
Funding secured to give city green make-over
Liverpool has been awarded nearly £3.5million to create new green corridors across the city.
Liverpool City Council teamed up with Mersey Forest, the University of Liverpool and organisations in Valladolid (Spain) and Izmir (Turkey) to successfully bid for 10 million euros of Horizon 2020 European funding which will be invested in creating new green spaces in the city – four million euros of which (£3.4 million) is specifically for Liverpool.
Liverpool partners are undertaking a range of innovative research projects and work with local communities, organisations such as the Business Improvement District and other stakeholders to identify and retrofit a number of ‘green corridors’ as part of the URBAN GreenUP project.
Work will start in the New Year when plans for the corridors will be developed. It is likely the sites which will be transformed will include locations within the Baltic Corridor, the business and commercial district of the city centre and the Jericho Lane/Otterspool areas.
The aim is to tackle environmental city issues through Nature Based Solutions and to deliver a range of environmental improvements including increasing biodiversity, improving air quality and alleviating surface water issues.
Work will include planting trees, introducing green walls (also known as vertical gardens) and establishing rain gardens and sustainable urban drainage systems, whilst enhancing pedestrian and cyclist routes in and out of the city.
The proposed environmental improvements builds on the work of the Mersey Forest over the past 25 years, providing a valuable opportunity to bring nature back to the urban core, and at the same time enhance the green infrastructure of the city.
During the project Liverpool City Council, together with the University of Liverpool and Mersey Forest, will test, monitor and measure the environmental, social and economic impacts and benefits of the nature-based solutions; assessing how they affect the environment, quality of life, local people and businesses.
At the end of the project, the findings will be reviewed to see which nature-based solutions work best and to suggest the most cost-effective and beneficial options that can be considered for future projects and schemes.
As well as this Liverpool Streetscene Services is to introduce a further 500 trees, plus new planters at specially selected locations across the city.
The council is also piloting a project at seven primary schools with the aim of giving every 10 year old child in the city the chance to plant a tree within the next three years.
The council has teamed up The Mersey Forest and the One Tree Per Child scheme and plans to plant 5,000 new trees by 2019
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 730426