Green infrastructure is often described in terms of the functions it performs such as improving air quality and the associated benefits it brings as a result, such as improved health outcomes. The goal of good green infrastructure should be to achieve multifunctionality. The extent will depend on local circumstances and priorities but planning for and delivering a measurable increase in multiple benefits should always be the goal.

Looking forward society faces critical challenges such as biodiversity loss, inequalities in health and wellbeing and climate change. Multifunctional GI can assist in responding to these challenges in a joined-up way. Considering the benefits of good Green Infrastructure can help guide thinking towards achieving multifunctionality. Often this can be a case of bringing together policy makers, practitioners, existing and potential users.

The four main benefits to consider are:

1. Thriving nature and biodiversity gains: Habitat and species loss has resulted in a decline in biodiversity. Good GI can include new and enhanced areas specifically for wildlife. Also, the design of buildings and spaces can allow plants to colonise and animals to use them, helping to create nature rich places.
2. Climate change resilience and meeting zero carbon targets: As the climate changes, the UK is predicted to experience more extreme weather events. Urban areas are already affected by flash flooding and heat wave events. GI designed, implemented and managed to provide natural solutions can reduce the impact of severe weather events, help wildlife move and adapt. GI can also reduce carbon emissions through interventions such as, renewable energy generation e.g. ground-source heat pumps or bioenergy.
3. Health and wellbeing benefits: Access to nature rich environments and greenspace has a positive impact on health and wellbeing. Often poor communities with poorer health and educational outcomes have the lowest levels of access to nature. Access to good quality parks and greenspaces can ensure that most people can gain mental health benefits from experiencing nature. Active travel routes for walking, cycling and horse riding can lead to physical health benefits from more active lifestyles.
4. Supporting prospering communities: High quality environments with natural greenspaces are attractive to people and businesses. Green infrastructure can support a shift to a decarbonised green economy, aid regeneration and add value to economic activity.

At a local level GI should achieve multifunctionality by:

• Involving beneficiaries across different user, age and socio-economic groups
• Creating accessible nature rich spaces close to where people live and work
• Ensuring spaces are adaptively managed to provide multiple benefits over time
• Capturing the multi-functional benefits of green infrastructure using appropriate qualitative and quantitative assessments or tools

Overall, addressing needs through multifunctionality is at the heart of good GI and what makes it different from traditional grey infrastructure, which it can be combined with to bring wider benefits.

By its nature, good GI is multifunctional and therefore varied. However, being multifunctional alone, does not mean that GI will always address local and strategic needs. This is because a diversity of solutions can be needed to solve a specific issue. This can be connected to the scale or hierarchy of provision. In sport terms this might mean a ‘kick about’ space in the estate, a 5- a-side pitch in the local greenspace, a Sunday league ground in the district park, and a sports stadium to serve the settlement. It might also relate to the same group of people whose aspirations differ or change over time. In the case of children’s outdoor play, this comes in many different forms - active group play, exploring nature, imaginative play, using fixed play equipment, cycling, skateboarding, sitting and talking or playing card games etc. The type of play changes as children become older and children with disabilities will have some different requirements. Therefore, providing one set of facilities such as swings and a roundabout will not meet their needs.

GI solutions can also address the same issue in different ways. GI can be intensely managed or more natural; it can also comprise a series of smaller connected private spaces such as domestic gardens, or one large public space such as a city park. Research using health related evidence has highlighted how a variety of greenspaces in a neighbourhood can have a positive impact on people’s wellbeing.

Variations in predictions over climate change mean that there is a lack of certainty over to what extent, how and when species may have to migrate and/or adapt to survive. Therefore, planning and targeting interventions to achieve a variety in the location and type of habitats, is likely to provide the best longterm solutions and reduce the risk around climate change assumptions. A mosaic of habitats can often deliver structural diversity, provided the spaces are large enough and linked with other similar areas for wildlife. This concept of ecological stepping stones provides an illustration of variety on a landscape scale.

Nature-based Solutions or protecting, restoring and better managing ecosystems for the benefit of people and biodiversity, gives the framework to tackle the twin climate and nature crises in an integrated way. A key element is implementing the right land use in the right place, for example, planting trees on peatlands where they would not naturally have occurred could lead to a net increase in emissions of greenhouse gases. Therefore, achieving a varied landscape should be set in the context of wider objectives to avoid unintended consequences.

This means that the planning and implementation of GI needs to aim for a measurable increase in variety through the creation, enhancement and connectivity of new and existing GI. This variety should be benefits-based to meet existing social, economic and environmental policy objectives.

At a strategic level GI should:

• Aim to create variation in the types and sizes of spaces to meet strategic needs
• Strengthen networks and their variety to create more interest for users
• Maintain and enhance a mix of significant GI assets
• Reduce the loss and increase the diversity of habitats and species
• Reduce the loss of and increase the variety of recreational facilities

At a local level GI should:

• Thread different types and sizes of spaces through local GI networks
• Create a variety of habitats and facilities to supplement larger initiatives
• Aim for variation in the density and layout of GI

Aiming for variety also has the added benefit of creating the right conditions for the wider involvement of interest groups and individuals in the planning and delivery of GI.

Many towns and cities in England include a lattice of trees, parks, gardens, allotments, cemeteries, woodlands, rivers and waterways set within and between urban areas. However these green assets may not be well connected and sometimes their potential to deliver critical environmental, social and economic benefits has gone unrealised. When improvements have been made often resource constraints have meant these have happened in isolation on individual sites at different times.

