Londons Natural Signatures NLA
15/01/2009
I attended a breakfast talk at the NLA, the centre for London's built environment, which was called Londons natural signatures and was based on a study complied by Natural England. The two speakers; Alison Barnes from Natural England and William Filmer-Sankey from Alan Baxter & Associates, presented the report which aims to reconnect Londoners with the underlying nature of the city and highlight the integrity of natural features to London’s local character. The aim is to highlight the nature of the city in order to create new natural identities based on the geology, ecology and landforms of London.
" We wish to re establish a sense of connection to the fascinating range of landscapes that can be recognised beneath our towns and cities. By publishing Londons Natural Signatures , Natural England is looking to ensure that these landsvapes are more clearly reflected within the regeneration and renewal of the capital. Incorporating natural areas into the way our cities are designed can offer enormous benefits to people's quality of life, stimulating jobs, improving people's health, creating greater urban resiliance to climate change and reconnecting people with nature."
Helen Philips, Natural England's Chief Executive
One of the points which I found especially interesting was that the topography of London has not actually changed drastically over time, but knowledge of it has been supressed by the presence of the tube system. Also in the quote above: "enormous benefits to people's quality of life, stimulating jobs, improving people's health, creating greater urban resiliance to climate change and reconnecting people with nature." The use of nature and the environment to improve peoples quality of life is something i am very interested in, I am looking into Ecopsychology for my dissertation. One of the main ideas is to create a series of small green spaces in a grid accross London creating an overall greening rather than a single largescale project, using the smaller projects to connect the green space across the city.
The city is split, in the report, into 22 zones of different landscape character types, which each have their own natural signature and through that a design clue is given. For example; Hampstead Ridge, Natural Signature - Mosaic of ancient woodland and scrub and acid grasslands along ridgetop summits with panoramic views. Therefore the design clue for this example is the creation of wild areas.
Overall it was a really interesting and inspiring presentation. Although some one made an interesting point at the end, which was that London's history is of change, and to try to stop that is almost contradicting the idea itself.
