Greening Up - From fights to rights: making it the default

Re-greening: a vital tool for urban renewal and levelling up • The Urban Greening Factor, developed through the London Plan, provides a quantifiable measure The government’s Levelling Up strategy, as set out in of the environmental quality of urban greenery a White Paper, a Bill and £4.8 billion of public funding, in any given site, as well as making important aims to ‘end the geographical inequal. [...] Where is the urgency The Prime Minister should declare a National to fill our streets with the nature that is proven to Urban Greening Mission to prioritise and unleash address such a range of urban challenges? Where the greening of our towns and cities. [...] Reduce the fear of public liability by identifying where it is safe to plant, reversing commissioning an expert review of public the status quo in which the onus is on those liability for trees and to reconsider the wishing to plant to prove that it is safe. [...] R ecruit, train and develop more Urban Green Professionals by convening a panel of professional bodies to analyse the profile of tree officers and other relevant posts in council environment, parks, and planning teams; identify the skills needed to deliver the urban greening revolution; and introduce green qualifications at all levels as a route to green jobs. [...] buildings and the positioning of trees and vegetation This is almost the size of the Serpentine lake in is a more significant factor in the overall Hyde Park, or 1,365 Olympic swimming pools.28 concentration and dispersion of pollutants within Sheffield’s new ’Grey to Green‘ project which has towns.31 ‘Green walls’ and other forms of large converted approximately 1.3km of hard surfaces vegetation.