Nature in your neighbourhood
The Edinburgh Living Landscape is a long-term vision to ensure that nature is at the heart of the city’s future.
It will demonstrate that investment in the natural environment makes economic sense as well as increasing biodiversity and creating healthier urban ecosystems. To do this we need to integrate nature into neighbourhoods across the city.
The project will reinforce and expand existing green networks and reconnect the people of Edinburgh to their natural environment. The Edinburgh Living Landscape will work to benefit local people and wildlife with an aim to make the city one of the most sustainable in Europe by 2050.
What does the programme involve?
Edinburgh Living Landscape is a group of organisations working in partnership to connect green infrastructure at multiple scales, from window boxes, green roofs and street trees through to large parks and urban woodlands. It is about making the links between a healthy environment, a healthy economy, people’s well-being and ultimately the prosperity of Edinburgh.
What does it look like?
The Living Landscape will lead to changes across the city, from bringing wildlife into people’s gardens to integrating green infrastructure into Edinburgh’s biggest networks. In densely populated urban areas the project will work with communities and developers to turn the grey into green. In the green areas of the city, the Living Landscape will make sure these areas are sustainable and resilient. For parks and greenspaces, this will mean changes to how some of the outdoor spaces look, with the creation of meadows and more natural areas that can be explored and enjoyed. For new developments, nature will be seen as an asset and natural features will be built into the infrastructure.
What is the Scottish Wildlife Trust doing?
The Scottish Wildlife Trust is playing a key role in the development of the Living Landscape. It is working with the partners to ensure the three fundamental ways of improving habitat quality are applied to every scale in the urban ecosystem:
- Nativeness – encourage native species and discourage non-native invasive species. Native species support other native species in complex ecological relationships which have evolved over millennia.
- Habitat complexity – encourage vertical and horizontal complexity of structure within habitat patches, whatever their size. This maximises the number of niches available for species.
- Connectivity – encourage physical and functional connections between habitat patches so the green infrastructure begins to coalesce into a more resilient system.
Who are the partners?
The project partners are the Scottish Wildlife Trust, City Edinburgh Council, Edinburgh and Lothian Greenspace Trust, Green surge, University of Edinburgh and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. These partners are leading the development of the Living Landscape and working with a wide range of local and national organisations to deliver the programme.
