1970) A C Natural Concern Solihull: CEGB: Midlands Region p. 3

7

urton Daily Mail, B January 1970.

8

ngland, Glyn & E Savidge, Rex (1982) Landscape in the making London: CEGB Press and Publicity Office p. 29

9

entral Electricity C Generating Board (Dissolution) Order 2001,

10

EGB (1970) A C Natural Concern Solihull: CEGB: Midlands Region p. 14

11

EGB (1970) A C Natural Concern Solihull: CEGB: Midlands Region p. 3

5

The profession of landscape architecture, both within and outside the Board itself, was instrumental in the realisation of the CEGB’s vision that “conservation is everybody’s business” and a moral duty as well as a statutory one.

patronage the board looks to its landscape architects to design for efficient and economic estate management today, and by developing the traditions of the past, contribute to the landscape of the future.”8 The privatisation of the electricity industry started in the 1990s, and the CEGB was fully dissolved on 9 November 2001.9 While the built legacy of the board is disappearing with the decommissioning and the demolishing of the iconic cooling towers and the generating stations, it raises the question: what does the future hold for the ‘landscapes of the future’ their guardianship created? These landscapes are enduring reminders of a quite unique era when a nationalised industry had a statutory duty to “have account for the natural beauty of the countryside and for its wildlife in everything it does.”10 The profession of landscape architecture, both within and outside the Board itself, was instrumental in the realisation of the CEGB’s vision that “conservation is everybody’s business” and a moral duty as well as a statutory one.11 The CEGB’s ‘landscapes of the future’ are our matured and highly valuable landscapes of the present. It is now the profession’s duty to preserve their values for future generations to come.

Dr Luca Csepely-Knorr is a chartered landscape architect, art historian and Reader at the Manchester School of Architecture.

21

ADVE R TO R I AL

ADAPTIVE URBANISM

HOW THE PANDEMIC HAS SHAPED THE WAY WE INTERACT WITH & DESIGN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT

The last 12 months have highlighted how vital it is for everyone to have access to well considered outdoor areas and in particular green spaces. These are the places we now socialise, eat, play, and even work - rain or shine and it is speculated that this will not change drastically as the restrictions are lifted.

Where possible, we will still use outdoor spaces over indoors areas out of practice and preference. Not only is it a benefit to our health but also to the environment and economy.

Since the start of the pandemic we have seen a rise in opening up and maximising the potential of the outdoors. In towns and cities, biodiverse & sociable green spaces are being dotted around to benefit people and nature. Roof Gardens in residential blocks and restaurants are booming. Streets are being pedestrianised to benefit the hospitality sector by expanding the outdoor dining.

INSPIRA PROTECT PLANTER SYSTEM

To benefit these areas, in 2020 the Bailey Street Furniture Group launched Inspira, a modular planting system that brings a range of environmental and social benefits to the urban realm.

The flexible design of the system makes it ideal for roof terraces, maximising the potential of the space available with bursts of colour, creating an attractive social space with integrated seating.

INSPIRA LINEAR WITH CANTILEVER SEATING DEANSGATE SQ ROOF TERRACE, MANCHESTER

In 2021 BSFG have expanded the range to include Inspira Protect, a reinforced modular planter range that has been tested to IWA 14-1:2013 rating. Inspira Protect offers security & protection to pedestrians and infrastructure without compromising on the aesthetic values of a space.

INSPIRA FORM

INSPIRA PROTECT ELIZABETH STREET, LONDON

Inspira is available in Linear and Form styles; Inspira Linear is a collection of straight walls and angled corners, designed for geometrically-shaped installations. (squares, rectangles, parallelograms, triangles) Inspira Form includes all the rectilinear components of Linear with the addition of curved wall and corner sections, allowing more organically shaped installations (circles, lozenges, waves )

The system has recently been utilised in expanding outdoor spaces for many hospitality establishments along Elizabeth Street in Victoria, Central London. The Protect planters offer a contained sense of calm amidst the bustling surroundings maintaining the streets village ambience.

Inspira Planters Deansgate Square Roof Terrace Manchester

A canvas for natural bursts of colour, bringing a range of environmental & social benefits to the built environment.

Increases Biodiversity

Acoustic Cushioning

Improves Rainwater Management

Offers Pedestrian Protection

Reduces Pollution

Improves Mental Health

Promotes Social Distancing

Climate Cooling

bsfg.co.uk/inspira 01625 322 888 23

F E AT U R E

By Marc van Grieken

1

Developing a new aesthetic for landscape ahead of 2030 24

F E AT U R E

A

To achieve net zero, it will be necessary to add thousands of wind turbines to the UK landscape. Ahead of COP26, Marc van Grieken asks if it is time for a new aesthetic which also addresses the needs of climate emergency.

1. Tulip field. Illustration of tulips being grown on sandy clay in the large polders of the former Zuiderzee at 4-5 metres below sea level. © Marc van Grieken

s the government prepares for the COP26 summit in November, the relationship between the measures taken to meet the UN Summit’s goals, and the impact of these measures, come ever more sharply into focus. Some of our landscapes are already changing because fossil fuels are being replaced with renewables. Changes can be very subtle or more clear cut. For example, in Scotland, the ‘relative’ extent of landscape change due to wind farm development is frequently expressed in terms of ‘landscape without windfarms’, ‘landscape with occasional windfarms’, ‘landscape with windfarms’ or ‘windfarm landscape’. Climate change affects us on a scale we have never seen before, but there have been periods that posed similar challenges to landscape professionals.

Reconstruction after the Second World War contributed to the need for increased electricity generation, matched by other infrastructure projects such as motorways. Sylvia Crowe argued that the landscape of Britain faced the greatest crisis in its history. Rather than opposing change and ‘protecting the countryside’, landscape architects at the time (Colvin, Moggridge, Holford) laid the foundation for large scale landscape planning. Infrastructure development provided an opportunity to refresh thinking and to create new aesthetics [see page 15]. In the case of windfarm developments, it is perhaps ironic that many people, including some landscape architects of that era, now oppose landscape change associated with wind energy.

Electricity related infrastructure has three main components: generation, transmission and distribution/ consumption. In the case of fossil fuels there is a fourth, namely the transportation of the fuel to the power stations.

Of these, the overhead transmission infrastructure often caused concern because it was seen as an intrusion or blot on the landscape. These concerns were recognised early on and addressed by section 37 of the Electricity Act, also referred to as the ‘amenity clause’ which was added in 1959. This required that due attention be given not only to economic and technical and other considerations (now commonly referred to as the “Need Case”) but also to the effects on the natural beauty of the countryside and flora and fauna. This reference to the natural beauty of the countryside not only placed landscape architects at the heart of planning, routeing and the design of transmission lines, but also created the opportunity to engage in large scale landscape and master planning .

Large coal-fired power stations in the UK generated between 2000 and 4,000MW compared with the largest 25

F E AT U R E

windfarms currently in use at Whitelee and Clyde in Scotland (which generate approximately 1050MW in total in two different locations). There is therefore a mismatch between the location of potential renewable energy sources and available grid. Such a mismatch will increase the need for either substantial upgrades or additional transmission lines. Wind farms are frequently the subject of considerable opposition, mainly relating to landscape and visual effects.

Many objectors talk about dominance of the turbines based on a comparison between the height of the turbines with existing landscape features. First-generation wind farms with turbines in the order of 35-50m in height were broadly welcomed and accepted. This was usually because the turbines could be fitted into the landscape without breaching any (scale) characteristics of the landscape.

Between 2000 and 2012, the scale of wind energy development increased significantly, especially in Scotland, with turbines substantially increasing in size and height and becoming more efficient.

In England, support declined and opposition grew as turbines became taller and developments larger. Wind farm proposals became a political football, with the Cameron government effectively putting a moratorium on onshore wind. The then Secretary of State refused most of the applications in England that went to appeal. Windfarm development all but totally stalled when subsidy was withdrawn. This led to a surge in solar farms but they too attracted opposition.

The Scottish government promoted so-called Feed in Tariff developments. These were highly subsidised renewable energy developments limited to a maximum of 5MW and requiring limited environmental assessment.

Although short lived and mainly resulting in the development of single turbines below 80m tip height, this led to a plethora of turbines appearing in the landscape in a rather uncoordinated manner.

This might have been the end of onshore wind energy development in the UK, but, in the world market, technical advances resulted in considerably larger turbines. Between 2000 and 2015, generating output of turbines almost trebled whilst tip heights of turbines broadly doubled. Increases in hub height and longer blades take advantage of the higher average windspeed to be found above 100m or more above

...should we continue trying to fit renewable energy schemes including onshore wind into our landscape, or should we search for an approach that recognises that we are dealing with a type and scale of development not seen before?

26

2. Hypothetical example of a windfarm using very large turbines that transcend the landscape. The funnel-like pattern is disengaged from the underlying field pattern and land uses but is almost literally channelling generated electricity to a node of transmission lines at Harker Substation. © MVGLA using Windplanner

3. Harker substation. © Marc van Grieken

2

3

ground level and generate more energy. This has led to a large number of wind farm proposals of up to 149.5m tip height, thereby avoiding the requirements for aviation lighting.

World markets also pushed ever-bigger turbines, and all those factors combined showed that subsidy-free developments were potentially feasible and the resurgence in development proposals began. Many schemes with planning permission for turbines in the range of 110-135m tip height are now being redesigned and resubmitted for planning consent with turbines of up to 235m or more tip heights. Turbine heights have again almost doubled in the last 6-8 years. It is expected that considerably larger and taller turbines (designed and developed for offshore) will be deployed on land in the UK within the next 10-15years.

These may have rotor blades of 120-150m (with a 240-300m radius) on towers between 190-220m, giving tip heights between 300-370m. In June 2021, LM Wind Power in France unveiled the longest blade to date at 107m. While the development of these large turbines is beneficial operationally and commercially, they lead to ever stronger objections and opposition to onshore wind.

It is often forgotten that many hydroelectric schemes caused very substantial impact on the landscape dramatically changed views and drowned valleys, including those of significant cultural heritage. The engineering triumphs exemplified by the Norris Dam (1936) and Douglas Dam (1943) or Cruachan power station would, most likely, not receive the same reception in 2021.

F E AT U R E

4. Causeymire Windfarm: This landscape is described as ‘large scale’. The turbines in the photograph have a tip height of 100m (tower height 60m and blades 40m). If these were replaced with turbines which have a tip height of 246m (towers 166m and blades 80m) and double the spacing distance, would they have similar effects or transcend this landscape? © Marc van Grieken

5. The height of wind turbines is often difficult to estimate.

In this photograph two turbines have a tip height of 198m and the turbine to the right is less than half of that. © Marc van Grieken

6. Silton Manor Solar Farm. © Beatrice Dower

7. Windfarm landscape, Woodville New Zealand: With 3+ generations of turbines including lattice steel towers, one could argue that the disjointed layout and sizes of turbines ‘relate’ to the shape and form of the steep topography of the scarp below the turbines. Turbines more than 2 times the height of these would decouple such associations.

The question the landscape profession faces is, should we continue trying to fit renewable energy schemes including onshore wind into our landscape, or should we search for an approach that recognises that we are dealing with a type and scale of development not seen before? Meeting current targets for renewable energy will require the deployment of several thousand more turbines in Scotland, England and Wales, together with developing windfarms off-shore, solar farms and biomass sources of energy. Can we be confident and follow the examples set by Colvin and her contemporaries and create new landscape strategies, landscape frameworks and masterplans that positively respond to large scale wind or solar developments?

This should not be seen in isolation but in full awareness that many other renewable sources such as offshore, solar, tidal etc, together with policy developments, behavioural change and landscape planning using the Natural Capital and Net Benefit approaches, will also have very important roles to play in meeting our targets.

Changes in electricity generating sources need to be matched by changes in the electricity transmission network.

When considering the combined effects of on-shore wind, expansion of the transmission grid and other Net Benefit measures, is it time for a new aesthetic? Does the scale and quantity of onshore wind farms and other large energy infrastructure that will be required to meet climate change targets require a new design narrative? If we agree that we do need a new design narrative, this need not replace all currently used approaches to manage the energy transition.

We must, however, face up to the reality that our landscape changes socially, economically, ecologically visually and in the way we experience it.

4

5

6

© Marc van Grieken

7 27

F E AT U R E

The ‘energy transition’ kicked off with adopting a relatively careful approach to fitting the windfarm into the landscape. It has been demonstrated many times that melding a new development into any landscape requires a reasonable synergy between the scale and size of the proposed development with the scale of the host landscape.

Turbines with a height dimension in the order of 50-80m tip, such as the turbine to the right in figure 5, still relate to, for example, the dimension in height of the poplars in this view.

On the same basis, it is easy to make the argument that turbines with heights in the order of 200m are ‘out of scale’ and will be overly dominant. It is however most frequently the number that causes concern. The two turbines on the left in figure 5 are 198m to tip but commonly estimated as being 80-100m.

Most people are not fully aware of the true scale of energy transition that is required. Our generation has declared a climate emergency and wish to do something about it. We must accept that very large turbines cannot be treated in the same way as the small turbines we have seen so far. We must face the climate change challenge proactively, by developing, discussing and testing fundamentally different models, frameworks, masterplans and strategies to facilitate and understand the effects of placing thousands more turbines in the UK landscape.

Alternatively, we can sit on our hands, short changing the next generation by pretending to be responsible stewards of our existing landscape. Listing all the reasons why an unusual and unfamiliar concept, type, size and scale of development will not work is not constructive.

It is defensive and demonstrates fear of the unknown.

But landscape is not unknown, it is your landscape and my landscape and our children’s landscape, and the measures we take (or fail to take) to address climate change will change it. We must design our changing landscape not only based on our understanding of underlying processes, but also through development of a new aesthetic that applies to the energy generating infrastructure high above us and enhances, grows and develops the grounded landscape within which we live. We need to demonstrate that significant benefits can be derived from designing energy landscapes at a scale that transcends the landscape.

