BRIEFING
2. Creating an active place for all, Connswater Community Greenway.
Andrew Haley
© Eastside Partnership
Andrew Haley is a landscape architect and director of The Paul Hogarth Company in Belfast, one of whose recent projects, the Connswater Community Greenway, is featured in the World Health Organisation’s Urban Green Space Interventions and Health. As landscape professionals we often talk confidently about the value of green infrastructure. We show images that we hope will inspire people about the possibilities and we explain principles, such as the way that well designed off-road walking and cycling routes will encourage more people to make active travel choices. But no matter how persuasive the pictures or the words, they can be trumped, on almost every occasion by hard facts particularly ones which include pound signs. When Connswater Community Greenway in East Belfast was in its early stages, it was propelled by identified needs and the ways in which regeneration of open space alongside the rivers could address some of the issues. These areas were in a poor condition and were considered to be unsafe, with community tensions and paramilitary activity a constant concern. Deprivation indices highlighted significant issues associated with education, environment, safety and particularly stark figures in terms of health inequalities. The masterplan that was developed by the Paul Hogarth Company was iterative, produced over a number of years from 2001. As the World Health Organisation in its Urban Green Space Interventions and Health – A Review of Impacts and Effectiveness has since highlighted,
the project, ‘provides an example of where community engagement was present from the project’s beginning’. The vision that was developed was radical. It was of a transformed place where the regeneration of 40 hectares could create safe, accessible environments that could be enjoyed by all. For some, it was an education project; for others, it was an environmental or tourism project. But from the outset, health was central. The project which was completed just over a year ago, has regenerated land and 5km of rivers, creating 16km of pedestrian or cycle connections, with 23 new or improved bridges, and a major new civic square. In securing the £40m required for the project, including over £23m from the Big Lottery, the case was consistently made that there was a profound need that investment in the Greenway would address. Once the project was committed, the client, Eastside Partnership and Belfast City Council maintained their
focus on health and on evidencing the benefits that had been predicted – Queen’s University Belfast undertook a £1m research programme called ‘Physical Activity and the Rejuvenation of Connswater’. The cost to the public purse, associated with obesity, diabetes and coronary problems are often referenced in the press. Of all the figures within Queen’s University’s research associated with this project, this is perhaps the most compelling: ‘If 2 per cent of the inactive people living along the Connswater Community Greenway become active, then this will cover the costs of the walkways, trails, bridges and lighting, over a 40-year period’.
From the outset, health was central to the project.
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