Green and Blue Infrastructure
Good quality Green and Blue Infrastructure (GBI) has an important role to play in our urban and rural environments for improving health and wellbeing, air quality, nature recovery and resilience to and mitigation of climate change, along with addressing issues of social inequality and environmental decline.
What is Green and Blue Infrastructure?
Green infrastructure is just as important to the city as its grey infrastructure of rail, roads, pipes and cables. It is a network of parks, green spaces, gardens, woodlands, rivers and wetlands (Blue), as well as urban greening features such as street trees and green roofs, that is planned, designed and managed to:
- promote healthier living, providing spaces for physical activity and relaxation
- cool the city and absorb stormwater to lessen the impacts of climate change
- filter pollutants to improve air and water quality
- make streets clean, comfortable and more attractive to encourage walking and cycling
- store carbon in soils and woodlands
- create better quality and better-connected habitats to improve biodiversity and ecological resilience
Green Infrastructure provides an opportunity to link with Biodiversity Net Gain, Local Nature Recovery Strategies, Nature Recovery Network, and Natural Capital.
Further information can be found on Natural England's Green Infrastructure Framework and Green Infrastructure Mapping Tool websites.
Winchester City Council commissioned a scoping report on Green and Blue Infrastructure (GBI) from Land Use Consultants in 2020. This forms the baseline of the district's GBI and can be viewed here:
https://luc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=2a1d08fa5da346b983dfe85b8b9cf0f9