8

© Marc van Grieken

8. 97.5m tip height 9. 150m tip height 10. 198m tip height 11. 246m tip height 12. 350m tip height 13. Cornmill, Lytham St Annes © Marc van Grieken

9

10

Marc van Grieken is a Chartered Landscape Architect, Fellow of the Landscape Institute and Chair of the Landscape Institute Technical Committee

11

13

12

28

14

Each of the following layouts show different heights and capacities of turbines, all which generate approximately the same amount of electricity within the same view and having approximately the same ‘land-take'.

(Montages with 55 degrees included angle of view, produced by MVGLA using Windplanner software.)

14. RES’s Kelburn Windfarm official opening. Will the next generation of children and grandchildren have the same concerns about seeing turbines in the landscape?

29

F E AT U R E

By Rebecca Knight and Paul Macrae 1. Night animation.

Still from a night time animation showing aviation lighting of offshore wind turbines. © LUC.

Light and power Wind power is making a massive contribution to the generation of renewable energy, but what are the implications for how turbines are lit?

T

o achieve net zero, there will need to be a considerable increase in the number of on and off-shore wind turbines. Landscape professionals need to understand the potential impacts of these structures and how to minimise adverse effects. As wind turbines have increased in size, so has the need for lighting to ensure the safety of air traffic. LUC estimates that there is over 11GW of onshore wind development in the planning system, most of which would require safety lighting.

There is a statutory requirement for lighting of wind turbines of 150m or more above ground level.1 Wind turbines below 150m are not required to be routinely lit for civil aviation purposes, but aviation stakeholders (including the Civil Aviation Authority, CAA) may make a case for aviation warning lighting where a structure is considered a significant navigational hazard. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) may also specify lighting, although in the interests of public amenity they will seek to specify InfraRed (IR) lighting.

Light pollution is a recognised problem in the UK, and the value of night skies has been brought to attention in part by the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s (CPRE’s) Night Blight campaign, and its associated mapping.2 For wind farms requiring lighting, effects on dark landscapes can be of particular concern in more remote areas, resulting in delays to permissions.

The need to accurately model and carefully assess effects is especially important in the UK’s darker, more sensitive and wilder landscapes. NatureScot has set out guidance on assessing lighting effects,3 in which they

30

1

suggest an appropriate scope for landscape and visual assessment of turbine lighting, including night-time visualisations “from a limited / proportionate number of representative viewpoints”. These visualisations, together with lighting intensity Zone of Theoretical Visibility (ZTV) mapping, can be useful to inform an understanding of the effects of turbine lighting.

As for any effects on the environment, mitigation should be considered to prevent, avoid, reduce or offset any significant adverse effects. As the Institute of Lighting Professionals states “Good lighting practice is the provision of the right light, at the right time, in the right place, controlled by the right system”.4 This is useful advice to inform appropriate mitigation. For wind turbine lighting, mitigation measures may include: • Using InfraRed lighting where possible (this is only currently an option for turbines below 150m above ground level) • Limiting the highest intensity of visible light to the horizontal plane and restricting it in other planes • Minimising the number of visible lights required in agreement with the CAA • Reducing the intensity of lights in periods of good meteorological visibility • Using ‘smart’ transponder-based demand-controlled aviation lights that only switch on when aircraft are detected within a particular airspace around the wind farm (known as an Aircraft Detection Lighting System, or ADLS)

1

As set out in the UK Air Navigation Order (ANO) 2016, Article 222 which has been translated into the Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) Policy Statement on the lighting of onshore wind turbines (2017).

2

h ttps://nightblight. cpre.org.uk/

3

atureScot (2020) N General pre-application and scoping advice for onshore wind farms: Guidance, Annex 2.

4

h ttps://theilp.org.uk/ ilp-guidance-note-onobtrusive-light-hasbeen-revised/

F E AT U R E

By Rebecca Knight and Paul Macrae

Grid capacity The huge investment required to meet the Paris Agreement targets commits the UK to significant generation of renewable energy, but do we have the grid capacity to make this happen?

2. The architecture of power transmission © LUC

1

https://www.gov.uk/ government/news/ new-plans-to-makeuk-world-leader-ingreen-energy

2

ttps://www.gov.uk/ h government/ collections/ contracts-fordifference-cfdallocation-round-4

3

elsh Assembly W Government, 2005.

Planning Policy Wales Technical Advice Note 8: Planning for Renewable Energy.

4

ttps://www. h nationalgrid.com/ sites/default/files/ documents/13795The%20Holford%20 Rules.pdf

5

6

cottishPower, 2019, S Zero Carbon Communities https:// www.scottishpower. com/userfiles/file/ Zero_Carbon_ Communities_Report. pdf?v=3 ttps://www.judiciary. h uk/judgments/ pearce-v-secretary-ofstate-for-businessenergy-and-industrialstrategy/

T

he UK Government has indicated that offshore wind will produce more than enough electricity to power every home in the country by 2030;1 and from December 2021, onshore wind and solar energy developments will again be eligible to compete for financial support through the Contracts for Difference (CfD).2 Whether onshore or offshore, wind or solar, the one constant is the requirement for a grid connection.

One of the key barriers to the implementation of wind farm developments is grid capacity: that is, the ability of the transmission infrastructure to transport electricity from the place it is generated, to the places where it is used. As an example, a lack of grid connection has limited delivery of wind energy development in Mid Wales for a number of years. Despite a positive policy environment, with several ‘strategic search areas’ defined from 2005,3 successful large-scale development has not been forthcoming in the absence of connections to export the generated electricity.

Positive planning for renewable energy therefore requires positive planning for grid connections, and landscape architects have a key role to play. Overhead power lines, whether carried on wood poles or steel pylons, are substantial infrastructure projects, generally crossing rural areas, and with potentially extensive landscape and visual impacts. With undergrounding of high-voltage power lines being prohibitively expensive over long distances, the key mitigation is through careful route selection. The Holford Rules provide the ground rules for routeing but the process needs an understanding of sensitivities and a keen eye for the opportunities that the landscape offers.4 Research estimates the cost of upgrading the electricity grid to cope with demand and allow for more renewable connections at £48 billion, much of which will need to be in place by 2035.5 This will require a coordinated effort.

Recently, consent for the Norfolk Vanguard offshore wind farm was quashed on the basis that the Planning Inspectorate had not fully considered the cumulative landscape and visual impacts of the grid connection works, alongside those of the future Norfolk Boreas project.6 It is essential that landscape architects are aware of the potential for cumulative issues and argue for joined-up approaches to assessing, and mitigating, the landscape and visual impacts of grid infrastructure.

2

Rebecca Knight CMLI is a Director of LUC, with 25 years’ experience of landscape and visual impact assessment.

She sits on the Landscape Institute’s Technical Committee and GLVIA Panel.

Paul Macrae CMLI is an Associate Director at LUC, with extensive knowledge of landscape and visual impact assessments for major infrastructure projects.

31

F E AT U R E

By Simon White

Seascapes and offshore wind power Seascape sensitivity studies are playing an important role in guiding offshore wind energy at a strategic level, but they need to be applied effectively to help avoid delay to suitable developments which combat climate change and its related impacts.

O

ffshore wind energy production is a major contributor to mitigating climate change, so it deserves support from the profession. However, these developments are huge in terms of height of turbine and areas covered (illustration 2). They will be visible over very long distances, and some are likely to cause cumulative impacts with existing developments. In achieving energy production targets, can we (and should we) also protect the character and special qualities of our most valued seascapes? There is a strong case to do so, but to achieve this we need a more effective strategic planning approach.

The Crown Estate facilitates offshore wind development by periodically leasing defined areas of seabed. They have just completed Round 4 allocations, and are now considering deep waters in the Celtic Sea. In this instance, various consortia bid for the development rights within defined bidding and wind farm extension areas, and they then try to resolve seascape issues as part of the consenting process (using seascape and visual impact assessment (SVIA)). This can lead to conflict, especially where sites are allocated near nationally designated landscapes (illustration 1).

The recent LI publication responding to the climate crisis, Landscape for 2030, states that strategic landscape and seascape planning are an essential part of renewable energy placement and viability. So, how to achieve this?

Seascape sensitivity studies are playing an important role at both a national and a regional/local level. Current national policy statements drive decision-making and these

32

lay emphasis on avoiding compromising the purposes of national landscape designations. Research for Natural Resources Wales (NRW)1 analysed all available UK SVIAs to arrive at a consensus on the magnitude of visual effects for different sizes of wind turbine at different distances. This was used to define visual buffers to optimise the distance for different heights of turbine for different sensitivities of seascapes. This appears to have influenced the location of Round 4 projects in the Northern Wales and Irish Sea area, but should it not be used at an earlier stage in the Celtic Sea to avoid significant effects on the Pembrokeshire Coast?

A UK Offshore Energy Strategic Environmental Assessment background paper2 expanded on and refined the NRW research. It combined this with analysis of Met Office data over 10 years on the frequency of visibility distance out to sea and other information to recommend refined buffers for different sensitivities of seascape.

Around the same time, an approach for assessing seascape sensitivity was developed for the Marine Management Organisation3. Both these documents inform both strategic and specific development assessments.

The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) is the Government body (since 2009) responsible for “protecting and enhancing our marine environment, and support UK economic growth by enabling sustainable marine activities and development.” The MMO licenses and advises on development of offshore wind installations.4 The MMO are creating marine plans for all English seas and coasts and

F E AT U R E

1. Worms Head, Gower – Atlantic Array windfarm was proposed offshore from this distinctive landform in the Gower AONB. This withdrawn windfarm would also have affected the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and designations on the English coast – Exmoor National Park and North Devon Coast AONB. © White Consultants Environment Ltd

2. The scale of offshore wind turbines – they are very large structures, rivalling the scale of nationally known and iconic tall structures such as the Shard at 305m and the London Eye at 135m. Current offshore windfarm applications include turbines up to 300m high, but some, in preapplication stages, are projected to use turbines 350m high and in the future ones that could reach up to 400m.

1

these include seascape character assessments at a national level, as for Wales. These act as part of the baseline but sensitivity studies are needed to guide the location and scale of future marine development.

Two potential areas for offshore wind development are to the east, off the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB, and to the south, off the South Downs National Park. In both locations, seascape sensitivity assessments5 have now been completed, which apply the national studies. Seascape zones have been defined with different levels of sensitivity taking into account the recommended buffers and likely combined cumulative impact with existing developments.

So overall, significant progress is being made to take a measured, strategic approach to the seascape effects of offshore windfarm development. However, more strategic sensitivity studies are needed, and it would be best if their findings are applied earlier in the planning process to guide wind farm location. This could avoid potential failure at a later stage in implementing an effective means of mitigating climate change.

Simon White is Director at White Consultants.

© White Consultants Environment Ltd

1

Seascape and visual sensitivity to offshore wind farms in Wales: Strategic assessment and guidance. Stages 1-3.

NRW Evidence Series.

Report No: 315, NRW, Bangor, 2019.

2

Offshore Energy Strategic Environmental Assessment (OESEA): Review and update of Seascape and Visual Buffer study for Offshore Wind farms, BEIS/Hartley Anderson, 2020.

3

An approach to seascape sensitivity assessment, MMO, 2020.

4

h ttps://www.gov. uk/government/ organisations/ marine-managementorganisation/about.

5

Suffolk seascape sensitivity to offshore wind farms, White Consultants for Suffolk County Council and Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB Partnership, 2020. South Downs National Park offshore wind farms buffer study, White Consultants for South Downs National Park Authority, 2021.

2 33

Everyone can do something to help save the planet Vestre has incorporated nine of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals into our business philosophy, and our goal is to be known as the world’s most sustainable furniture producer. Though we implement many measures ourselves, it won’t be enough. It will take a lot of money if the world is to eradicate poverty, fight against inequality and stop climate change by 2030. Vestre therefore donates at least 10 per cent of its annual profits to sustainable projects around the world. If all Norwegian companies did the same, they would match the entire Norwegian aid budget – twice over!

We challenge other companies to do the same and pay their tithe.

F E AT U R E

By Alister Kratt

The power of water Just a few years ago, the future of tidal lagoon power looked rosy. It promised to make a new and important contribution to the renewable energy mix. An independent report for Government endorsed tidal lagoon power and its pathfinder project, Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon. But tidal energy has stalled. Why? What does this reveal about the UK’s approach to infrastructure, and can the landscape profession lead the case for new thinking?

T

he Swansea Tidal Lagoon is planned to connect Swansea and the docks in the west to Swansea University’s new Bay campus and Crymlyn Burrows to the east. With its 9.5km U-shaped breakwater, or sea wall, built out from the coast, it can meet 90% of the region’s domestic electricity demand with its stable supply.

The tidal lagoon was masterplanned by landscape architects, working with engineers and marine specialists.

It is envisioned as multifunctional infrastructure. The masterplan provides for dynamic new public realm along the breakwater and at the landing points and into the city centre, and creates a destination for coastal recreation. It can regenerate the area, including the redundant dockside. The scheme won a resounding 86% approval from the community, drawn by its social, economic and environmental benefits.

With a breakwater life of at least 120 years, the lagoon is designed to last twice as long as a nuclear facility and five times longer than an offshore wind farm. The breakwater reduces future flood risk and acts as an artificial reef system, providing new marine habitats and beach and saltwater marsh environments.

The Government recognises the need to decarbonise energy generation at scale, yet in the UK, renewable energy still only provides around 20% of our daily needs. Swansea has always been a pathfinder for a national fleet of larger lagoons, matching the price of offshore wind with economies of scale. The fleet of proposed lagoons will be capable of supplying eight percent of the UK’s total electricity demand.

So, why are we waiting?

In 2017, an independent review for Government led by Charles Hendry analysed the strategic role of tidal lagoons as part of decarbonising the UK energy mix. Hendry

36

endorsed their concept, and also Swansea, as cost effective.

Yet one year later, the plans for Swansea were shelved by the UK government, on grounds of value for money. The discrepancy between Hendry’s advice and the Government’s decision comes down to cost being considered the primary factor in the delivery of zero carbon energy. While Hendry recognised the capacity of tidal lagoons to regenerate places, Government assessed the cost in isolation from the benefits.

