PhD project in Nature-based urban renewal: the case of Nottingham’s Green Heart

The ambition of this PhD scholarship is to understand how nature-based urban recovery processes emerge in ordinary cities, and what their contribution is to sustainable and liveable urban futures with potential co-benefits for people, places and nature. The post-Covid urban landscape is characterised by disruption to the long established functions and spaces that used to define city centres. Economic restructuring, digital transformation of the retail sector, local government austerity, changing cultures of work and leisure, net zero policy and an urgent biodiversity crisis have all contributed to a reorientation of what makes city centres liveable and sustainable.

Nottingham’s response to these challenges is bold and internationally significant, the “Green Heart” nature-based redevelopment of the city centre followed many years of decline and inactivity in the regeneration plans for Broadmarsh shopping centre. Nature-based urban recovery is in the vanguard of urban policy innovation and marks a new chapter in understanding people’s relationship with place and nature, providing a significant opportunity for internationally leading research and impact.

The multi-functional benefits of urban green spaces are well established in literature. Improvements in mental and physical health, attachment to place and community, and encouragement of active travel are among purported community benefits. Community benefits are, however, dependent on the type of city, community and questions of identity where there is a knowledge gap addressed by this proposal. An emerging critique of nature-based solutions highlights many unintended consequences that may exacerbate socio-environmental inequalities.

The advantage of conducting this PhD project in the context of Nottingham, a city with socio-economic deprivation and a diverse ethnic mix, is that Nottingham is typical of a large number of European post-industrial “second tier” or “ordinary” cities which face similar challenges but are under-researched. Insights from Nottingham can therefore influence a wide range of urban policy and practice internationally.

This interdisciplinary PhD project will critically examine the impact of Nottingham’s Green Heart in three important dimensions:

1) the viability and sustainability of Nottingham city centre as an inclusive social, cultural and commercial hub for East Midlands;

2) the changing relationships that local residents and stakeholders have with identity and place following a nature-based urban design intervention at the heart of the city; and

3) the impacts for local climate resilience from the intervention.

Prospective candidates can approach this topic from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including but not limited to urban planning and design, sociology, geography, political science, psychology, history and public health.

All enquiries about the position to Dr Jenni Cauvain, jenni.cauvain@ntu.ac.uk  – School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University.

Dr Jenni Cauvain

Dr Ana Souto

Dr Peter Eckersley