Climate change and nature in town regeneration planning

Roughly one third of Irish people live in towns. For decades, these places have generally been perceived to be in economic decline with main streets in particular suffering from high vacancy and dereliction rates. Society has begun the debate on how to rebuild and regenerate. Largely absent from this debate – until the last few years – have been issues around climate change and nature loss. Billy Hynes of our Future Analytics team explains.

Perhaps understandably, addressing long-term, global environmental threats has been a low priority for communities when compared to more tangible local issues. That belief has shifted. Irish people now overwhelmingly recognise that the climate is worsening and beginning to impact their lives (e.g. flooding, food price increases).

They also know behavioural change is needed and that where possible, change should be enabled by the places where they live.  There are fears of what conveniences could be lost. In addition, likely benefits are not guaranteed.

All of this is rational. Unfortunately, when communities come together to plan for their town’s future these concerns can clog up decision making. 

Enabling community decision making

Much of what I and my colleagues at KPMG Future Analytics currently do revolves around supporting communities in the creation of town regeneration plans. From recent experience, three areas of contention have emerged when climate change and nature action have intersected with regeneration efforts.

The first is the dominance of the car. The second is building reuse and intensification of land for homes and businesses. The final element is managing public and private land to enhance nature and biodiversity. Of these, by far the most contentious is car use, parking, and the prioritisation of walking, cycling and buses.

Thankfully, much of the apparent friction between economic development, liveability, climate action and nature enhancement is avoidable. Indeed, with the right actions and implementation strategy, it is usually possible for everything to be improved. However, to permit this to happen it is necessary to improve how town regeneration decisions are made. 

Focusing on positive outcomes

Every regeneration plan involves at least some public consultation. Hopefully, the programme is strong and broad, involving children and marginalised groups. Unfortunately, stakeholder consultation can often become an exercise in people advocating for a relatively narrow wish list. When this happens, the town is effectively treated as a fixed pie from which each person tries to get the largest slice.

This severely limits opportunities for innovation and collaboration. The result is to restrict the ability of the town to reach its social and economic potential. It also curbs opportunities for townspeople to contribute positively in the fight against climate change and nature loss.

An alternative approach is to focus on how the necessary changes can be designed in such a way to create a more liveable and sustainable place that still provides strong economic prospects. Effectively, this is where – although threats are considered – efforts are concentrated on exploiting opportunities. This expands the pie!

Understanding motivations, needs and wants

A vital first step to making this approach possible is understanding the needs and wants of various stakeholders (e.g. community groups, residents of all ages and backgrounds, businesses, public sector). Any plan should try to fulfil the needs of as many people as possible.

It is within the various wants where the negotiation space lies and appropriate ideas can be created. There is also wriggle room in how needs can be provided. Put simply, the more people that have their needs met, the greater a plan is accepted and the less chance of people blocking actions.

It is important to recognise that needs change. Needs are both subjective and objective. One need that is growing is importance is the need to connect with nature. Across Ireland, all generations are developing a strong awareness of the role nature plays in their physical and mental health.

In general, communities are getting better at understanding the relationship between the economy, property development, social connections, climate change and nature. However, they often need help through additional knowledge to better engage in urban regeneration decision making. This can be at least partially solved by those running stakeholder engagement programmes providing data and good examples of what other places have done.

Following establishing stakeholder needs, understanding what winning means for various sections of the community is also a useful exercise during the early phase of engagement. It is often surprising to see how seemingly disparate groups can have similar ideas of what a successful town looks like. This can be complemented with having people propose objectives and actions.

Clarity on trade-offs & consequences

The next step is to establish the trade-offs and consequences of possible actions. Even overwhelmingly positive actions may unintentionally impact someone negatively. Trade-offs mean doing one thing stops another activity from happening. Consequences are the impact – both good and bad – on people and the environment.

The trade-offs and consequences can all be charted. Although there are always unknowns for possible outcomes, transparently laying out how proposed actions could impact the town socially, economically and environmental greatly aids decision making.

It also shows where actions support and even undermine each other. In the cases where people are likely to be negatively impacted appropriate assistance can be planned.

Feasibility

The final step is ascertaining if the proposed actions are feasible according to the abilities of those who will be involved in implementation, likely funding, and the possible management systems to make sure the long journey towards success is reached.

Decision making is hard. Regenerating towns is difficult. Tackling the intertwined issues of climate change and nature loss seems overwhelming. Nonetheless, there are solutions. The steps outlined above should help in the creation of actions where the environment and overwhelming majority of people living in Ireland’s towns win!