Developing green infrastructure ‘thinking’: devising and applying an interactive group-based methodology for practitioners

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a wave of interest in the concept of green infrastructure (GI) as a means of applying an ecosystem approach to spatial planning practice; however, more limited attention has been paid to decision-making processes or tools to enhance GI within spatial plans and guidance. We address this deficit by reporting on the development and application of an interactive group-based methodology to enhance GI ‘thinking’ and interdisciplinary collaboration, drawing on the literature on the sociology of interactions. Our findings suggest that a game-based approach to GI problem-solving was successful in breaking down professional barriers by creating an informal learning arena, providing an enabling opportunity for participants to solve problems in an iterative, non-linear style to develop principles for action with transferability to ongoing plan formation. This style of problem-solving was characterised by shifting norms and routines of interaction, leading to problem re-framing and a search for alternative solutions.

Keywords:

• green infrastructure
• deliberative methods
• problem-solving

Acknowledgements

We thank the referees for their helpful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The workshop at the Eastern River Basin District Training Day was approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes. This shorter workshop resulted from a scheduling overrun in a full day of various training events of which this workshop was one event among many.

2. 23 June 2014.

3. Such tensions where identified in a series of interviews with 6 council officers from different departments (e.g. drainage, transport, planning, parks) and 2 consultants working on behalf of the council to supply GI expertise in the formulation of spatial planning policy.

4. The facilitating team comprised: one ecologist; one landscape architect; and two planners. An architect substituted for the ecologist at the workshop with the Eastern River Basin District. All facilitators were experienced practitioners but working in an academic environment at the time of the workshops.

5. The cards were shuffled prior to game play to further ensure that a random and broad selection of issues emerged in the course of this phase of the workshop.

Additional information

Funding

We wish to acknowledge the funding for this research from the Irish Environmental Protection Agency's STRIVE Research Programme (Eco-Plan Research grant 2012-W-MS-12 21).