EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - The PURE Guidebook: “Water Connects”

The PURE Guidebook: “Water Connects”

Introduction

PURE North Sea is a EU project, which started in 2002 and lasted for four years. Led by the Province of Groningen, partners from England, Sweden and the Netherlands set up and realised a great number of projects in those four years.

Description

“Water Connects” means connecting users and residents to water planning in an early stage. Where town meets countryside in the urban-rural fringe, there are a lot of dynamic activities creating a high pressure on land use, since government policies tend to preserve the rural areas. Consequently solutions have to be found in these areas to accommodate housing needs, businesses, recreation, water storage and biodiversity. “Water Connects” aims to accommodate these demands by combining them with the realisation and maintenance of an attractive and sustainable urban fringe environment.

EU involvement

The project is partially funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Conclusions

Altogether, the “Water Connects” approach was developed while working on pilot projects and plans. The PURE partnership produced 15 different plans, ranging from master plans, implementation plans, water system / river restoration plans and water catchment plans. Pilot projects with a strong focus on implementation were carried out by each partner.

Water structure plan Westrand, within the theme Planning with water: Groningen.
Osbäcken remediation plan, within the theme Water system restoration: Goteborg.
Implementation plan Gooiermars, within the theme Multifunctionality: Deventer.
Four pilots in river catchment’s of the rivers Team, Ouseburn, Skinninggrove Beck and Seaton Burn to set up public private partnerships to produce a catchment plan for these four rivers running in the rural-urban fringe zone of Newcastle/Gateshead, within the theme Participation: North East region, UK.

Contact info

PURE Secretariat

Publication date

01/02/2006

Cities

The North Sea area: Groningen, Deventer, Goteborg and the North East of the United Kingdom.

Links

The PURE North Sea project on EUKN The Province of Groningen, the lead partner (in Dutch)

The PURE Guidebook "Water connects" (PDF, Eng, 1.5 MB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Urban environment > Urban renewal

Keywords

Waterside development