Future Parks Accelerator

Thriving Green SpacesDelivering the Edinburgh 2050 Vision

Linda Anglin – City of Edinburgh CouncilPark Managers Forum 5 March 2019

Project Partners

Why we are ready

We are not alone

• Edinburgh 2050 Vision

• Part of a greater movement

• No “Silver Bullet” – needs everyone pulling together

We are not starting from scratch

• Pioneer projects and pilots

• Established delivery partnership

• Transformation of the Council

Why we need transformation

Challenges

• Uncertain future for greenspaces funding and resources

• Our city is growing

• High number of visitors, festivals and events

Opportunities

• Elected member support

• Edinburgh Green Spaces Forum

• Transient visitor levy

• Edinburgh and Lothians Greenspace and Health Strategic Framework

• £1 billion challenge

What are we going to do?

We will fashion a new vision for the city’s green spaces, to be captured in an ambitious 30-year strategy which aligns with Edinburgh’s 2050 City Vision and that delivers a new way of working to ensure their on-going enhancement, protection, and care.

We will establish a sustainable funding model that enables us to resource a greenspace service relevant for 21st century urban living and take a lead on delivering many of the capital’s aspirations on place-making, health, sustainable energy, active travel, and biodiversity.

To achieve this, we will harness the enthusiasm, skills and wherewithal of communities and partners, exploring new ways of working together that allows our green spaces to grow, thrive and adapt over the next three decades.

Our work will focus on six change-categories, which collectively have the potential to revolutionise our green spaces:

• Community

• Ecological

• Commercial

• Technological

• Governance

• Sharing

Community

• Gather missing baseline data about the condition, quality and potential of our green spaces

• Engage with communities to determine their needs and get their ideas using co-design iterative processes

• Work with others to explore how we can work together to deliver cross-sector benefits

Ecological

• Build on the Living Landscape principles

• Map ecological networks and determine ecological coherence using EcoCo protocol

• Quantify eco-system services, natural capital assets and other benefits and determine how we can improve

• Determine how we can make our operations more environmentally sustainable

Commercial

• Calculate true cost to run the service

• Explore how we can generate income

• Develop a sustainable business plan

• Build evidence base to support our case for funding

• Make the invisible value of our green space visible

• S75 developer contributions

• £1 billion challenge

• Visitor Levy

Technological

• SmartPark Model

• ParkPower

• Link in with the £1.3 billion City Deal to make city ‘data capital’ of Europe

Governance

• Explore governance models and develop a proposal which is a good fit for Edinburgh

• Produce a Common Good register and guidance on the rights and governance of these properties

• Explore participatory budgeting and stakeholder contracts

Sharing

• Develop M&E strategy and methodology

• Set up methodology for recording and sharing data

• Park Manager Forum and Fast Followers

• Sharing across UK, Europe and rest of the world

Thriving Green Spaces

• A complete picture of our green spaces

• Robust cost plan with achievable business plan

• Strong community buy-in

• Valued and benefits realised

• Protection against loss and decline

• Green spaces that fulfil their full potential

• Green spaces where people thrive

Thanks for listening