It seems that investment in tidal power in the UK is being frustrated by the unnecessarily tight confines of political thinking and existing forms of economic modelling. The energy industry works with Contracts for Difference (CFD), the government’s main scheme for supporting low-carbon electricity generation, which means that those supplying energy benefit from a subsidised flat unit rate. This underpins the investment they need to make, and protects consumers

1

2

1. Swansea Bay. © Juice Architects.

2. Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon. © LDA Design

from fluctuating prices. Such protection matters of course, especially given the pressing issue of fuel poverty, but – crucially – the present economic analysis for CFD pricing excludes the added value from any beneficial outcomes.

There are many ways to assess value for money. For tidal power, it could be in the context of its extraordinary longevity, generating electricity over a period of 100 years.

It could recognise the value of a pathfinder project, the start of a journey. With value capture being such a familiar concept within the wider development market, the placemaking and regeneration value of the tidal lagoons could easily be recognised within a new hybrid CFD. Is there a glimmer of hope? While the National Infrastructure Strategy failed to mention lagoons in 2021, it did however recognise that projects should be assessed in light of the economic, social and environmental benefits they bring. The Welsh Government is now starting to explore market responses to the concept of resurrecting the Swansea Tidal Lagoon.

However, the obstacles to delivering tidal power remain symptomatic of a bigger problem: a chronic lack of joined-up and ambitious thinking across the infrastructure sector. Too many projects are still pursued with blinkers on, focused on narrow outcomes that minimise risk but fail to deliver lasting, positive outcomes. Landscape professionals have a key role

in turning this around, through masterplanning which realises the opportunities. This means encompassing the spatial, environmental, social, cultural and economic dimensions of the project.

In Sylvia Crowe’s time, when power projects were considered to result in the industrialisation of the landscape, it made sense that impacts and mitigation were at the front of our minds. We are in a different era now: power projects can be designed to support communities and the environment, and to deliver and define great places. Working with the natural environment should be a catalyst for resilience. Landscape professionals will be leading the way when they not only see the possibilities, but express them in a vivid way.

Alister Kratt is director for Infrastructure at LDA Design.

Alister led the design team for the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon and supported Tidal Lagoon Power in preparation of strategies for their lagoon fleet and presented the case for the consideration of beneficial outcomes to the Hendry Review. LDA Design has won the President’s Award and Infrastructure Award for work on the Swansea Tidal Lagoon.

Alister is an advisor to Design Council and Design Commission for Wales.

37

ADVE R TO R I AL

38

39

C L I M AT E E M E R G E N C Y – C P D

By Evan White

LI Policy Paper | Autumn 2020

GREENER RECOVERY

Delivering a sustainable recovery from COVID-19 How investing in better places can support the UK’s recovery from Coronavirus while tackling climate change

Five priorities for a green recovery a natural capital 1 Take approach to new infrastructure and housing investment

in maintenance 2 Invest and renewal of existing places fairer standards 3 Set for green space in natural 4 Invest solutions to climate change in green skills, 5 Invest digital and data

PRIORITY

1

Take a natural capital approach to new infrastructure and housing investment

GREENER RECOVERY: DELIVERING A SUSTAINABLE RECOVERY FROM COVID-19 To aid economic recovery we need to get LI Policy Paper | Autumn 2020

5

Britain building: creating and repairing places that are healthy, resilient and sustainable.

New or accelerated government investment can help kickstart this activity; however public investment should not be used to fund unsustainable, unhealthy, poorly-designed places, which impede our ability to meet our 2050 net zero target. Government needs to invest in schemes that are not simply ‘shovel-ready’, but are ‘shovel-worthy’.

Government investment in infrastructure more broadly must take a natural capital approach, and ensure it delivers an environmental net gain.4 Even a modest reallocation of the money spent on grey infrastructure could bring enormous benefits; recent research suggests that a £5.5bn investment in urban green infrastructure would generate over £200bn of physical and mental health benefits.5 Green infrastructure (GI) projects can generate economic returns whilst providing a means of restoring nature and delivering ecosystem services.

The government announced £40m for a Green Recovery Challenge Fund at the 2020 Summer Budget,6 but other nations are going further.

The scale of GI investment should be ambitious, including landscape-scale investments in regional and city parks, new green belts, and city-wide walkways. Landscape-scale infrastructure planning, learning from Wales’ Area Statements and proactive Covid-19 planning policy,7 can ensure that we’re building in the right place, and that the environment is seen as a core economic asset to be enhanced through development, rather than as a constraint to it.

To guide this investment, a landscape-led approach is essential. Involving landscape and greenspace professionals in early stage masterplanning ensures that new development is designed with people, place, and nature as a priority. Too often the spaces between buildings are an afterthought, leading to reduced community and environmental outcomes.

Whilst the quantity of new housing remains a priority, success is about more than just numbers of units. The quality of our homes and communities has come under close examination during lockdown, highlighting the importance of access to local amenities, parks and green spaces. Strengthening building standards is critical to delivering healthier homes and buildings – as is ensuring that Planning Authorities are incentivised for good placemaking and not just units.

The COVID-19 stimulus packages offer a significant opportunity to address immediate and entrenched socio-economic issues and hasten the transition to a low carbon and environmentally resilient economy. An ambitious package of green infrastructure stimulus can put the UK on track to its commitment to net zero by 2050, provide short- and long-term economic benefits, create jobs and tackle regional inequalities.

Recommendations • Provide economic stimulus packages which accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy, by properly embedding natural capital into decision-making • Require all publicly funded infrastructure and large-scale housing to meet high standards of environmental and social benefit, including targets for healthy green space.

• Implement a landscape-led approach to planning all new developments delivered through this funding round • Re-orientate targets and incentives for Local Planning Authorities towards a broader set of placemaking outcomes, and ensure that the new planning reforms help deliver these • Extend net gain policies in the Environment Bill to cover a broader range of outcomes and development types, including infrastructure

Supported by

GREENER RECOVERY: DELIVERING A SUSTAINABLE RECOVERY FROM COVID-19 LI Policy Paper | Autumn 2020

6

Greener Recovery Festival 2021 In March, the Landscape Institute held its Greener Recovery Festival – a CPD week demonstrating how landscape practice can combat the climate emergency, increase biodiversity, and restore the natural environment. View the event on LI Campus.

T

he Greener Recovery Festival was a great opportunity for LI members, professionals and practitioners to hear from inspiring speakers, share their ideas, and keep up to speed with the latest developments in green infrastructure and climate change strategies, both nationally and internationally. Viewers could attend a variety of panels and presentations on a range of subjects – 40

including biodiversity net gain, natural capital, climate equity, and net-zero carbon targets – as well as interactive site visits and networking sessions.

The week began with a message from the eminent Virginijus Sinkevičius, Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries at the European Commission, who kicked off proceedings by extolling the benefits of improving and developing

green infrastructure. He implored landscape practitioners to avoid “squeezing nature into a corner”, and instead develop spaces where it can thrive, increasing biodiversity and “mending our broken link with nature.”

With the UK pulling away from the EU, Sinkevičius underlined the need for us to continue working with our European neighbours, by sharing information and taking inspiration from one another, as

C L I M AT E E M E R G E N C Y – C P D

1. Virginijus Sinkevičius, Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries at the European Commission.

2. Dr Tony Juniper CBE, Chair of Natural England.

3. Alastair Mant, Head of Business Transformation at UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) and LI Vice President Carolin Gohler.

4. Rebecca Wrigley (Rewilding Britain), and LI President Jane Findlay.

We should not just be asking how we can help nature “recover”, but how we can make nature “better”

we collectively take steps to reconcile our built environment with the planet’s ecosystems. He reminded us that those working in the landscape sector have a large part to play in biodiversity gains, and urged us to lead and teach others in this arena.

We were also fortunate enough to be joined by Dr Tony Juniper CBE, Chair of Natural England, who warned of the dangers of continuing current levels of carbon emissions. Juniper argued that green infrastructure is not a cost but an investment, and that destroying nature will destroy economies – nature makes an enormous economic contribution, and doesn’t need to be sacrificed to facilitate growth. He stressed that we should not just be asking how we can help nature “recover”, but how we can make nature “better”. Much like the EU Commissioner, Juniper believes that taking inspiration from international approaches to the climate emergency is crucial in developing resilient infrastructure going forward.

Indeed, the Festival did just that, by turning to perspectives from across the pond with presentations from American urban designers Mark Johnson (Civitas Inc.) and Alice Shay (Buro Happold), who showcased the benefits of renewing, redeveloping, retrofitting and repurposing brownfield sites in favour of building on greenfield sites. The projects discussed included the renovation of the New York State Canal System. As Johnson put it, better to “heal” damaged areas than to build on undeveloped spaces.

As COP26 draws near, efforts to meet net-zero goals are gathering strength, but it is vital that we ensure that we are on track to meet these goals, and that we continue to take responsibility for the welfare of nature and the environment. This was a key theme of the talk given

by Alastair Mant, Head of Business Transformation at UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), who felt strongly that we need to set net-zero carbon targets – and stick to them.

Attendees were given the opportunity to see some of the work being done in this area. Carolin Göhler FLI hosted a panel which showcased frameworks and strategies from

1

2

3

4 41

C L I M AT E E M E R G E N C Y – C P D

across the UK, with Brian Evans’ Implementation Plan for Glasgow City Council’s Climate Adaptation Strategy, Richard McLernon’s Belfast Resilience Strategy, and Jonny Sadler discussing Manchester’s Green Recovery. These speakers stressed that good communication between professionals, policy makers and communities is needed at all stages of planning and implementation to reduce carbon production, and that this is something we need to be acting on now. Sadler reminded us that the effects of climate change are visible already, and we must acknowledge that it is a “real, present issue”.

But the focus was not solely on the climate crisis; further measures are still needed to tackle the ever-more concerning global fall in biodiversity as well. On this particular point, Helen Oakman (DEFRA), Dr Julia Baker (Balfour Beatty) and Sally Hayns (CIEEM) discussed the social benefits of nature for wellbeing, and agreed that Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) must be a central part of sustainable development. Following on from this discussion, Bob Edmonds and Bill Butcher, directors of UKHab Ltd, explained the functions and applications of the Biodiversity Metric – a method of measuring and assessing biodiversity losses and gains resulting from development or land management changes – and presented case studies which demonstrated how BNG can deliver quantifiable benefits to society.

An increasingly effective method of improving biodiversity is rewilding, explored in a panel with Rebecca Wrigley (Rewilding Britain), Ian Houlston (LDA Design) and Peter Shepherd (BSG Ecology Ltd.), who showed that rewilding strategies can work both economically and ecologically, through a combination of locally-led action and government policy. Shepherd praised the increasingly wider and deeper appreciation of the value of environmental infrastructure, but warned that work is still needed to meet current targets. The panel agreed that we need to “ease off” on management and ensure that we don’t over-curate spaces, giving 42

nature the opportunity to exert itself.

As Wrigley said, we must “take care of nature so that it can take care of us.” This is no different for designed spaces, which need to support us and the natural world concurrently.

We must “prioritise nature-based solutions” and create “a built environment that enables people and nature to thrive.”, said Alastair Mant.

Another keynote speaker, Rebecca Pow MP, similarly stressed the importance of well-designed green infrastructure that benefits both people and nature. She detailed DEFRA’s plans to invest in green recovery and their commitment to a natural capital approach. It was encouraging to see that the Government recognises the importance of the issues of climate and biodiversity. Questions were raised by audience members and other speakers, however, as to whether proposed levels of funding and the emissions targets that have been set will be sufficient to combat the increasing effects of climate change.

That being said, speakers also noted that we can choose to surpass these goals rather than limit ourselves to them, and that professionals can and should go the extra mile in ensuring

5

6

their projects contribute to a more sustainable future.

Consistently throughout the week, presenters agreed that collaboration across professions, authorities and organisations is key. Alexandra Steed URBAN’s work on the South Essex Estuary Park demonstrated the necessity and success of taking a collaborative, holistic strategy.

The place-specific and co-ordinated approach of Steed’s project sets a good example for others working across the UK. Dr Julia Baker corroborated the effectiveness of such an approach, suggesting that strategies and planning to increase BNG must be locally and culturally specific, a sentiment that many speakers shared. Bill Blackledge CMLI pointed out that “local people are experts in their local area”.

A combination of expertise – technical and local – is needed to create and reinvigorate public green spaces and infrastructure. To achieve this, practitioners must ensure that they are fully engaging with communities local to their projects, to establish both the needs of the site and of those using and living around and within it.

Practitioners must also be

5. Rebecca Pow MP 6. Alexandra Steed URBAN

Nature isn’t something that’s “nice to have”, but rather something that people, particularly children, “need to have.” Sites need to work for the communities in which they are based.

C L I M AT E E M E R G E N C Y – C P D

7. Clockwise: Dr Mya-Rose Craig (Back2Nature), Asad Rehman (War on Want), Tatiana Garavito (Wretched of the Earth) and Ahlyah Ali (LI Member Services Officer).

8. Left to right: Dr Anastasia Nikologianni, IFLA and Judy Ling Wong CBE, Honorary President of the Black Environment Network.

careful that they are considering, consulting and including people from all backgrounds in our communities within these processes. Keynote speaker Judy Ling Wong CBE gave an inspiring talk on the importance of engaging with diverse communities to ensure climate equity. Ling Wong, the Honorary President of the Black Environment Network (BEN), argued for a “people-centred approach” to increasing green infrastructure, calling for consideration of the needs of all groups and backgrounds in both design and policy, and stating that people required “genuine equal partnership” and “genuine empowerment”. The link between landscape and social justice was explored further in a QuestionTime-style session with Dr MyaRose Craig (Back2Nature), Tatiana Garavito (Wretched of the Earth) and Asad Rehman (War on Want), who discussed systemic racism in relation to the environmental and landscape sectors, and how organisations must challenge diversity issues and increase inclusivity, ensuring that residents see themselves reflected in the delivery of new projects and policies.

