PM 36 - Increase areas of high-quality accessible green spaces in the built environment
- Code
- PM 36
- Measure
- Increase areas of high-quality accessible green spaces in the built environment
- Description
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Existing green spaces in the built environment should be improved to ensure they provide benefits for people and wildlife, with an array of habitats provided as well as publicly accessible routes for all users. Green spaces may occur on the urban fringe or towns and villages or within city centres, and new developments should provide suitable areas of high-quality greenspace in their plans. Allotments can be managed to encourage more wildlife, such as through hedge boundaries and elimination of chemical use. Urban planters, vegetated areas around buildings, balcony gardens, rain gardens, road verges, green roofs and walls and parks all provide locations for planting of native and/or climate-adapted tree and plant species. Both groups of species should be integrated to attract wildlife to these areas as well as considering the future long-term survival in a changing climate by increasing habitat connectivity. Restoration of natural features of urban waterways and associated riparian habitats that may have been diverted, culverted or canalised will help increase wetland biodiversity and reduce urban flood risk.
- Wider environmental benefits
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Improving air quality, Increasing woodland cover Improving air quality Improving water quality Increasing flood risk management Reducing climate change impacts Supporting health and cultural services Improving soil health
- Links to additional information and guidance
- Priority
- Nature-rich areas within the built environment are accessible, climate resilient, interconnected and biodiverse
- Priority description
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Whilst Herefordshire is a rural county the city, towns and villages are still important places that can be shared by people and wildlife. Many species have come to successfully coexist with people in urban settings, and many others must travel across the built environment areas when moving between their natural habitats. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the built up areas and settlements can enable species to move freely and even inhabit these areas in the long-term. The majority of these measures and supporting actions can apply on private and council land as well as to schools, business premises and hospital grounds, and between them these spaces can become an interwoven network for nature within our built environment.
- Mapped