Making Green Infrastructure Socially Inclusive: Principles and Challenges

Green Infrastructure consists of interconnected multifunctional green spaces and green features. Components of Green Infrastructure include parks, nature reserves, street trees, streams, sustainable urban drainage systems and green roofs. Proponents of Green Infrastructure are hopeful that its use in planning systems will provide multiple social, economic and ecological benefits to improve the liveability and sustainability of places. Although it is widely accepted that Green Infrastructure can deliver multiple ecosystem services, there is still uncertainty concerning how it can best be designed, implemented and maintained. This project considered how practitioners in the United Kingdom view and understand social aspects of Green Infrastructure and proposed a set of social principles that could be used to ensure these social aspects are included in future work that incorporates Green Infrastructure. Participants generally agreed with the proposed principles, but many found them difficult to apply in their current roles. A major concern was that Green Infrastructure is still frequently seen as ‘nice to have’ rather than at the core of development plans. Furthermore, most attention is paid to the initial stages of planning Green Infrastructure, neglecting the later aspects of management and monitoring