As well as the need to encourage diversity, Ling Wong placed real emphasis on the involvement of young people and children in design, and on their participation and education, so that they may take a role in shaping, transforming and maintaining public spaces in the future. Similarly, Michael Hoenigmann, Managing Director of Jupiter Play, explained how essential it is that nature is accessible to children, and the need to include nature in the design of play spaces.

Nature isn’t something that’s “nice to have”, but rather something that people, particularly children, “need to have.” Sites need to work for the communities in which they are based.

The importance of community engagement and involvement was echoed by many speakers throughout the week: Dr Helen Hoyle (UWE Bristol), showcasing her work with schools and the local community in Luton, agreed that we need to ensure that young people of all backgrounds have access to nature; Ian Houlston suggested green recovery strategies were an opportunity to address

7

8

inequalities directly; and Brian Evans asked that we make sites meaningful not only to their quality of place, but also to users and residents’ quality of life.

Ultimately, the Festival’s core message stressed the value of “community” in all its forms: professional, local, international, and natural. Each plays a key part in our green recovery, from the COVID pandemic, and from the biodiversity and climate crises. We must continue to share strategies, involve local people and residents, collaborate with fellow practitioners, and support nature, in order to create a more environmentally responsible future.

I caught up with Jane Findlay, the President of the LI, after the event.

She praised the Festival’s accessibility, because its national and global reach allowed the LI to spread the word about these issues and solutions to other professions. Although the more personal aspects of an in-person event were missed, the success of the Festival may prompt a combination of physical and virtual events going forward. The LI has received “fantastic feedback” for what was a very informative and well-run event.

The Festival’s themes were reflected in its use of the online hosting platform, Hopin, which facilitated discussion amongst attendees, and provided an excellent substitute for an in-person event. Interestingly, the use of Hopin was, of course, a low-carbon endeavour, with the need to use polluting forms of transport nullified – a small step on the path to a net-zero future. The platform brought people together from far and wide, allowing speakers and attendees from across the globe to present, share ideas, and network with another. As Virginijus Sinkevičius reminded us, nature does not recognise national boundaries – the climate crisis is a global problem that we must tackle together.

If you weren’t able to attend the Festival, or if you’d like to revisit any of the pertinent and valuable advice from the week, you can access the recorded sessions and speaker materials on the LI Campus. [https:// campus.landscapeinstitute.org/] Evan White is a writer and editor with a particular interest in landscape and the natural environment.

43

ADVE R TO R I AL

BUILDING BUILDINGNATURE NATURE

SUSTAINABLY SUSTAINABLY

s momentum As Asmomentum momentum builds builds across buildsacross across business business business and industry and andindustry industry to reach to tothe reach reach goal the the ofgoal goal net zero of ofnet net emissions zero zeroemissions emissions by by by 050, the 2050, 2050, focus the theon focus focus sustainable on onsustainable sustainable materials materials materials in landscape ininlandscape landscape architecture architecture architecture has never has hasbeen never nevermore been beenimportant. more moreimportant. important.

Dan McLearnon Dan DanMcLearnon McLearnon from WoodBlocX from fromWoodBlocX WoodBlocX Landscaping Landscaping Landscaping explains explains explains how the how how company’s the thecompany’s company’s products products products can play can can a play playaa ital role. vital vitalrole. role.

fle

at

In

We recognise We Werecognise recognise that simply that that providing simply simplyproviding an providingan an

ex

As a company As Asaacompany that company usesthat timber thatuses uses astimber atimber coreas material asaacore corematerial material

ar

we we responsibility have haveaaresponsibility responsibility to ensuretothat toensure ensure our supply that thatour oursupply supply nvironmentally environmentally environmentally friendly orfriendly friendly sustainable ororsustainable sustainable product product productwe have a

n’t enough. isn’t isn’tIt enough. enough. is essential ItItisisessential for essential us that for for these us usthat thatthese these

in

chain, and chain, chain, the processes and andthe theprocesses processes that we use that that towe weuse usetoto

manufacture manufacture manufacture our products, our ourproducts, are products, sustainable are aresustainable sustainable in inin ementselements are elements traceable are aretraceable traceable right backright right to the back back source. totothe thesource. source. order to protect order ordertothe toprotect protect natural the the environment natural naturalenvironment environment and and and

biodiversity. biodiversity. andscape Landscape Landscape architectsarchitects architects specify our specify specify timber our our street timber timberstreet street biodiversity.

rniture furniture and furniture planting and andsolutions planting plantingsolutions on solutions a wideon on range aawide widerange range All of our All timber Allofofour our is timber FSC timber certified, isisFSC FSCcertified, with certified, 80%with being with80% 80%being being projects ofoffrom projects projects rooffrom gardens, fromroof roofgardens, residential gardens,residential residential

sourced from sourced sourced sustainably from fromsustainably sustainably managedmanaged forests managed within forests forestswithin within evelopments developments developments and retailand and to hospitality retail retailtotohospitality hospitality and public and andpublic public a 30 milearadius a30 30mile mile of radius our radius sawmill, ofofour ourwhich sawmill, sawmill, is based which whichin isisbased basedinin paces. The spaces. spaces. common The Thecommon theme common running theme themethrough running runningthrough through the Highlands the theHighlands Highlands of Scotland. ofofScotland.

All Scotland. timberAll is Alltimber cut, timber drilled isiscut, cut,drilled drilled verything everything everything is sustainability. isissustainability. sustainability.

From creating From Fromnew creating creatingnew new and treated and and attreated treated the sawmill atatthe the so sawmill sawmill there is so so no there there wood isisno nowood wood een spaces green green within spaces spaces thewithin within built environment the thebuilt builtenvironment environment to toto waste onwaste site waste when on onsite site building when whenone building building of ourone one structures. ofofour ourstructures. structures. greening regreening regreening grey areas grey grey with areas areas treeswith with andtrees trees plants. and andplants. plants.

Waste products Waste Wasteproducts from products our production, from fromour ourproduction, production, such as such suchas as sing a natural Using Usingaand anatural natural renewable and andrenewable renewable resourceresource as resource a as asaa sawdust and sawdust sawdust bark and chippings, andbark barkchippings, chippings, are sold on are are tosold soldon ontoto olution makes solution solution formakes makes a great for for partnership, aagreat greatpartnership, partnership, a aa biomass fuel biomass biomass companies fuel fuelcompanies companies and bark and suppliers. andbark barksuppliers. suppliers. artnership partnership partnership that can only that thatcan be can successful only onlybe besuccessful successful if ethical ififethical ethical

nd sustainable and andsustainable sustainable practicespractices are practices fully traceable are arefully fullytraceable traceable and and and The combination The Thecombination combination of naturalofmaterials, ofnatural naturalmaterials, materials, ansparent. transparent. transparent. opportunities opportunities opportunities to increase totoincrease biodiversity increasebiodiversity biodiversity and and and

su

pr “As a“As “As company aa company company that that that no usesuses uses timber timber timber as a as core as aa core core a material material material we have we we have have a ade a responsibility responsibility responsibility to to to O ensure ensure ensure that our that that our our pr supply supply supply chain, chain, chain, and the and and the the su processes processes processes that we that that we we tim pl use to use use manufacture to to manufacture manufacture sh our products, our our products, products, are are are fu sustainable” sustainable” sustainable”

Dan McLearnon Dan DanMcLearnon McLearnon

O

Business Development Business BusinessDevelopment Development w

to

bl

44

t e a o r e e e e ”

ADVE R TO R I AL

flexibility of design has made WoodBlocX an

incorporate curves means we can adapt designs

attractive choice.

to fit spaces perfectly, whether its a brand new installation or a retrofit.

Interestingly, in the last two years we have experienced a significant uplift in landscape

Infinitely adaptable design innovation, smarter

architects and specifiers requesting more

processes and problem solving are core

information covering our environmental and

elements within our business. Our street

sustainability practices as part of their

furniture options are unique in their field and

procurement processes. This highlights that it is

help to create opportunities to enhance spaces

no longer down to the product alone to provide

with trees and plants to increase biodiversity

a sustainable solution, the business must

and connect people with nature.

demonstrate its wider dedication to these areas.

Our patented system of interlocking blocks provides landscape architects with a

Find out more about us Visit: woodblocx-landscaping.com Call: 0800 389 1420

sustainable timber product that is long lasting, time saving and adaptable, delivering attractive planting solutions for spaces of all sizes and shapes, that create the right balance of form function.

Our structures are made up of a series of strong wooden blocks of varying sizes that are held

Request a sample pack See how our modular system works with our sample pack woodblocx-landscaping.com/sample-packrequest

Book a CPD session 30-45 minute online sessions tailored to your requirements

together by strong dowels, using different sized blocks and the ability to pre-cut angles and

www.woodblocx-landscaping.com/cpd

45

C L I M AT E E M E R G E N C Y R E S O U R C E S

By Claire Thirlwall CMLI

Hidden power As part of a regular series, chartered landscape architect and author Claire Thirlwall explores tools, projects and guidance available to help our professional understanding of this issue’s topic.

It is easy to identify the direct energy cost of our working practice, such as heating and lighting our workplace or travel to site. But how often do we consider the hidden energy we use?

© iStockphoto

Data The power our computer systems consume in our homes and offices is obvious – as we switch on a device, we know it is consuming electricity.

However, there is a less obvious use of power caused by how we do our work. As our Dropbox files sync, our Google Photos backup, we carry out a web search or download a file, there is a carbon cost.

Our own computer is a tiny part of our energy use, but with over 4 billion internet users worldwide, the collective impact is significant. Most of the energy used by the information and communications technology (ICT) is out of sight of the user. ICT is estimated to use 10% of the world’s energy demand, equivalent to the combined energy of Germany and Japan, and data centres alone represent 1% of global electricity use.1 The data passes through our router, along miles of cables, through powered infrastructure, such as servers and network switches, until it gets to huge data centres often covering hundreds of acres, where it could be saved multiple times.2 The data centre will be a hot, noisy building that uses

46

vast amounts of power and water for servers and air conditioning.3 The amount of data uploaded is vast – every minute, YouTube users upload 500 hours of video content and WhatsApp users relay 41,666,667 messages.4 One estimate suggests that a year of smartphone use, excluding charging, uses the same amount of energy as a household fridge.5 To reduce the impact of your data: – Create links to files or online information rather than sending email attachments – Review your online storage and back up – only store what is needed and remove duplicate files – Consider how much video content you save – five minutes of 4K footage from a 360° camera creates a 2.1GB file, the equivalent of almost 200 high resolution photos – Reduce the file size of any attachments you do send – Outlook has tools to compress pictures or you can compress a file into a zip file before sending.6

Storing our data offsite has many benefits, such as allowing collaboration or for offsite backup and archive. However, our personal and work behaviour creates a hidden environmental impact that we need to consider.

1

L Posani, A Paccoia & M Moschettini, ‘The carbon footprint of distributed cloud storage’, in arXiv:1803.06973 [cs], 2019, <http://arxiv.org/ abs/1803.06973> [accessed 11 May 2021].

2

‘Look inside Facebook’s Clonee data centre: home to 50k bees, renewable energy and the machines that work your social media’, in Independent, <https:// www.independent.ie/business/technology/ look-inside-facebooks-clonee-data-centre-home-to50k-bees-renewable-energy-and-the-machines-thatwork-your-social-media-37319141.html> [accessed 11 May 2021].

3

‘The Secret Cost of Google’s Data Centers: Billions of Gallons of Water’, in Time, <https://time. com/5814276/google-data-centers-water/> [accessed 11 May 2021].

4

‘Domo Resource - Data Never Sleeps 8.0’, <https:// www.domo.com/learn/data-never-sleeps-8> [accessed 11 May 2021].

5

Posani, Paccoia and Moschettini.

6

‘Reduce the size of pictures and attachments in Outlook email messages’, <https://support.microsoft. com/en-gb/office/reduce-the-size-of-pictures-andattachments-in-outlook-email-messages-d0b6b6bf3b08-4dad-a01c-533719d1c005> [accessed 1 June 2021].

Photographs The move from analogue to digital photography means that our photo archives now live online. The ease of saving means we can easily accrue tens of thousands of images, many of which we’ll never use again. Online storage is incredibly convenient – we can access our photos anywhere we can connect online, and our own saved Google Photos can be searched in the same way as a web search.

However, that convenient archive has a carbon footprint. Almost 40,000 images in my Google Photos account takes up 102GB of storage. Google has been carbon neutral since 2007, but uploading and synchronising that many files has an energy cost, as the data travels back and forth to the data centres.9 Over four trillion photos are stored in Google Photos, and every

week a further 28 billion new photos and videos are uploaded.10 Only backing up photos that are worth keeping and removing duplicates are two ways to reduce the volume of images stored. The Google Photos app includes a tool to help review storage, highlighting dark or blurry photos you might want to delete.11

9

‘ Our third decade of climate action: Realizing a carbon-free future’, in Google, , 2020, <https:// blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/ our-third-decade-climate-action-realizing-carbonfree-future/> [accessed 14 May 2021].

10

‘ Updating Google Photos’ storage policy to build for the future’, in Google, , 2020, <https://blog. google/products/photos/storage-changes/> [accessed 14 May 2021].

11

‘ Updating Google Photos’ Storage Policy to Build for the Future’.

Resources

www.clickclean.org Find out which of the applications you use are green and which need to clean up.

Claire Thirlwall is director of Oxfordshire based landscape practice Thirlwall Associates.

Her book “From Idea to Site: a project guide to creating better landscapes” is published by RIBA Books.

www.carbonliteracy.com Improve your carbon literacy, which is described as “an awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis.”

www.websitecarbon.com Discover how your website is impacting the planet, and what you can do to reduce the carbon footprint.

The site is powered by sustainable energy.12

www.thegreenwebfoundation.org Check how any website is powered with the Green Web Check feature13

12

‘ How does it work?’, in Website Carbon Calculator, <https://www.websitecarbon.com/how-does-it-work/> [accessed 11 May 2021].

