EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network

The Greenscom Project

Introduction

A busy street has been cancelled. It is now a place for slow moving and for the silent water in a river. How could this happen? This is the main question for the main stories in the Greenscom project. What is important when you are to balance the urban green?

Description

The Greenscom green planning toolkit gives you information on how to balance the built environment in the cities with the urban green. It is often a hard task, as the red often is in a stronger position than the green. The toolkit is based on experience from 14 case studies with green planning in very different situation - to gain a wide experience.

It has also drawn from different theories on planning and participation.
The most important concepts from the theories are presented in the toolkit and related to the practice experience from the casestudies. The general objective for the project has been to improve and develop planning concepts and policy instruments for sustainable urban development, to be worked out in a toolkit for urban practitioners.

The study has focussed on:

The governance of the balance between urban open spaces and built up areas that contributes to the quality of life of citizens and the conditions for urban nature;
Underlying ways of communication and participation in decision-making.

The derived objectives have been:

As to governance at the strategic level: assess concepts and strategic tools that address the role of green areas and other open spaces in cities;
As to governance at the operational level: learn from the effects of various policy instruments used to manage quantity and quality of urban open space;
As to communication issues at both levels: evaluate the ways of communication between various stakeholders in urban growth and green;
Develop a method for comparative research.

Methodology

The research has been done in three main phases.

1. First, a common methodological framework was formed. Two knowledge areas have been studied:

The communication of growth and green issues;
Urban governance and policy instruments.

Hypotheses, questions and criteria derived from the initial studies were further developped into a common framework for the different case studies, including final criteria for the assessment of policy instruments and questionnaires for the interviews on governance and communication. Each of these knowledge building steps has followed in a sequence of initial workshops/conferences including both scientists and practitioners and draft reports that will be further elaborated during joint panel discussions resulting in final reports.

2. The second phase has been case studies, in which data will be collected and elaborated on the basis of the methodological framework. Three intermediate workshops have been held in order to, respectively, review and adjust the framework based on the first results; exchange experiences between the involved cities; evaluate the first outcomes of the case studies and make a first impression of tools.

3. The final phase has been initiated by a small-scale workshop in which participating researchers and practitioners from the participating cities will analyse the outcomes of the case studies. After further elaboration, these conclusions have been discussed at a conference of a wider group of stakeholders, researchers and practitioners. This stakeholder conference has provided the basis for the development of a toolkit for urban professionals.

The toolkit will be introduced to a wider audience of practitioners through a database with access structure on a web-site (this web-site).

Conclusions

Each country learnt different lessons from their case-studies. These experiences presented here are from the Danish cases and are summed up to 5 lessons learnt. The three Aarhus cases all show a talented incrementalistic planning. The process shows several elements that made this planning a success:

It is important to use opportunities. Incrementalistic planning can therefore also be called 'planning by chance'. Opportunities come and go and you have to be ready to act when the opportunities are often suddenly are present. You therefore need to have all your background material ready;
The incrementalistic planning takes time and you must be ready to wait and to act just in time. It is often not possible to control all the necessary conditions for the implementations. There might be barriers that right now cannot be moved, but time may change the conditions for these barriers. In stead of pushing hard and intensive it can be wise to wait until the condition sooner or later change. A strategy for this change can be useful;
Communication and negations are heavy elements in the incrementalistic planning. It stems very much from the strong implementation drive in incrementalistic planning. To reach the implementation cooperation between many actors are normally necessary;
This process demand skills. It demands actors that can use opportunities, estimate when and what to do at the right moment and can handle the communication process;
What could be called background power is necessary. Conditions can create a 'supporting environment', when the opportunities get present. In the Aarhus cases these were mainly to forms of background power. Firstly there were official plans that supported the three cases. Secondly there was a strong green discourse for green that was very helpful.

Contact info

Danish Building Research Institute
Knud Erik Hansen (Toolkit developper)

Contact info

Danish Building Research Institute
Denmark
Karen Atwell, tel. 0045 45865533 ext. 350

Publication date

Cities

The project is European with the participation of: The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and France.

Links

More information on the Danish Building Research Institute More information on the Greenscom Project

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy

Keywords

Urban environment

Institutional characteristics
Academic/Research