Alley Greening: A Tool for Enhancing Community Resilience?

In many cities across the world alleys are transitioning from residual spaces to hybrid places providing the foundation for new functions, uses, and identities to take root and coincide through a process of “alley greening”. Such manifestations are transforming the relationship between people (local residents) and place (alleyway–local area), most notably during the COVID-19 pandemic when a new urgency for the provision, or repurposing, of safe, social spaces emerged. Yet, the potential of alley greening to affect people-place relationships and engender community resilience has been relatively unexplored. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, including questionnaires, interviews, and case study analyses, this paper critically investigates the experience and perspectives of green alleys from various place-based actors in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The findings reveal that, even in the absence of institutional and policy support, green alley projects have the potential to stimulate positive people-place relationships in various ways and enhance wider community resilience to shocks and stresses. However, barriers prevail, curtailing the reach and purpose of such projects both in Belfast and elsewhere. The paper considers how governance arrangements might best overcome such hurdles and strengthen pro-environmental and pro-social behaviours that are fundamental to community resilience. Key policy highlights Despite their integral form and function in the city, alleyways, nor their potential, are rarely recognised in the policy. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a policy-implementation gap in the provision of locally accessible greenspace. Policy inertia exacerbated this gap preventing the fulfilment of changing community needs. Alley greening emerged as a tactical urban response. A lack of place-based approaches within policy has polarised institutions from communities. People-place relationships, essential to resilience-building and green alley longevity, are subsequently inadequately engaged with and fostered. An opportunity exists for alley greening to be a place-based policy instrument to stimulate pro-social and pro-environmental behaviours for building community resilience.</p

Belfast THRI[VES]: Transformative Health and Regeneration Initiatives [for Vibrancy, Equality, and Sustainability]:Project Report

Belfast THRI[VES] is a pilot collaboration between Ulster University’s Belfast School of Architecture and the Built Environment, the School of Psychology, and Bamford Centre for Mental Health &amp; Wellbeing, working with Operational Partners from Belfast City Council’s City Regeneration &amp; Development Division and The Department for Infrastructure. The project was funded through Belfast City Council via the Department for Communities COVID-19 Recovery Revitalisation Programme, and the Department for Infrastructure. This report represents the overall project findings, literature reviews, case studies, lessons and recommendations. Examining how the City Centre can be an improved, inclusive, and innovative place for future generations, THRI[VES] argues for liveability as a unique framework to evaluate and deliver projects within and/or impacting on the public realm, primarily, through enhanced wellbeing priorities. It also investigates the role of public-private engagement to reframe wellbeing-based criteria and more effectively connect statutory and tactical regeneration process to more informal bottom-up evidence-based considerations that can collectively address and develop innovative solutions to tackle health, climate-change, and socio-economic stresses. Four objectives structure the synthesis and presentation of report findings to:• Assist Council-Executive goals to develop effective public decision-making processes to reimagine greener, healthier, more vibrant city spaces (in line with A Bolder Vision aspirations).• Identify areas for improved cross-sector data-sharing on wellbeing, sustainability, and resilience.• Develop evidence-based proposals to improve public-space policy and decision-making.• Propose new data-sharing platforms and future collaborations to inform more effective evidence-based policy, design, and post-evaluation of new public realm projects for wellbeing.Focusing on Belfast city centre, primary evidence, literature reviews, and international precedents provide wider lessons about urban governance and place-management at different scales of development including: • smaller projects (pop-ups, parklets, and meanwhile type examples) • neighbourhood-wide visioning and masterplanning proposals, and• city-wide to regional and national planning and regeneration project development policy.The above project levels, discussed in report examples, acknowledge how all development and policy are interconnected, impacted by complex spatial and community decisions for local/national governing bodies. The report highlights a need for greater shared understandings and collaboration amongst all policymakers, professionals, and the public about the terms, data, and co-production processes that inform both urban and rural development. The findings, discussions, and summary recommendations – set out below and expanded upon in the concluding chapter- are thus seen as a starting point to help improve placemaking for greater liveability and sustainable livelihood in Belfast and all villages, towns, and city centres. Ulster University Academic Research Team and Belfast City Council PartnersBelfast School of Architecture and the Built Environment:Dr Saul Golden, PI, Lecturer in Architecture &amp; Spatial DesignDr Gavan Rafferty, Co-I Lecturer in Spatial Planning and DevelopmentProfessor Gerry Leavey, Co-I, Director, Bamford Centre for Mental Health and WellbeingBelfast City Council City Regeneration &amp; Development Dr Callie Persic, Development Manager Ms Niamh Mulrine, Regeneration Project Officer<br/

Collaborative and innovative participatory planning pedagogies: reflections from the Community Participation in Planning project

Designing pedagogical methods to teach community engagement and participation to spatial planning students at university remains challenging, particularly given the diverse range of stakeholders and perspectives that now exist in contemporary society. Framing the development of innovative pedagogies as one aspect of the broader ‘third mission’ of universities, i.e., enhancing civic engagement and social impact, the chapter draws together reflections from the Community Participation in Planning (CPiP) project on ways to co-design a pedagogy that nurtures cross-sectoral and transnational learning for co-learning inclusive participation practices in planning. The contribution explores how ‘learning in action’, through live real-world projects, can enrich student learning and move beyond didactic teaching styles to offer an innovative pedagogy that nurtures knowledge co-production. The conclusions offer insights on: a) the implementation challenges to teaching participation in planning courses, b) differences in interpretations of participation by comparing multiple cultural contexts, and c) how the spatial planning discipline can combine teaching and research with civic engagement/social impact.publishe