13

‘ The Green Web Foundation | Together towards a green web’, <https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/> [accessed 12 May 2021].

© iStockphoto

Water use on site Once a landscape scheme is complete, it can be easy to think that the energy use is minimal. We might have chosen materials with a small carbon footprint and low energy lighting to reduce the impact of the scheme. However, the long-term maintenance can hide significant energy use.

Where irrigation isn’t provided by rainwater, the use of tap water contributes to carbon emissions.

Per litre the impact is small, but like data usage, there is a cumulative impact – the water industry uses up to 3 percent of the total energy used in the UK, with most of that used for water processing.7 An Anglian Water report showed that in 2018 the company emitted 366,000 tonnes of CO2, equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of over 800 million miles driven by an average passenger vehicle.8 In line with other sectors the water industry has set a target of net zero by 2030 but even with this commitment we need to consider the impact of irrigating our planting schemes and, where possible, select low water use options.

7

Great Britain & Environment Agency, Renewable energy potential for the water industry., Bristol, Environment Agency, 2009.

8

‘Greenhouse Gas Emmisions Annual report 2018’, Anglian Water, 2018, <https://www. anglianwater.co.uk/siteassets/household/in-the -community/ghg-emissions-report-2018.pdf>.

O US EPA, ‘Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator’, in US EPA, 2015, <https://www.epa. gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalenciescalculator> [accessed 18 August 2020].

In our work as landscape architects, we need to ensure we understand that even though some energy use is out of sight, our actions will still have an impact on climate change.

47

LIJ-HalfPage-2020.ai 1 27/01/2020 14:49:06

C

M

Y

Providing sustainable timber solutions for the built environment through our unique modular system

CM

MY

CY

CMY

@UniteStaniforth

K

Bespoke planters Retaining walls Seating woodblocx-landscaping.co.uk 0800 389 1420

Fresh thinking for landscape jobs Landscape Institute Jobs T H E JO B S BOA R D F O R T H E L A ND S C A P E P RO F ES S I O N The LI Jobs Board is the best way to get your landscape role or project opportunity in front of a wide audience of qualified applicants.

We have a range of advertising packages available to suit your requirements.

Your advertisement will not only feature on the jobs homepage but will also be automatically tweeted from the LI’s @talklandscape Twitter account with 33,000 + followers https://jobs.landscapeinstitute.org/post-a-job/

An inverted 35 metres electricity pylon is a temporary installation by British artist Alex Chinneck located at the Greenwich Peninsula, east London.

Shutterstock © Ron Ellis

RESEARCH

By Denise Hewlett with Debra Gray, Richard Gunton, Sheela Agarwal, Chris Skelly, Philip Weinstein and Martin Breed and Tom Munro.

Exploring research requirements Green spaces and natural environments are known to be beneficial to our health, but research gaps remain to be explored.

F

or decades, there has been a rise in the number of pandemics globally. These have had significant impacts on people’s health and wellbeing, on health services, and on national economies. This crisis is made all the more urgent with the unfolding outcomes of COVID-19, which has accelerated the importance of well-planned natural environments in rural and urban areas, and their positive impact on health and wellbeing.

UK policies emphasise the use of green space to improve people’s health and wellbeing, in part reflecting financial imperatives to reduce pressure on the National Health Service, but this approach can also be related to important economic consequences, since any decrease in people’s ill-health is also likely to enhance productivity.1 The idea that nature is good for our health has long been recognised.

Together with concerns about widening health inequalities, an ageing population, and the sheer concentration of people living in cities, research worldwide has produced increasing evidence, particularly in urban contexts, about the importance of green space to people’s health.2 Despite more limited research in rural areas, it is now widely accepted that green space, characterised by openness, presence of water, sounds of nature, lessdisturbed environments, certain habitats, and (as an emerging hypothesis) biodiverse soils, can all have a positive effect on people’s health and wellbeing.3 Understanding the relationship between health, wellbeing and green spaces is imperative for contributing to evidence-based decision making, and is particularly important in health 50

1

Isham, A., Mair, S. and Jackson, T. (2020) Wellbeing and Productivity: A Review of the Literature. Centre for Understanding Social Prosperity Working Paper, No. 22.

Guildford: University of Surrey.

2

Richard, L., Gauvin, L., Raine, K. (2010) Ecological models revisited: their uses and evolution in health promotion over two decades. Annual Review of Public Health. 32, 307–26.

3

Liddicoat, C., Sydnor, H., Cando-Dumancela, C., Dresken, R., Lie, J., Gellie, N., Mills, J.G., Young, J.M., Weyrich, L.S., Hutchinson, M.R., Weinstein, P., Breed, M.F.(2020).

Naturally-diverse airborne environmental microbial exposures modulate the gut microbiome and may provide anxiolytic benefits in mice.

Science of the Total Environment. 701, 134684

4

Dahlgren, G. & Whitehead, M. (1991).

Policies and Strategies to Promote Social Equity in Health.

Stockholm, Sweden: Institute for Futures Studies

5

Van den Berg, A.E. (2017) From green space to green prescription.

Challenges and opportunities for research and practice.

Frontiers in Psychology. 8, 268

6

Lovell, R., Depledge, M. & Maxwell, S. (2018) Health and the Natural Environment: A Review of Evidence, Policy, Practice and Opportunities for the Future. London: Defra Lovell et al., 2018)

© Gordon Plant / Unsplash

professions, most notably in the realm of social prescribing. However, determining just how green spaces affect people’s health is hugely complex, challenged by factors including people’s lifestyles, their behaviours, where they live, and how leisure time is spent. The complexity of such social, economic, and environmental determinants of health, warrants inter- and cross-disciplinary enquiries among planning professionals, landscape managers, public health practitioners, and scientists.4 Such collaborations can lead not only to assessments of the value of green spaces to our health, but could also provide for findings that can be applied in professional practice.

From some perspectives, however, the links between green spaces and health have been considered to have reached maturity.5 Nonetheless, determining ‘cause and effect’ is still beyond our scientific reach, and additional research gaps remain:

• Simplistic conceptualisations of ‘greenspace’ are often evident in research on the relationship between green spaces and health, resulting in indistinguishable forms of green space being reported. This hinders our understanding of geographical complexities, such as the relative effects of different types of green spaces, of their environmental characteristics and ecological condition.6 We have limited knowledge of the importance of biodiversity, particularly in rural spaces, and how the range of landscape characters, configurations, and uses (e.g. agricultural, pastoral), or how their microbial diversity, or ecological condition, specifically affect people’s health and wellbeing; • Simplistic or limited measurements of health used are also evident. For example, single measures of psychological distress have been used. This approach hinders our understanding of the

RESEARCH

7

ffice for National O Statistics (2018) Rural Population and Migration Statistics.

London: ONS

8

L ocal Government Association (2017) Health and Wellbeing in Rural Areas.

Report produced in conjunction with Public Health England. London: Local Government Association

9

uo, M. (2015) How K might contact with nature promote human health? Exploring promising mechanisms and a possible central pathway. Frontiers in Psychology. 6, 1093

10

mily J Flies, Chris E Skelly, Sagri Singh Negi, Poornima Prabhakaran , Qiyong Liu, Keke Liu, Fiona C Goldizen, Chris Lease, and Philip Weinstein.

Biodiverse green spaces: a prescription for global urban health. Frontiers in Ecology 2017; 15(9): 510–516, doi: 10.1002/fee.1630

11

asgupta, P. (2021), D The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review.

(London: HM Treasury)

12

KPMG.nl(2012) Green, Healthy and Productive. Available from: https://www. cbd.int/financial/ values/Netherlandsvaluehealth.pdf [Accessed 20th July 2020]

breadth of possible health outcomes, factors that affect our health, and the possible interactions between these: all of which is needed to increase our understanding of how people’s access to green spaces improves their personal health and wellbeing; • Communities living in rural and in coastal areas are under-studied, despite the fact that in the UK, nearly 10 million people (17% of the population7) live in these areas that are characterised by complicated health patterns.8 Existing health datasets are not compiled at a sufficiently fine-grained spatial scale, calling for further research at more local levels to better understand the complex health experiences of residents in both rural and coastal locations; • Increasing evidence supports a strong case for microbiological diversity playing an important role in improving human health, through enhancing immune status and helping to ameliorate disease risk. As such, it has been argued to be potentially a key factor required to provide answers to just how green spaces might affect people’s health.9 Yet, although there is a growing consensus on our ability to act, our knowledge is limited and focuses on urban populations;10 • There are still major gaps in knowledge and understanding about the economic value of greenspaces.11 In particular, there is limited quantification of the economic contribution of the intangible elements, or non-use values, of greenspaces.

That which exists focuses primarily on green interventions in peri-urban and urban environments as opposed to rural greenspaces, whose economic benefits tend to be assumed rather than determined, particularly if these areas hold protected status. This neglect is surprising given that assessing the value of changes to our natural capital, and the ecosystem services it provides, is becoming fundamental to deciding how and where funds should be spent to restore, maintain, and manage the natural environment.

© Gordon Plant / Unsplash

• The impact of greenspaces on labour productivity, especially in rural areas, is also poorly understood. Except for a study of green space and health in the Netherlands, most research focuses on buildings and office environments.12 These studies suggest employees work better and more productively in greener, more attractive environments, and that productivity is potentially higher as they experience lower stress levels, which reduces sickness and absenteeism. Researching this relationship assumes added importance given that recent research suggests that UK rural communities are less productive than their rural equivalents in Europe.

It is therefore surprising that health and wellbeing’s impact on sickness and presenteeism is not more central to discussions about improving productivity in rural England, and that the impact of greenspaces and their environmental quality on productivity per se, and indirectly on economic wellbeing, does not feature at all.

• Finally, few studies have examined concurrently the multiple factors affecting health and wellbeing, amongst which as discussed above, environmental, social, and economic factors are important.

Given these gaps, it is clear that further research is needed to improve the evidence base required for strategic and policy decisions about the role green spaces in urban and in rural areas play in health, wellbeing and labour productivity. Addressing these

gaps requires us to recognise the heterogeneity of green spaces, and of rural landscapes, including their distinctive landscape types, characters, and ecological condition, and to examine a broad set of physical, psychological and social, health and wellbeing outcomes. Moreover, our review highlights the need for critical evaluations of the interactions between natural capital and associated non-use values, in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of the effects of green spaces on health and wellbeing, and labour productivity. Nonetheless, while understanding the utility value of natural greenspaces to communities will help prioritise investment and management decisions, research in this area continues to spotlight the inherent value of both nature and human wellbeing.

Professor Denise Hewlett, is a trustee for the NAAONB, member of the IUCN, sits on IUCN's Global Taskforce for Protected Areas and COVID19 and is Director of PeopleScapes Research Group at University of Winchester(UoW).

PeopleScapes is an interdisciplinary group of social, economic, health and environmental scientists, working with practitioners from public, private, and charitable sectors. It includes Dr Debra Gray and Dr Richard Gunton of UoW, Professor Sheela Agarwal at University of Plymouth, Professor Philip Weinstein, Dr Martin Breed and Dr Chris Skelly of the Healthy Urban Microbiome Initiative (HUMI) and Tom Munro of the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

51

RESEARCH

By Alison Galbraith

Building links between academic research and landscape practice In the first of a series of articles, we explore the benefits of closer contact between academia and practice.

K

enji Shermer (East Devon District Council), talking recently about his work on proposals for Cranbrook healthy new town1 and the importance of making sure design decisions don’t have unforeseen consequences, quoted Bertrand Russell from a 1959 BBC interview: “Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficial social effects if it were believed, but look only and solely at the facts.”’ Kenji’s assertion that we designers often rely on hunches to inform how we design things struck a chord with me. We know that what landscape architects do is important. We recognise that what we do could always be improved or may need to change. But are we learning and growing in the best possible way? Jane Findlay, President of the LI, recently called for landscape architects to base our work on a body of evidence, and in doing so making landscape architecture as vital engineering, so that it cannot be sidelined.2 I’ve had the privilege over the past 7 years of working with the landscape architecture team at the University of Gloucestershire as part of the LI’s Professional Review Group. I greatly value having regular contact with students starting out in their studies and with the experienced staff who are guiding them and inspiring them.

During my time with the PRG, the courses have benefitted from an increasing presence of PhD staff who regularly publish papers and students writing their PhD theses. For me, talking to them about their work gives 52

an insight into the world of research and the possibilities it offers.

But an insight is as far as it goes for me! I feel that there is a lot of good work going on but also that I don’t know what it is or how to get to it, or indeed, how to contribute to it. When I approached course leaders Dr Alessio Russo and Dr Ying Li about writing this article, they kindly sent me a number of papers about the relationship between research and practice – it was clear that it is not just me who feels the relationship could be better. The papers show there are challenges relating to what is researched, what should be researched, how research is carried out, and how research is presented and disseminated. Even what constitutes research is debated by academics – this distinction is important to them and their work.

Helpful and encouraging as the academic papers were to me in starting to think about this subject, they in themselves illustrated to me what I perceive to be part of the problem. They were published in journals I’ve barely heard of; they were written in language I struggled to keep up with; and seemed long-winded, including (as they necessarily do) lots of detail about methodology used and responses to questionnaires, and statistical breakdown of findings. For people like me, used to reading straightforward technical text or a more engaging, conversational style of writing (sprinkled with humour and opinion, and with lashings of pretty pictures and colourful graphics), the papers were a struggle.

However, struggle I did, and the

key findings resonated with my own perception that research is somewhat of a ‘dark art’ to us practitioners. To try and better understand the world of research and to explore some possible ways forward, I spoke to Drs Russo and Li. The primary aim for researchers is to be published in refereed journals.

Refereed journals publish content which is subject to peer review: a rigorous process which can take many months, but which is necessary to ensure originality and robustness.

One paper referred to a 2013 US study (Chen3 ) which found that only around 25% of US professionals regularly read refereed journals to keep informed of new knowledge. Professional magazines were much more popular, being read by 78% of professionals questioned, with the most popular form of research being internet searches (91%). Even “everyday life” was used as a resource more than refereed journals, at 77%. The same paper reported discrepancies between what professionals, as opposed to academics, felt needed more research.