Ecosystem services and benefits to people provided by nature including, provisioning services (e.g. food, water, wood), regulating services (e.g. water quality, flood regulation, erosion protection, carbon storage, noise reduction, air quality regulation, cooling and shading), supporting services (e.g. habitats, thriving plants and wildlife, pollination), and cultural services (e.g. access to nature, sense of place, aesthetic value, recreation and education) have not been considered as working in combination and as part of a local or strategic networks. This means that GI has been dealt with in a fragmented way and not viewed as a functioning network. Opportunities to integrate GI together into core elements of new and existing grey infrastructure have therefore been missed.

In order to create multifunctional living networks of GI, strategic and long term planning is required. This can ensure that green infrastructure assets connect across wide areas from urban through to rural. This can enable the movement of people and wildlife through green networks and protect and enhance existing natural features. Positive planning can create new GI designed to help improve placemaking enabling settlements to grow and adapt in a connected way.

These improvements can address deficits in and increase the quantity and quality of a range of ecosystem services. To achieve this, understanding what GI assets there are, what condition they are in, what benefits they provide and how these do, or could work as networks is essential. Working at a network scale will necessitate wider engagement, partnerships and interdepartmental working to gain an overview and vision. Benefits might be enhanced health and wellbeing, cleaner air, active travel and local food production. Developing and maintaining interconnected healthy ecosystems for people and nature is a foundational principle for green infrastructure.

At a local level GI should:

• Be informed by mapped information which identifies different existing GI assets, shows where the assets link together at a local and strategic scale
• Be grounded in local information which informs planning and design
• Focus on needs based on addressing deficits in local Green Infrastructure supply
• Ensure the functions and services provided by individual projects meet the needs of users, benefits the wider environment, connects to GI networks within the boundary of the project and links with existing and planned GI in the surrounding area

At a settlement level GI should be assessed to understand how it works together as a system to provide multiple ecosystem services and benefits. Including how all the various parts do or could connect into networks that provides different benefits for people across a community.

For networks of GI to be delivered strong partnerships, a clear vision and understanding of what can be achieved over time is required. GI strategies can be important along with cooperation between landowners, developers, policy planners, development control planners, health and other specialists, designers, and communities if success is to be achieved.

Green infrastructure provides greenspaces and pathways for recreation, exercise, informal and organised sports, and active travel. GI can also improve the quality of streets and routes for pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders. There is evidence that having many natural features within a neighbourhood encourages walking trips to destinations such as shops.

When, how and who uses green infrastructure is greatly affected by how near it is, how well it meets users’ needs and how well it is managed. Certain types of routes such as multi-user routes in the urban fringe and short circular routes for exercise close to where people live, can be important in connecting people and places, and supporting healthy communities. Therefore, well designed, accessible and cared for spaces and routes close to where people live are most likely to:

• Respond to the needs of less mobile users
• Be inclusive for people who are less confident outdoors, for disability or cultural reasons
• Feel safe for all non-motorised users
• Overcome barriers particularly through good information and design
• Offer opportunities to interact with the natural world for recreation, education or relaxation
• Connect different communities together
• Support local community pride and cohesion

Green infrastructure which simply provides a green backdrop to movement routes, such as mown grass verges will be less likely to provide a range of experiences and therefore benefits. Transport routes which include recreational opportunities and natural areas will raise the quality, attractiveness, financial and social capital of an area.

At a strategic level GI should:

• Aim to strengthen access networks and reduce fragmentation of green and blue infrastructure
• Contribute to access policy such as green transport and active travel strategies
• Help achieve targeted individual access objectives for different users
• Maintain and enhance non-motorised routes
• Provide information which promotes wayfinding to destinations and longer routes

To create opportunities for green liveable places, GI policies and implementation plans should aim to use evidence on access to greenspace. Then apply appropriate standards to help quantify deficits and identify priority locations for GI investment. This will ensure that GI is inclusive and provides spaces and routes for all local people and visitors including walkers, cyclists and horse riders, and people with disabilities.

Character is what makes a place distinctive; it helps people to recognise and connect to their local environment. ‘Landscape character’ embraces the natural, cultural/ historic and perceptual aspects of landscape, and how they interact in a way that makes a place distinctive. It also helps people to recognise and connect to their local environment.

Taking steps to understand an area’s landscape character is essential to ensure that new Green Infrastructure responds to a place appropriately. This requires taking account of information about local landscape character and key characteristics which can be found, for example, in landscape/townscape character assessments, historic landscape character assessments and the National Character Area profiles.

The GI approach to ‘conserving character’ is not only concerned with ‘preserving or maintaining character’; it is equally about accommodating and managing change to retain the landscape characteristics and benefits that society and local communities value. ‘Enhancement’ is about taking opportunities to improve an area’s character by strengthening existing characteristics or introducing appropriate new features. In National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Heritage Coasts additional character considerations may apply to align with their statutory and other purposes.

In many cases, a mix of approaches will be appropriate throughout an area. It is also important that the feasibility of each approach is considered in relation to the practical functions required of the landscape. Steps taken should include discussions with stakeholders on what they currently value about the landscape, how it has evolved over time and what needs to change in the future. For example, options considered may lead to the creation of a new, high quality landscape in part of an area that has become degraded. In contrast, where an area’s sense of place has been weakened by the loss of characteristic features, then the objective may be restoration reflecting a valued previous character.

Planning policies and decisions should ensure that developments are sympathetic to local character and history, including the surrounding built environment and landscape.