Down by the riverside – regenerating our urban waterways
The University of Sheffield is leading a ground-breaking project to redevelop areas surrounding urban waterways in the UK, in order to deliver significant social, economic and environmental benefits to local communities.
The Urban River Corridors and Sustainable Living Agendas (URSULA) project is receiving £2.5million over 4 years to find ways to redevelop and regenerate areas surrounding urban rivers. Based at the University of Sheffield, the project is a collaboration with the universities of Durham and Bradford, and involves a diverse range of project partners, including the Environment Agency and Sheffield City Council. URSULA takes an interdisciplinary approach to redevelopment, and draws together researchers from a variety of disciplines including Sociology, Geography, Animal & Plant Sciences, Town & Regional Planning, Civil & Structural Engineering, Architecture and Computer Science.
Project Manager Tom Wild is based in the Department of Civil & Structural Engineering at the University of Sheffield. He explains the historical background to the project and the need for regeneration: "Sheffield is situated where it is due to the abundance of natural resources in the area, such as forests for charcoal and rivers to power industry. River modifications made in the seventeenth-century, such as weirs and diversions, put pressures on the waterways, which became a dumping ground for effluent. As a result of a gradual process of neglect and disuse, urban rivers no longer became a focus for human activity. This is by no means unique to Sheffield, but is very much a Europe-wide trend. However, over the last few decades this situation has changed as waterfronts become a target for redevelopment."
The unused brownfield land which lies alongside urban rivers now provides a unique opportunity to create high quality communities. The URSULA project will take a holistic approach to the task of regenerating these areas, and will place equal emphasis on preserving ecological habitats, making areas economically viable, and improving access for the people living there. "The project focuses on sustainability through integrated interventions, covering anything which could bring about social, economic or environmental change" says Tom. "We are researching how to maximise opportunities through sustainable patterns of development for the regeneration of urban waterways".
URSULA will focus principally on the Don Valley region of Sheffield, using real-life examples of riverside redevelopment. The project will generate solutions to tackle degradation and address development, which can then be widely applied in many different settings. Project Director David Lerner, of the Catchment Science Centre at the University of Sheffield, explains: "We will draw on case studies in Sheffield, the UK and beyond, and test our outcomes with local stakeholders in Sheffield on the corridor of the River Don and its tributaries".
The researchers will work closely with the European demonstration programme INTEREG. Two related projects developed by Tom also approach the issue of redevelopment from two equally important perspectives: 'value', or valuing attractive landscapes in the urban economy, and 'making places profitable', or ensuring that space is utilised and managed efficiently in perpetuity. Together, these projects are worth more than £10 million, and both involve open demonstration sites and multi-million pound investments, such as new park areas, which the URSULA researchers hope to draw lessons from.
Tom adds: "The broad aims of URSULA and these new INTEREG projects are threefold: to bring about practical policy recommendations, on a local, regional and national level; to produce transferable lessons and examples, which can be rolled-out to other areas of the UK and across Europe; and to foster durable relationships with partner agencies, encouraging knowledge sharing about best practice".
For further information, please contact Tom Wild (Project Manager) at:
tel: 0114 222 6283
email : t.wild@sheffield.ac.uk
or Professor David Lerner (Project Director) at:
tel: 0114 222 5743
email : d.n.lerner@sheffield.ac.uk
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