Subjects important to professionals included plants and materials, sustainable design, site engineering, construction techniques, water management and grading / circulation.

Topics of interest to academics were less focused on design and construction, covering a broader spectrum of assessment and management, heritage, character, value. Some overlap was identified between human dimensions of planning and design, global landscape issues, and green urban development.

RESEARCH

© Unsplash

1

At the LI conference on Health, Wellbeing and Place: How landscape delivers positive change, 27-29 January 2021; https://www. healthycranbrook. co.uk/place-making/ Speaking at an Architects for Health event

2

3

hen, Z (2013) The C role of research in landscape architecture practice. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (PhD dissertation); in Milburn & Brown (2016) Research productivity and utilization in landscape architecture in Landscape and Urban Planning 147; page 75)

4

ttps://www. h sheffield.ac.uk/ polopoly_ fs/1.833257!/file/ research-forlandscape-practice. pdf

5

ttps:// h theconversation.com/ academics-do-wantto-engage-withbusiness-but-needmore-support-62902

This study reflected the situation in the USA, and it would be interesting to carry out a questionnaire in the UK to see what practitioners think would benefit from further study.

Perhaps I’m just getting hung up on what I perceive to be the dark art of research – in other words, the type of research that is carried out by academics and takes place in an academic / peer review context. It might be more helpful if the term research is viewed in a more general way, as defined in the Cambridge Dictionary: “a detailed study of a subject especially in order to discover (new) information or reach a (new) understanding.” In which case, we already do this. It is often more readily accessible and, because we might do it ourselves or seek it out for a specific purpose, presumably it is more relevant to practitioners. And if a practitioner wants to find out what others think about a particular aspect of their work, they could send out a questionnaire to their contacts and colleagues or via social media, couldn’t they? The results may not be highly scientific, but surely some conclusions could be drawn?

Resources to which we typically might refer include the LI’s information and guidance notes and standards, building regulations, British Standards, planning documents (including anything from the National Planning Policy Framework, local plans, design guides, to landscape character

assessments, ecosystem services statements), building bulletins, supplier technical guidance, and specialist / charity publications such as TDAG’s Trees in Hard Landscapes, CIRIA’s SuDS Manual, Healthy Spaces and Places by Heart Foundation (Australia).

Some practices regularly carry out and publish research, most notably the multi-disciplinary global company Arup.

Most practitioners do not have time to read lengthy research papers and just want to understand the potential applications in practice. It could be liken to the carefully crafted trials and years of research undertaken in the development of a new medication to enable researchers to understand and weigh up the benefits and any risks. Most of us don’t need to know all that – we just need to know how it might work for us.

Dr Ying Li pointed me to a helpful booklet produced by the University of Sheffield’s Department of Landscape Architecture.4 This acknowledges the disconnect between academia and practice, saying: “All too often the work of an academic department is hidden or difficult to find…”, and goes on to set out in a clear and brief format information about a range of reports, toolkits, books and academic papers.

Contact details of the authors are given, along with synopses of work they are currently undertaking. The titles of recent PhD theses are given, as is information on ways to get involved. This is a really good way of

letting us know what has been, or is currently being studied; but who would have known to look on their website?

A colleague of mine works with the LI’s Environmental Standards Working Group, which carries out reviews of new or updated landscape-relevant technical information such as British Standards, guidance from Natural England and other bodies, in order to pass comment back and provide summaries to LI members. A new initiative for the group is to begin publishing regular updates in Vista – the LI’s weekly email newsletter.

Could something similar work for making people aware of research happening in academia? Indeed, this has already started happening with April’s issue of Landscape including an interesting feature announcing a collaboration with the international academic journal Cities and Health as part of the ambition to help landscape architects access the research evidence base.

An Australian study indicated that academics want to engage with practice, but they need more support (and time allocation) from their universities.5 It seems that a number of factors need to combine, involving researchers and their institutions, academic and mainstream publications, and professionals and practices.

Alison Galbraith is a director and principal landscape architect at Terra Firma.

53

www.factoryfurniture.co.uk A 100%FSC Manufacturer

SONOBE

CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF SOIL CELLS

St Pauls Cathedral, Planted 2005

greenblue.com 0800 018 7797

54

Establishing the future urban landscape

RESEARCH

By Marcus Grant

The COVID-19 Lockdown Papers: insights, reflections and implications for urbanism and landscape On 25 March 2020, Cities & Health journal put out an international call for think pieces, as initial reflections, in response to what was being witnessed, as town and cities started to respond to the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis. As part of an ongoing collaboration with Landscape, here is a series of abstracts summarising some of those responses.

B

elow, I provide a selection of 12 papers for Landscape. All the COVID-19 Lockdown Papers were written, peer reviewed and revised during the first wave and under national lockdown regulations. Thus, they represent a unique record of observations and thoughts. Our authors confronted the task with innovation and insight. These conditions offered a novel lens to observe people and communities in neighbourhoods and urban support systems under stress. In many cases, this showed that previous health challenges and vulnerabilities became further compounded. We hope these papers help to support the case for addressing the structural problems for urban health and city sustainability – landscape practitioners and urbanists have a central role to play.

For ease of accessibility, we present these 12 think pieces in four categories.

You will, of course, find many other themes and cross-cutting issues of interest. You can find all of these as full papers, and more, at the Cities & Health journal website (bit.ly/CitiesxHealth).

If you are viewing the digital version of Landscape the links to each paper have been provided.

Open space and public realm Green Space and the Compact City: planning issues for a ‘new normal’ We trace the emergence of urban public green space as an issue of concern for planning. Using this platform, we then discuss the emergence of the compact city idea and how this conceives the design and use of such spaces. Using four categories: form & features, distribution, connectivity and resilience – we identify issues to be prioritised in future research for the planning of urban green space in the ‘new normal’ of social distancing consequent on COVID-19.

By Mick Lennon The public realm during public health emergencies: Exploring local level responses to the COVID-19 pandemic Public parks and recreational spaces are now some of the main outlets for people to get outdoors, however COVID-19 has created challenges in these spaces. We classify local government responses around maintaining physical distancing in the public realm using a preliminary conceptual map of theories and actions to identify variations in these approaches around the globe.

By Alexander Wray, John Fleming & Jason Gilliland

How the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the lack of accessible public spaces in Tehran Development trends in Tehran, Iran, have caused high population density, centralised public spaces, car-oriented streets, and smaller houses. Postpandemic, the city should reclaim the flexibility, diversity, and accessibility of public spaces and revise the legislative and financial tools of municipalities for creating a compact city.

By Parnian Kordshakeri & Ehsan Fazeli Living conditions and biotic systems

Global change increases zoonotic risk, COVID-19 changes risk perceptions: a plea for urban nature connectedness Ebola and COVID-19 are textbook emerging diseases influenced by humans. Ebola is often considered a result of exotic nature threatening health. Conversely, COVID-19 emerged in an urban environment. To prevent and mitigate zoonotic pandemics, policy should promote nature connectedness and integrate nature-city-inhabitant interactions.

By Maarten P.M. Vanhove, Séverine Thys, Ellen Decaestecker, Nicolas Antoine-Moussiaux, Jeroen De Man, Jean Hugé, Hans Keune, Ann Sterckx & Luc Janssens de Bisthoven

55

Nature-based restorative environments are needed now more than ever With the COVID-19 pandemic, many people had to remain indoors for long periods of time. However, the biophilic draw for people to go to natural places became apparent, despite in many cases their closure. We explore the need for more injections of nature throughout our cities, in the in-between spaces, to create a feeling of restoration and benefit health.

By Kaitlyn Gillis Biotic systems as a critical urban infrastructure during crisis: Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly changed the way urban resilience and wellbeing are viewed.

We use the COVID-19 pandemic as a lens to determine how cities might provide a good quality of life during times of crisis. We explore how cities could be support wellbeing during hard times, through the integration of biotic at varying scales throughout cities.

By Andrew Jenkins

Active neighbourhoods and mobility Activity-friendly neighbourhoods can benefit non-communicable and infectious diseases Walkable, activity-friendly neighbourhoods are recommended for their benefits for non-communicable diseases, environmental sustainability, and economic performance. There are several pathways by which dense, mixed-use neighbourhoods with transit access and recreation facilities can reduce risk of both infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases.

Reducing health inequities is a core value for public health, and we comment on strategies for equitably creating activity-friendly communities.

By Deepti Adlakha & James F. Sallis

Beyond active travel: children, play and community on streets during and after the coronavirus lockdown As countries have imposed lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, cities have been transformed in many ways.

In this short article, we consider changes to urban residential streets in England and call for attention to be paid not only to streets as places for active travel and mobility, but also as spaces of dwelling, playing and connecting, especially for children, their families and communities.

By Wendy Russell & Alison Stenning

Policy-making for an ‘unruly’ public?

The initial response to COVID-19 in the UK took on a culture of decisionmaking, based on the notion of an inherently ‘unruly’ public, that was self-defeating. This glossed over the diversity of socio-economic contexts, the complexity of the science, and the value of engaging with stakeholders possibly limiting the effectiveness of urban governance. Can we identify approaches that better support collective responses to strategic problems of community wellbeing?

By Lucy Natarajan

Will the COVID-19 outbreak propel the demand for active spaces or scare the public away?

Physical activity came into the spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic as governments encouraged citizens to stay active for their wellbeing, shut indoor sports clubs and gyms, and put strict limitations on exercise in densely populated areas. Could the “safety” of exercising outdoors result in a boom in the demand for active urban spaces?

Or will people become too afraid to exercise in crowded public spaces all together?

By Rachel Payne

Urban forms and green infrastructure – the implications for public health during the Covid-19 pandemic Recent health issues have raised awareness among the general public and stimulated debate over the future forms of urban living. Those factors which enhance healthier environments are receiving broader recognition in maintaining the health of citizens in a time of pandemic. We explore the framework of ecosystem services to examine temporary interventions that may also indicate possible pathways for the future. Analyses of the impact of forms of urban settings and particularly of green infrastructure to improve citizens’ health support our reflections.

By Malgorzata Hanzl

The way we live; Future trajectories Urbanization and biodiversity loss in the post-COVID-19 era: complex challenges and possible solutions Although biodiversity conservation and restoration can significantly contribute to environmental health in urban areas, rapid urbanization undermines biodiversity in various ways. One challenge that will arise after the COVID-19 pandemic is the accelerated expansion of urban areas through more informal settlements due to increased poverty and increased urban sprawl.

We posit major issues for future research and practice to be scrutinized in the post-COVID-19 era.

By Amin Rastandeh & Meghann Jarchow

1

Marcus Grant CMLI is Editor-in-Chief of Cities & Health

56

L U K I D A S O L A R

Landscape Institute Awards 2021 Building on the success of the 2020 Awards, the LI’s 2021 Awards will do more than ever before to celebrate the exceptional contribution of landscape designers, managers, planners and researchers across the world. Awards entries will be judged against four main criteria: Sustainability, Value, Professionalism and Design.

This year, the awards includes 15 professional categories, covering all aspects of practice; five open categories for all landscape professionals to enter; the Building with Nature National Award; two student awards; two member accolades; and the President’s Award.

The Awards 2021 entries will close on 8th July, the finalists will be announced in September and the winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on 25 November, celebrating the brightest and the best from the sector.

The Awards Ceremony registrations will open soon.

Keep an eye out for more updates.

With thanks to our headline sponsor for the LI Awards 2021 Hardscape.

Awards timeline • Entry registrations 29 April – 8 July 2021 • Awards judging August – September 2021 • Finalists announced September 2021 • Winners announced at the LI Awards ceremony – 25 November 2021 To find out more visit: https://awards.landscapeinstitute.org/

Time to think anew.

Convert sunlight into energy and create light at night.

Lukida Smart and sustainable.

Beautiful and efficient.

57

LI life: Highgate competition

By Ian Dungavell 1. and 2.

The two images show exactly the same view taken approximately a century apart. © Highgate Cemetery Archive

Highgate Cemetery competition

1

Over the past year, the Landscape Institute has been running a landscape masterplan competition for one of London’s most-loved cemeteries. Its Director outlines the challenges.

T

his year has already been tough for trees. The end of March was unusually warm, and April was very dry and cold, leaving them desperate for water. But then May was perhaps the wettest ever, with torrential downpours and hail rather than the sedate day-long drizzle England has been famous for. Once they had started to come into leaf, an unusually deep area of low pressure brought winds of the strength we’d expect only in winter.

If the weather was not stressful enough in itself, Highgate Cemetery’s trees also have to cope with cramped root space, sometimes straddling ledger stones or squeezing themselves in between brick vaults, all the time fighting for light with the other self-set upstarts of their generation. No wonder they get stressed and are more prone to pests and diseases.

58

A pragmatic policy over many years of landscape management by minimal intervention created an attractive aesthetic of ‘romantic decay’ which captivated visitors.

Like others, the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, the charity which now runs the cemetery, was spellbound by its beauty and fearful of changes which might destroy it. Yet the landscape was gradually destroying itself and, unintentionally, biodiversity was declining.

So too was the quality of its landscape design. Highgate Cemetery’s original ‘garden architect’ or ‘landscape engineer’, as he called himself, would have been horrified. David Ramsay was well-versed in the tradition of the Picturesque, and understood that sensations of contrast, variety and delight heightened the experience of moving through the landscape. This was no simple utilitarian landscape.

But open areas had become clogged with self-set trees and bramble, obscuring long and near views, and homogeneity ruled where surprise was called for.

The Trust’s Conservation Plan, completed in 2019, set out the new balance which was to be achieved: ‘Trees of the most suitable species in the most suitable places and in good health will make it easier, and safer to appreciate the quality of our historic landscape. Furthermore, not only will they be less likely to damage memorials, this will be better for biodiversity too.’

That meant not only extending the lifespan of historic trees by careful management, but also reinstating structural planting, clearing areas of secondary woodland and replanting with a greater variety of trees and shrubs, reopening historic views and, crucially, thinking about biodiversity and the climate emergency. All the

LI life: Highgate competition while sustaining its special interest as a Grade 1 registered landscape; a cultural designation rather than an ecological one.

Inevitably, people reach for the ‘restored to glory’ cliché to describe such a project, but there is no going backwards with historic cemeteries: there have been too many layers of additional burials for that. Nor is it always desirable: an aerial photograph taken in 1939 shows Highgate Cemetery East as an arid landscape, almost bereft of trees save for a couple of intersecting avenues of poplars. Nobody would want that now. The cemetery is an evolving, changing, developing thing, and you just can’t put it into reverse.

We find ourselves in a very different situation from when the cemetery opened over 180 years ago, and with additional priorities. The task for our landscape architects is a sensitive reimagining of the cemetery landscape: true to the design principles of the founders, resilient to the effects of climate change, supportive of biodiversity, and capable of being maintained with a fraction of the original labour force.

But which landscape architects will guide Highgate Cemetery in the next phase of its evolution? Following an open competition managed by the Landscape Institute, four firms of landscape architects were invited to submit ideas as to what this ‘historic cemetery for the 21st century’ might actually look like. The winners have yet to be announced, but even a quick look at their submissions, illustrated here, shows how the judging panel had its hands full in choosing between these alternative futures as designers responded to the site in different ways.

“Our watchword is evolution, not revolution,” said Martin Bhatia of Colvin & Moggridge. “Our vision recognizes the strength of the respective characters of Highgate Cemetery. To the West, contemplative picturesque woodland with dramatic topography, densely planted evergreen groups creating a sequence of strong contrast between light and shade along the journey uphill.”

Neil Porter of Gustafson Porter + Bowman talked of a “topographical

journey of discovery”: “we imagine the woodland opening and closing to reveal glades of sunlight, views into the woodland revealing hidden graves and drifts of woodland plants... at the top of the hill, the planting represents a paradise on Earth, and one gets fantastic views over central London.”

Johanna Gibbons of J&L Gibbons explained that their “concept is one of extraordinary respect and radical caretaking. It is to do with appreciating this intersection of every aspect of design and stewardship. Our vision is to work with the current assets, which are highly valuable both natural and built, and to graft in a long term future for this place. No landscape can be left on its own. It needs to be looked after.’

Periscope took a ”seven generation look at the life and death cycle of a cemetery,” explained Daniel Rea. “We’re looking forward to our children’s children, and back to our parents’ parents, and trying to understand the impacts of our actions in the past and

what we can leave for our children’s children, and in that way we are trying to address the climate crisis, but also understanding how the culture of burial and death will change in the future, and how we can provide for that.”

Whichever practice is chosen will have its work cut out. There is a strong sense of ownership, and several groups must all be satisfied: grave owners, volunteers, local residents, as well as tourist visitors. All have their own ideas about how Highgate Cemetery should face the future.

Even designers used to working in the public sphere will have to approach the task with extraordinary sensitivity.

Ian Dungavell is chief executive of Highgate Cemetery. An architectural historian and conservationist, he was formerly director of the Victorian Society.

2 59

LI life: Highgate competition 3. Colvin and Moggridge image from the competition submission © Colvin and Moggridge

4. Gustafson Porter image from the competition submission © Gustafson Porter

3

4 60

LI life: Highgate competition 5. Periscope image from the competition submission © Periscope

6. J+L Gibbons image from the competition submission © J+L Gibbons

5

6 61

The GLVIA Panel of the Landscape Institute is inviting LVIA practitioners and users to put forward proposals for short opinion articles (750 words) for inclusion in Volume 11 of IEMA’s Impact Assessment Outlook Journal which will be focused on Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment.

The IEMA Outlook Journal is a practical series which offers thought-pieces contributed by IEMA members, EIA Quality Mark registrants and invited guests on a theme related to Impact Assessment. The Outlook Journal seeks to provide a thoughtprovoking quick read covering key aspects of UK EIA practice.

It showcases fresh ideas on key topics and offers new perspectives on how to push forward the professional practice of Impact Assessment.

To see previous editions of the Outlook Journal please use this link https://www.iema.net/corporate-programmes/eia-quality-mark/ impact-assessment-outlook-journal Proposals for articles should be submitted by email to technical@landscapeinstitute.org by July 14th and should be no more than 150 words. Successful proposals will be notified by July 16th and will need to submit the full 750 word article by August 12th.

62

LI life: new publication

By Theo Plowman 1. Import Building, Republic at East India by Remapp.

The redevelopment of East India Dock has been designed to reduce the impacts of urban heat and provide a sheltered microclimate. © Dirk Lindner

1

Landscape for 2030 A new publication establishes landscape as a leader in the fight against climate change.

I

n 2008, the Landscape Institute published a ground-breaking Climate Change Position Statement. There was clear recognition within our own industry that we needed to make a greater contribution to tackling climate change. As the scientific community’s understanding of the extreme threats of both climate change and biodiversity loss changed, so must our response.

These crises are explicitly linked, and there is a strong interrelationship between climate change, biodiversity loss, and human wellbeing. The landscape sector is at the juncture of these issues, and our response must address the existential threats to all three.

Our new publication, Landscape for 2030, highlights the central role that the landscape sector can play in delivering climate change action, with eleven case studies showcasing the work that members of our profession are doing at all scales. These projects will both demonstrate to stakeholders the multiple benefits that landscape

can deliver, and help inspire best practice throughout the profession.

Landscape professionals can help mitigate climate change – by reducing their own footprint, by creating places that encourage low-carbon lifestyles, and by building resilience into our environments to help them adapt to already inevitable climate shifts.

This publication is part of the commitments we made in our 2020 Climate and Biodiversity Action Plan to establish the landscape profession as leaders in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss, as well as provide more best practice examples for our sector to follow. Government, clients and stakeholders can now see in one place the incredible range of measures our sector can utilise.

Members can browse examples of best practice in sustainable and biodiversity-focused landscape planning, design, and management across a wide range of contexts, including: – large-scale urban developments focusing on sustainability,

regeneration and adaptation – small, community-focused schemes and single building projects – a flagship wildlife sanctuary and ecotourism design – research and tools to explore future impacts of climate change on our landscapes We will be continuing to research and promote practical examples of how our members on the ground can make a difference. If you have a case study of good landscape practice – across design, planning, management or science – please share it with us.

All enquiries to: climate@ landscapeinstitute.org.

Download a copy of the Action Plan here. https://landscapewpstorage01. blob.core.windows.net/wwwlandscapeinstitute-org/2021/04/12510LANDSCAPE-2030_v6.pdf Theo Plowman is Policy Manager at the Landscape Institute.

63

LI life: entry standards

By Lucy Pickford

Entry standards update Who are you designing for? It might seem like a simple question, even one with an obvious answer. But are we really doing this in our work as landscape professionals, and how do we approach something as important as inclusive design?

The Times They Are a-Changin’ The landscape profession and the design focus of the work in particular is an ever changing one, whether we’re looking at how we incorporate equality and diversity into our work both in the office and out, designing inclusivity into our projects or designing for the future, to ensure that all places are healthy places.

There are many factors that drive change: sometimes they are small shifts that happen frequently but are almost missed, and sometimes there are major shifts – Le Corbusier for one has a lot to answer for. When he

developed Modulor, his proportional design system, in the 1940s he was setting in place a system that would define the shape of much of the built environment. It was a set of design rules that focused primarily on a 6ft tall man – something most of us are not.

The Guardian recently highlighted an exhibition at the Barbican about the feminist architecture cooperative Matrix that took a radical approach to their design work fighting against these particular engrained standards (we could question whether designing with most of the population in mind

is really radical but that’s not the point here). It did, however, make us think about what the equivalent is within the landscape profession, and how we as built environment professionals look at both gendered spaces and inclusivity in spaces as a whole.

There’s a lot to explore here, whether it’s looking at physical accessibility of space, power dynamics in ownership of a space, non-physical barriers to access or the impact of nature and green space on health. The conclusion was that while we may not have a radical group like Matrix, it doesn’t mean there aren’t many of 1. Matrix founding member Anne Thorne carries a pram up the steps of a subway in Aldgate, East London from ‘Urban Obstacle Courses’ in Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment (Pluto Press, 1984).

Source: Liz Millen

1 64

LI life: entry standards our members out there now trying to design thoroughly inclusive environments, or that the industry isn’t heading in the right direction.

Who’s leading the change?

While there’s still a long way to go, the tide is turning, and inclusivity and equality & diversity is becoming more central to all of our work. Here at the LI, we’ve incorporated it directly into our competency framework so that the next generations are measured against competencies such as equality and diversity, inclusive design and healthy places, not only in their earlystage training, but as they continue through their careers too.

Our registered practices such as Planit-IE are going a step further and holding themselves directly accountable by becoming a B Corp in July 2020.1 This means that values in these areas are built into their internal processes and client facing work, applying practical changes that create a sustainably focused and community minded environment.

Alongside this, there are initiatives

that have been running concurrently with the Matrix group. Coin Street, for example, are a social enterprise established in the 80s to bring a derelict site on the South Bank, London, back to life. Following a proposal for new office buildings on the site, they formed the Coin Street action group and, with other local organisations, launched a campaign for a new vision for the sites: housing, a new riverside park, managed workshops, and leisure uses. Later they went on to form the Coin Street Community Builders and bought the sites.

This project (recently profiled on our site) is an excellent demonstration of community led regeneration. By transferring the power of ownership to the local community and users of the space, a site can truly fulfil its potential and come alive, and it’s still the case decades later. As it’s run by a social enterprise of which many community members are a part, it means that those that live there have control over the development of the space and will be directly involved with the redevelopment of green

space in the area in the future. While it’s important that community takes ownership over these spaces, they are still public and accessibility to all is equally important.

As we look to the future of our profession, it’s clear that whatever we do we need to lead by example to instil these changes and create truly inclusive design, whether that’s as individuals, practices or as a professional body. Perhaps the starting point though is to simply think, “who am I designing for?”

If you’d like to understand how these topics align directly with your practice as a landscape professional, there is a full break down of our new competency framework on our website.

Lucy Pickford is Membership Marketing Manager at the Landscape Institute.

2. Matrix co-founding member Anne Thorne and her children cross a busy road in Aldgate, East London from ‘Urban Obstacle Courses’ in Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment (Pluto Press, 1984).

Source: Liz Millen

1

ertified B C Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. B Corps are accelerating a global culture shift to redefine success in business and build a more inclusive and sustainable economy. https://bcorporation. uk/about-b-corps

2 65

LI life: volunteering

By Mary O’Connor

National Grid Visual Impact Provision – reflections on volunteering As she completes her period in office, the Landscape Institute’s representative on the National Grid’s Stakeholder Advisory Group for Visual Impact Provision project reflects on the past six years.

S

1

2 66

ince 2014, I have been the Landscape Institute’s representative on the National Grid’s Stakeholder Advisory Group (SAG) for its Visual Impact Provision project (VIP). This is part of the energy regulator Ofgem’s licencing of National Grid’s transmission operations, known as “RIIO”: Revenue = Incentives + Innovation + Outputs. The second phase, RIIO-T2, runs from April 2021 to March 2026. The VIP project falls under the “innovation” element of RIIO. In RIIO-T1, there was a £500million provision to carry out work to reduce the impact of existing transmission lines in National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs).

The project is guided by the SAG, and composed of people who are passionate about the landscape, representing National Park and AONB associations, statutory bodies for landscape and heritage, interest groups such as Ramblers, CPRE and CPRW, as well as the Landscape Institute. It is chaired by Chris Baines and also attended by a representative of Ofgem.

Identifying projects Led by Professor Carys Swanwick, an assessment methodology was adapted from the approach of the Guidelines for Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment (GLVIA3) to identify where the infrastructure was causing adverse effects. From my involvement in GLVIA3, it was

LI life: volunteering 1. Peak East – Existing 2. Peak East – Photomontage 3. North Wessex Downs – Existing 4. North Wessex Downs – Photomontage

satisfying to see the assessment receive the LI Highly Commended Award in the Landscape Policy and Research category in 2015.

The line sections were ranked in order of the severity of their effects and the top twelve sections were considered in more detail while, in parallel, a series of local stakeholder consultations and workshops was held at each of the designated landscapes.

Four major projects are progressing towards implementation: orset AONB, currently under D construction, where 8.8km of overhead line near Dorchester will be placed underground, removing 22 pylons from the landscape. The VIP cable route is archaeologically rich, and engineering work was preceded by a 20-month programme of archaeological investigations, which made some significant finds.

Peak District National Park, where 2km of overhead line east of the Woodhead Tunnel near Dunford Bridge is being replaced with underground cables, also removing seven pylons including a sealing end compound from the landscape. It has received planning permission and main engineering work was due to start in May 2021.

Snowdonia National Park, which has also received planning permission, will replace 10 pylons and about 3km of overhead line crossing the Dwyryd Estuary with cables buried in a tunnel.

The project has been shortlisted in two categories in this year’s Planning Awards: ‘Planning Permission of the Year’ and ‘Award for Stakeholder Engagement in Planning’.

North Wessex Downs AONB, still in design development, will remove around 4.4km of overhead transmission lines and up to 13 pylons, close to the Millennium White Horse and the site of the Civil War battle of Roundway Down, north of Devizes. Site investigations and public consultations are currently under way.

1

ttps://lei. h nationalgrid.com/

It was clear early on that the major engineering projects to underground

3

4

sections of overhead line would take a long time to come to fruition, and so the Landscape Enhancement Initiative (LEI) was introduced, using 5% of the overall provision. This provided up to £24 million over six years (2015-2021) for localised visual improvement projects1. That would mitigate adverse effects on a more local and low-key level, and which could be implemented in the short term.

The role of the LI Rep This has been a very rewarding role.

In preparing to take it up, I obtained a copy of Sylvia Crowe’s 1958 “Landscape of Power”, remembering her writing on the topic from my student days. It is extraordinary how much is still relevant

of what she had to say about power generation and transmission systems in the landscape. She writes of the role of the landscape architect in guiding development, correlating “all the land uses with each other and with agriculture in such a way that they build up into a whole landscape”.

These “landscape counsellors” would be “in a position to advise what effect proposed development would have, and how it could best be assimilated”.

On behalf of the LI, I have contributed to enriching the SAG’s understanding of landscape context and character (based on my view of landscape architecture as an overarching and integrating endeavour), to developing the assessment and 67

LI life: volunteering 5. Snowdonia Dwyryd Estuary – Existing 6. Snowdonia Dwyryd Estuary – Photomontage

5

decision-making processes, and to broadening the “visual” impact focus of the VIP to encompass the idea that landscape character improvement can reduce adverse visual impact.

I also chaired the approvals panel for allocating LEI funding to project proposals.

Sylvia Crowe advocated for seeing that “a good landscape is part of the nation’s standard of living”, for the “new development of power” to be treated as “an area to be developed as a fine place in itself” and planned so it would “add character and dignity to the scene”. From the landscape point of view, she saw the “complete solution” would be to “put the whole system underground”, but recognised that the cost “would be stupendous”.

This was a lesson the SAG had to

6 68

learn when we were approaching the selection of projects for undergrounding – that the amount of overhead line, identified as having very high adverse visual or landscape effects, that could be put underground within a budget of £500m would be limited. And of course, the engineering works required have the potential for significant environmental effects. In today’s regulatory climate, effects on other aspects of the environment, as well as practical considerations such as ability to access the location of the line with the very large plant and machinery needed to implement the undergrounding, all had to be taken into account.

As the current RIIO-T1 comes to an end and T2 commences, I am stepping down from this role. After an open recruitment process, the LI are

appointing Sue Sljivic CMLI to take up the role in June 2021. Sue has considerable professional experience in EIA & LVIA, conducting consultations, and in major infrastructure projects.

She has a particular interest in the use of colour in the landscape – a topic often discussed in the SAG. She is a founder member of RSK, an engineering and environmental science and technology company, and has recently retired after 30 years with the company. I hope she will find representing the LI on the VIP SAG as enjoyable and rewarding as I did!

Mary O’Connor is a Fellow of the Landscape Institute. www.nationalgrid.com/VIP https://lei.nationalgrid.com

ADVE R TO R I AL

Welcome to LI Campus – the Landscape Institute’s home for professional development and learning In a fast-changing world, landscape professionals need to keep up to date. A core responsibility of every professional is the commitment to lifelong learning.

Free for LI members From the 1st of June, we’re making everything on Campus free for LI members.

As an organisation, we aim to bring high-quality, relevant, educational content to the landscape professionals, wherever they work. For professionals currently working or making their path into landscape professions, LI Campus provides a collection of interactive learning resources, including CPD training, conferences, webinars and events. It makes it easy for people who couldn’t make it to our live events to view them later on catch-up.

Recently added In order to meet the UK’s 2050 net zero carbon target, the economic and social recovery from COVID-19 must be green.

Parks and green spaces need significant investment that matches their role as vital national assets. Exceptional speakers gathered at the Greener Recovery Festival this March to debate greener all the key issues in this vital area ranging from climate to biodiversity action.

Key discussions were around net zero, environmental net gain, adaptation and natural capital accounting. The festival recording is available at LI Campus.

Stay tuned – a lot of new content is added every month! Campus works on phones, tablets and PC browsers – so it is accessible from anywhere.

GreenBlue Urban: The RootSpace Story Broadcast on 22 June, available on LI Campus Howard Gray, PR & Specification Consultant GreenBlue Urban continues to support the Landscape Institute and LI Campus’s learn-from-anywhere approach. We have fully emerged into the world of virtual communication, and even with the likelihood that life will gradually return to some form of normality, online learning will no doubt be here to stay. Education has always been our passion, and we are pleased to continue to provide a range of interactive sessions for listeners across the globe.

Our LI Campus webinar on 22 June focused on the celebration of the increased establishment of trees in the urban environment using soil cells, sometimes known as crate systems or pavement support systems.

It has been 20 years since our founder developed the first innovative soil cell. During this presentation, he will join Howard to share with you the experiences, exciting moments and the breakthrough events which led to the creation of ArborSystem® – the most advanced tree pit system available.

Unsurprisingly, our story starts with trees – it is difficult to imagine life without them. They are complex organisms, interacting with their surroundings in many ways – the living lungs of the planet. We will look at the forest floor environment, which is where trees do best – spaces with healthy, uncompacted soil. The problem with forest floor soil is that it is only healthy for as long as it is uncompacted. Higher organic volume soils quickly become anaerobic when compacted, creating zones from which tree roots cannot access nutrient or minerals.

Comparing this to the built environment, where trees are most needed for shade, water management, air quality and so many other ecosystem benefits, it became obvious that, to keep tree rooting zones effective for tree growth, the soil must be uncompacted and aerated – the soil cell was born.

We will share the lightbulb moment, prototypes that led to continued innovation, and all generations of soil cells that GreenBlue has brought to

© Green Blue Urban

market, all having undergone thorough comparison testing against known engineered solutions. We’ll be highlighting RootSpace the current and first “panel” system designed with an air deck for healthy aerated soil, an additional side panel for strength capabilities and made in the UK from 100% recycled/recyclable material with the option of reused marine debris.

Howard is an enthusiast for successful urban trees. He has been planting trees in urban areas for over 40 years and is passionate about making sure that every tree has the same opportunity of realising its species potential.

Understanding the many conflicts, both financial and engineering, with planting in our congested towns and cities, he can work with designers and contractors to achieve the best results. Having worked on a number of SuDS schemes across Europe, with both local authorities and developers, he is uniquely positioned to present the vision – enabling sustainable cities through the use of green and blue infrastructure.

https://greenblue.com/

https://campus.landscapeinstitute.org/

69

ADVE R TO R I AL

Vestre: Nordic design – a perfect merging of form and function 7 Sept 2021, 11am Romy Rawlings, UK Commercial Director, Vestre Join us for this webinar, where you will hear about Vestre’s uniquely Nordic approach to design and how we apply some important principles to both our product design process and our entire attitude towards business.

Scandinavian design is intrinsically linked to some of the finest architects and designers of our time, for example Alvar Aalto and Arne Jacobsen. Some of the world’s most iconic items of furniture, such as the Egg chair, were conceived by Nordic designers, and are as popular today, after many decades, as when they were first launched. Such is their timeless aesthetic and our lasting love affair with this distinctive style.

Today, this important heritage continues, and key Nordic beliefs and rights such as Friluftsliv, Allemannsretten, and Hygge have more and more to offer both our own lives and our work in the public realm (perhaps even more so in the post-COVID world).

During the webinar, we’ll meet Vestre’s award-winning designers, both past and present, and discover more about their fascinating thought processes around the specifics of outdoor furniture design.

You’ll already know that Scandinavian design requires an approach that definitively blends simplicity, functionality, and affordability. Other no less important features are the use of natural materials, a distinct lightness of touch, and particular choices made around colour. So much more than a simple focus on aesthetics, Nordic design is an all-embracing philosophy that encompasses many broader and equally essential aspects. And of course, for Vestre, overlaying every stage is a focus on sustainability and responsible production.

We’ll consider in detail: • How form must follow function • Why simplicity is an essential aspect of the design process • How a love of nature and the desire to spend time in natural environments influences not only the design of individual furniture

elements, but also the spaces in which they are placed • Why high quality is a prerequisite due to both the value placed on products that people will come into close contact with, and its implicit impact on sustainability • And, not least, comfort – a consideration of ergonomics and the importance of universal design is needed if we’re to create products that are suitable for use by everyone.

Discover why perhaps the happiest countries in the world are in Scandinavia: could design be in part responsible for this?

Romy Rawlings is a Chartered Landscape Architect and Commercial Director for Vestre, a Norwegian manufacturer of street furniture.

Romy’s career has been based entirely in the landscape sector, and she is passionate about the impact of good design upon those using outdoor space.

https://vestre.com

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/landscapeinstitute-337604806

Hardscape: The Ethical and Sustainable Vision – How can a landscape architect adopt this in practice?

21 September 2021, 11am Nick Jones, Sustainability Manager, Hardscape A discussion-based webinar involving key individuals from Hardscape’s Sustainable team and landscape stakeholders, who will discuss the approach and relationship between design and sourcing ethical and sustainable materials. The panel will debate what all this means when it comes to specification and the desire to ‘do the right thing’, balanced with time and cost restraints to a specific scheme. Hardscape will highlight other facets of products and their environmental actions to help deliver on the current thinking on SDG principles and necessary actions to be taken thereafter.

We will explore what the benefits are, and how designers within the landscape architecture profession should utilise the information and knowledge in their collaborative relationships within the placemaking environment. The discussion will also cover Hardscape’s goals and ambitions with the SDG agenda too, how they have remodelled the scope of their goals and KPIs, and are expediting actions to meet specific SDG business commitments to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.

It is acknowledged that achieving near zero carbon will have cost consequences. In our world it is key that this is embraced rather than rejecting products for lower cost but higher carbon emission alternatives, or due to their short-term aesthetics, thus requiring frequent replacement because of their shorter life cycle.

70

As huge supporters of the Landscape Institute, we recognise that the collective voice is one thing, but actual collaborative action will enhance and deliver on our mutual carbon ambitions and “must-take” steps in all areas of relevant project delivery at micro and macro levels.

Nick joined Hardscape in March 2021. His role includes developing the Group’s commitment to Ethics and human rights via their association with the Ethical Trading Initiative and accreditation to the Ethical Labour Sourcing Standard, BES6002, as well as advancing their allegiance to a sustained greener environment, both internally within the workplace and externally towards Hardscape’s vision of a zero-carbon ambition.

https://hardscape.co.uk/

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/landscapeinstitute-337604806

ADVE R TO R I AL

Marshalls: Natural Stone Detailing 20 July 2021, 11am Business and Human Rights, and You – You’re either part of the problem, or part of the solution.

27 July 2021, 11am Gordon Hines and Elaine Mitchel-Hill, Marshalls

Natural Stone Detailing Marshalls have been supplying natural stone products since the business began back in 1890, and have supplied natural stone for some of the UK’s most iconic projects, including Trafalgar Square. Through the years, we have developed our portfolio of stone, and invested in staff, machinery and relationships with our international quarries to bring our customers products that are durable, sustainable and beautiful. The benefit of using natural stone in hard landscaping is that it brings a sense of quality to a scheme that is hardwearing and beautiful. The variety of materials, colours, sizes and textures available give designers and specifiers the ability to create truly unique landscapes, which can be enjoyed for years to come.

In this session, Gordon will highlight some of the main detailing issues to overcome when working with natural stone, discussing the options available to ensure the best application for stone on a scheme, which will perform on durability and longevity.

We hope our audience will gain a better awareness of detailing and durability issues, making sure a stone can perform for the design you have chosen, as well as looking at items to be considered in the specification of a project to avoid errors and delays.

The design team at Marshalls are trained to transform even the most ambitious ideas into something deliverable, with consideration given to the stone’s strengths and technical properties. We pride ourselves on our ability to help customers bring their visions to life, from start to finish.

From simple functional kerbs to complex and innovative designs, we would like to take this time to share with you our knowledge in this area.

Business and Human Rights, and You – You’re either part of the problem, or part of the solution.

Marshalls has been engaged in the elimination of child labour in the Indian sandstone industry since 2005. We made a promise to support and uphold the rights of children through our participation in the UNGC (UN Global Compact) and our commitment to Children’s Rights & Business Principles. Our human rights and children’s rights policy statements make our stance clear.

In this session we will: 1 s hare an overview of salient human rights issues for natural stone sourced around the globe 2 s hine a light on the speed and pace of human rights legislation, mandatory human rights due diligence, and its likely impact on the products you use and for your customers/companies 3 share insights from natural stone supply chains sector 4 l ook at the kind of questions you should be asking of the companies you source from, or specify ighlight the direct impact on key issues – such as child labour and 5 h forced labour - of the decisions that you make 6 s hare developments in human rights due diligence in the wake of the global pandemic.

© Marshalls

Participants will be better able to acknowledge the active role they play in supporting or undermining the human rights of others, be clear about the impact of legislation, understand what they can and must now ask of natural stone suppliers in terms of robust evidence and data, and leave with a clear understanding of the actions they can take which allow them to be part of the solution.

Gordon Hines is the Technical Manager for Marshalls natural stone, responsible for our portfolio of commercial landscaping products. He is directly responsible for the selection, design and detailing of external landscaping elements. Everything from decorative stone paving, setts and kerbs to more detailed pieces such as planters, seats, cladding, sculptures, engravings and bespoke masonry. Gordon has vast experience of world stones and can advise on their suitability and usages in landscape projects, having designed and advised on a wide variety of natural stone schemes across the UK. He also sits on the technical committee of the Stone Federation of Great Britain and is Chairman of the Stone Federations Landscape Forum.

Elaine Mitchel-Hill, Business & Human Rights Director at Marshalls plc, has been working on issues of human rights in global supply chains for over 16 years. She sits on the UNGC advisory board in the UK, the International Labour Organisation Child Labour Platform in Geneva, and is on the advisory committees for both the investment company CCLA ‘Find it, Fix it, Prevent it’ ethical investor initiative and the global Social Responsibility Alliance. She also chairs a strategic private sector panel focusing upon the worst forms of child labour. Elaine is a trustee for the not-for-profit Traffik Analysis Hub where she’s helping to develop advanced supply chain mapping for the private sector using global big data on modern slavery and human trafficking.

https://www.marshalls.co.uk/

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/landscapeinstitute-337604806

71

How do you stay up to date with landscape knowledge and learning?

You can now watch anywhere, anytime and relive key sessions with the LI’s new on-demand CPD learning library: LI Campus.

Subscribe today and unlock access to all of our current and future events. Watch live CPD session, interviews and demonstrations from the comfort of your home. Don’t miss out – every session will be uploaded to Campus for catch up later.

Go to campus.landscapeinstitute.org for more information.